I seem to recall that one being bad with a main character that whined more than usual for these games.

If they did 12 I'd be all over that one. I remember liking it but also being burnt out on all the Japanese RPGs by then so only got a few hours in before putting it aside. Think I could manage another JRPG after this several year hiatus.

This latest patch fixed the shadow issue I was having. Even seemed to get a small performance boost so turned SSAO on. Had a little slow down in some areas where a lot of animation was occurring but other than that its been smooth.

Haven't bothered to mess with the FOV setting yet but I'm actually ok with the default.

StiLL with checkpoints....sigh.  According to reviews soMe of them are brutal as well. Wish I knew why this was necessary. NoT a deal breaker for me, just frustrating.

So far they seem pretty reasonable. I had to leave the game unexpectedly and was deep in to a long level. I figured I'd have to play the thing all over again but it put me right at the start of the last room I entered which was just fine.

For me the shadow issues are more annoying than the FOV stuff. I've gotten used to the tight FOV. Other than that technical issue this is a pretty great game.

Yeah that was a pretty good season overall. I even liked a bunch of the early stuff with the Phillip nuttiness and Brandon being such a loose cannon. I was also satisfied with the ending as I think Cochran played a great game compared to those that were left after Malcolm went home.

The Reunion Show was kinda a stinker though. I do miss hearing from the early contestants. I would have liked to hear from Shamar about how he behaved and performed. Or about some of the early contestant strategy plans. And its always fun to hear from the first contestant voted out. They also didn't need to spend time with that little girl who had a crush on Malcolm or Rudy who apparently wants to make it clear he doesn't hang out with "queers". And although I do like seeing Boston Rob having him there to pimp his book was not a good reason - but the short critique about Phillip was fun.

Not sure about the Blood vs Water thing. I'm suspecting its going to be a families thing.

Keep an eye out for starter pack sales. Gamestop has the Mithril Edition starter pack which was the shit. Get a mount, quest packs for several key zones, and 2,000 turbine points to spend quest packs or whatever, all for $10. It looks like that's gone up to $20 now. Still a decent deal. Steam also swaps out different starter packs and puts those on sales from time to time. The current one "Steely Dawn" looks like crap though: An armor set, a quest pack (although a good one), a bunch of XP boosts (useless), and a measly 500 turbine points.

You can also just go the subscription route when you hit a wall with the F2P stuff and you pay like a regular MMO but get 500 Turbine points to spend each month.

I stuck with the F2P route and basically have all content unlocked. I would purchase a bunch of Turbine Points when they went on sale (often) and then buy content when that went on sale (often). Still probably spent over $100 in Turbine points but that's spread over several years so it didn't even sting. I get the sense I'm making out better this way than if I went the subscription route at this point.

But I wouldn't worry about any of this until you hit your wall in the game.

The CD probably won't do you any good as there have been a bunch of updates that you'll probably have to download anyways. So I would just download the client from their website and go at it that way.

There's been graphical updates (DX10 support) and this game does look fantastic. The UI however is archaic and will take a bit of getting used to again - its not always intuitive and doesn't look that great.

I am not sure of the communities health level. On the server I was on (name escapes me) there were people running around but nowhere near the levels that WOW gets. And that was kinda nice as when you quest you weren't waiting for something to spawn and when you came across people on the road or on your destination it was kinda special. The main hub towns are where you will run across most people running around, and when there are the holiday events that's when you'll see large crowds of people. There are plenty of guilds looking to recruit. The one I joined had about 200 members listed but really only about 15-20 people on during peak but off-peak I would typically see 0-3 people.

The game is also free to play and you can get around fine for the first 15 or so levels without paying a cent.

Pinball FX2 with a select one or two packs. Since I have most of the tables on the PS3 and all of them on the iPad will wait for a sale for the non-essentials.

Looks like a couple of notables made it on to Netflix:

Cabin in the Woods, John Dies at the End, and the series Continium

All are worth checking out for their own reasons.

I liked the 3rd one quite a bit, wasn't expecting to. I doubt I would see this in theatres but will rent it when it comes to streaming.

I was doing a pretty good job of not buying any old thing on sale the last few months and working through my backlog instead. Was feeling pretty good about it. But then I picked up Dirt Showdown a few days ago and HOMM 5 and its expansions. Now I feel bad.

Between all the Comixology sales that have gone on and the Marvel Unlimited app I'm way over my head in comics. Comixology has basically been like Steam to me and I want to buy just about everything that goes on sale. That's left a huge backlog for me. Unfortunately a bunch of the stuff I'm purchase on sale and read haven't been all that great - Return to Wonderland Omnibus, 30 Days of Nights various volumes, Army of Darkness omnibus (what was I thinking?), and a bunch of other stuff I haven't gotten to.

I'm going to have to ween myself off from purchasing everything that goes on sale there.

Fantastic news. Really did love the original and spent a bunch of hours playing through it and the add-ons but it was getting a bit stale there.

I'm in. I did enjoy the Rohan expansion and the horse combat once I got over the learning curve. But the end game content of building up a town didn't really hold my interest. So more levels, more zones, and more horse combat means I'm in.

The one thing they didn't mention which I hope they do is a UI revamp. It was a bit clunky when it came out and compared to today's UIs its really clunky.

I put in two hours in to it. If you liked the first (I did) you'll like this as its more of the same - a somewhat open world zombie apocolypse game. It still has all the warts of the original game including the horrible dialogue which makes you hate any of the main characters. And they seemed to have ramped up items you can gather in the game. It seems like there are items everywhere to pick up so you're spending a bunch of times just scouring every inch of ground to pick up items - it kinda sucks a bit of life out of the whole survival aspect of the game its supposed to be focusing on. Instead its gather gather gather, kill kill, gather gather gather.

Haven't hit any game stopping bugs or anything (never did in the original) but there are some annoying things. Like the weather seems to change on a dime. It's nice and sunny one second and then all of a sudden dark and torrental rains. Some leafs of a plant made me stuck between a building an a rock face for awhile but my jumping and ducking movements eventually unstucked me. I had a zombie appear out of thin air. And then after clearing out an area but then found they all came back after I went over a small rise and turned around.

Still having a lot of fun with it. I love the analog combat where you can direct your blows to cripple or cut off limbs. The location looks great, although I do wish the textures were hire res. The quests are acceptable and there seems to be some minimal base building elements which is kinda a nice change. All-in-all it seems decent so far.

Euro Truck 2 is a surprisingly fun game. Check out the demo on Stream if you are unsure but $20 is certainly worth it.

Pre-purchased Dead Island on PC - got it for $15 at GMG using a sale and store credit. And just purchase both the original Dragons Dogma for $19 on Amazon and the Dark Arisen. Did always want to get the DD games just never got around to it so nows the perfect time.

From what I read dark arise  is a standalone that includes the original game so I think you don't need to buy that separately?

Gah. Can anyone confirm?

Pre-purchased Dead Island on PC - got it for $15 at GMG using a sale and store credit. And just purchase both the original Dragons Dogma for $19 on Amazon and the Dark Arisen. Did always want to get the DD games just never got around to it so nows the perfect time.

Watched the first two episodes of Hemlock Grove. Not too sure about this one. It starts off fine then gets pretty confusing quickly. There's the main storyline of "who's the werewolf?" but that story is side lined by all these other story threads and characters that are introduced and not fleshed out at all. You spend your time figuring out how all these things tie together and its not fun as you're given very little to work with.

Like there's this nerdy girl that has an interest with the new kid in town. But then that ends quick and the next time you see her is getting ready for a school dance, she hooks up briefly with some guy there, and then that's it. I'm not sure what the whole point of that was. There's a bunch of those loose threads that play out every 10 minutes or so.

The acting is pretty awful for almost everyone. Thankfully the best actors are the two main characters, the rich kid and the gypsy kid. Everyone else basically seems like they're coming from a Soap Opera.

So this isn't an immediate must watch. I'll probably finish out the season but am disappointed in it so far.

Ugh. This one could bite me for pre-purcashing it. Figured it would be at least as good as the original.

Pinball Arcades April tables are out. It's a great mix. Whitewater (1993) and Space Shuttle (1984). Whitewater will likely get the most buzz as it's one of the more popular pinball tables. It has  a pretty neat left ramp where the ball goes up and down then loops around the flipper, a whirlpool, and a Bigfoot. The theme is a humorous white water rafting adventure. Space Shuttle has been in the Williams Collection before but is still loads of fun with really fast gameplay. The table makes it feel like your working towards a multitball that will award you tons of points. If you really want to see how to play Space Shuttle take a peak at this Space Shuttle Video  - I never even knew you could trap multiple balls on the flipper like this. I've been trying to master that on other tables since I watched that video last week with some limited success.

Pinball Arcade also got Greenlit for Steam. They're saying late April or early May for it to appear on there. Not sure what tables are going to be made available off the bat but it won't be all of them. The PC team wasn't working on tables while the Greenlight process delayed the release - understandable.

If you're interested in more real pinball tables I'll also reccomend another app, Zaccaria Pinball. Zaccaria was a popular pinball maker in Italy in the 80's. Most of the tables never made it too far out of Europe so for me they were almost all unfamiliar (I did happen to play Time Machine at the Midwest Gaming Classic). But they are high quality tables for the time but a bit more basic than what you would see from Williams, Bally and Stern during this time. The tables do have a neat feature to them where during the 3rd ball you can build up this bonus time which will count down during a 4th ball which you can use to boost your score. Pretty neat.

They plan on releaseing something like 29 tables for the app and have 4 out currently. The best of the bunch right now is Pinball Champ - which unfortunatly is having some lag issues on it (even on a iPad 3/4). But the other tables are pretty decent too. There's also a night mode you can purchase for the tables. This is a must as the tables look fantastic when the lights are turned off. Their last update added some pretty decent physics to the ball movement. While isn't quite good as Pinball Arcade at the moment it is still pretty decent. One thing their physics does have over PA is they managed to do ball spin!

The developer seems commited to improving the App so I sprung for their Gold pack ($35) which nets everything including all tables they will release. There is a Silver pack for a bit less that nets all 29 tables (as they are released) and a Bronze pack for a lot less which just includes things like the night mode, different balls, and fippers (last two are not worth it). You can also just buy things piecemeal. They're worth checking out if you want more pinball.

Yeah, I agree. That guy is really a fantastic actor. Those two scenes you mentioned were the two that really stood out.

The show lost a bit of that Twins Peaks vibe now and seems to be coming in to its own without it being cooky. Enjoying the show quite a bit.

Yeah had that experience too. It was pretty bad that they were basically spoiling what was going to happen after the commercial break. Even with the DVR you could not not see them - that's a double "not".

It's ho-hum. The first few minutes are great however. Then there's Country singing.

Basically the show is a sci-fi Western. But none of the characters are really intriguing despite having a large group of different alien species.

So far it's no Firefly. But I'll give it a few more episodes.

Yeah I've noticed Feedflix has gotten less accurate in the last few months. I hardly go there anymore. I fllick through the new releases page on Netflix now which sucks. I just want a page that shows new and upcoming movies with a brief description.

I know about bitcoin, but what is this mining aspect?

Well basically they created a Bitcoin with the idea that is was like any resource you would mine for (gold, oil, gas, etc). There's a finite number of the resource and that helps determine value - in this case not a whole lot of it. Initially in order to get the Bitcoin you had to mine for it. And you would do that by running a computer program that ran some algorithm that would determine if you got a coin or not.

The faster and more powerful the system the more mining it could do and the greater the chance you would get a coin.

But the problem now is that the resource has pretty much all been mined so the chances of getting a coin are slim. Particularly on home system which are slow and underpowered compared to whats out there mining for these coins.

Planet Money (podcast) recently did a show on Bitcoin. They seemed to suggest that at this point it would be difficult to get any coins from mining - particularly on a home PC. They also spoke to a few people who thought the bubble for Bitcoin was getting close to bursting - so if you get coins probably best to use them or sell them quick.

Its a neat idea, and like everyone wish I got in on it from the start, but at this point I'm sticking with traditional money.

Yeah Malcolm really bungled that whole thing. I also don't understand why he voted for Reynold.

It looked like Malcolm had a good thing going with the two HIIs available for play. But now he's squarely on the bottom. He still has his HII, which I think he'll be smart enough to know when to use it for himself, but once its gone he's just a balancing challenge away from going home.

I do love how it all played out though. Andreas paranoid about her being the target is what really saved them. I had no clue she had so much sway in the way people vote until this episode.

Really not sure who I want to win this one though. I guess Cochrain at this point. He has done a great job keeping focus on the votes that keep his group on top and keeping Philip's insanity in check. Dawn is another ok choice as she's actually playing the game and pretty well, but she annoys me. I would be happy with Malcolm winning until I saw this episode in how he bungled everything. I haven't warmed up to any of the other players and most of them seem undeserving to win.

Looks like they're going to give this sale a second attempt for tomorrow. You can sign up for it here: https://promo.marvel.com/

This is pretty much the best way to check out a lot of comics from their start without paying anything in to it. Here's a few reccomendations of stuff I actually read:

Runnaways Vol 1 - #1
Ruse #1
Exiles Vol 1 - #1

Three fun reads where you don't need to know much of anything about the Marvel Universe of today to enjoy - which is where I was.

Aw. I actually liked that episode quite a bit. Had Cochrin winning an immunity challenge. Had some big strategic moves going in. And had a nice blindside.

Losing Corrine also doesn't impact Malcoms plan at all to take control as he has a hidden immunity idol and that other guy in his alliance does too. I think Philip will be falling pretty soon and it will be pretty sweet to see him go.

I made the same mistake but with the last Tomb Raider. When I saw that I could start pre-loading it I went to Steam to trigger it. But was surprised to find I hadn't pre-purchased it after all. So I bought it on Steam and started the pre-load. It was nagging me since I could have sworn I pre-purchased it. Then a day or two later I thought to check Green Man and sure enough I purchase it there. Recall I got it a few months ago when they had a semi-cheap sale on it.

Getting hard to keep track of what I bought where.

Caught up with episode 2 and 3. Very hopeful for the show. Looks like there's plenty of meat there for a series with the towns secrets, Norman turning crazy, and the Norman and Norma relationship. Liked the 3rd episode quite a bit and do like the girl with the oxygen tank. She stood up to Norma's interrogation without blinking an eye. Also liked that the brother turned out not to be such a jerk after all.

What I don't get is the relationship between Norman and the blond girl. Don't get what she sees in him now that she's seen what he's like - just a nice quiet guy that faints. It doesn't seem like they would have much chemistry so not  sure where the relationship will go other than her using him.

While that stinks they really haven't created many good games in the last 5 years.

A few more interesting pictures here to close this out.

The Sunday event is considered "family day" so there were a number of kids around. Would be interesting to hear what they thought of some of the older arcade game consoles and older video games. I know in the console room a bunch flocked to the 360 that had God of War running on it. But with the Quake LAN there were quite a few younger kids playing. I suspect they were the damn spawn campers!

Someone had brought in a Fix it Felix, from the movie Wreck it Raph.



They put it in one of the hallways on Saturday and was being played pretty often. Neat stuff.



The highlight in the show for me was getting to play Cactus Canyon Continues. Cactus Canyon was the last Bally DMD pinball released before pushing out their two Pinball 2000 tables that were the very last (Star Wars: Ep 1 and Revenge from Mars). Before the Cactus Canyon team could finish the game they dismantled the team and released less than 1,000 units with its incomplete code. So the game came out a bit unpolished and missing a few modes. So a guy who owned the machine decided to add in a few of the missing modes, add some new modes, hire one of the original voice actors to record more lines, then took the machine to the show.

I've been playing the Pinball Arcade version of Cactus Canyon quite a bit, loving it in its incomplete form, so I was very interested in checking out Cactus Canyon Continued.

The table was tucked away in one of the corner hotel rooms so wasn't getting a lot of traffic. I was able to spent a bit of time playing it and talking to the project creator. He was nice enough to set up several of the new modes to trigger for me. It turned out to be my highlight from the show.



The vendor hall was downstair in another part of the hotel I didn't even manage to see the first day. I wish I had since there were even more games tucked away on the walk over there I would have loved spending more time playing. But by Sunday I was pretty pooped and ready to head back so just walked around the vendor hall which was crowded as hell but had a ton of video game related stuff to check out.



If you're looking to buy any old console games oor even some hard to find PC games, this is definetly the place to be. I have a feeling next year I'll pick up one of those Retcon 5 machines and then buy a bunch of cheap video games from the vendor hall at the show.



I was kinda surprised to see a number of sealed Atari 2600 games too. I probably haven't see this many Atari 2600 games since the 80's at KB Toys.



And if you ever need cables for anything. This looks to be the place to get them.



Another nice thing about the hall was that there were some playable games tucked here in there including a few rare ones. Like a Tapper machine that was a Budwiser Tapper instead of the typical RootBeer Tapper - could get that for $1,500. And a Joust 2. I really wanted to play that Joust 2 but right after some people finished playing the game died or the screen turned off or something so didn't get to play it but took this sad screenshot of it.



So that was the gist of what went on there. The venue was bursting at the seams with games and people. But I kinda liked it that way as there seemed to be always something new you would discover just walking around. People for the most part were pretty friendly. Only had a few people who kept playing one game after another without looking behind them to see if anyone was waiting to play too. And only a few incidents of bad BO.

There were a few cosplayers too. One young woman dressed up in this sexy Bowser outfit (from Mario). And there was a fat guy with tits and a wig. Although I'm not 100% sure that was cosplay.

I'll probably make this a yeary thing as it was just a lot of fun, inexpensive, and there was plenty of stuff I wanted to check out that I just didn't have time for. Including playing the WoZ table. I'm waiting in line next year.

You really had to explore the hotel area to find everything. When I headed downstairs I was surprised by walking in to rooms with mini-arcades. Each room had the same deal, all free to play. So I played a bit of Kangaroo, a Donkey Kong clone, and a Japanese import Macross (e.g. Robotech) and a few other arcade games that I hadn't played in decades. It was hard not to play everything but I had to explore more!



So tucked away in another side room was one that had a bunch of video game consoles. Most were old ones, some I've never played before but they also several of these set up:



I gave it a whirl. One of the guys volunteering in the area came over and walked me through the initial mech power-up phase. You had to press a few buttons, flick a few switches, neat stuff.  Then he gave me a few pointers on the controls and foot pedals and sent me on my way. I didn't know what the hell I was doing in the mission but got my mech out of the docking bay, blew up a bunch of stuff, pressed a few buttons on the controller to swap weapons, and managed to finish the mission. Overall a real neat experience.

I asked him if they were going to network the consoles together for multi-play and he said they tried that last year and it didn't work out. People were too confused by the controls which I can see.

Also in this room was an Intellivision with Burger Time on it. Never did get an Intellivision but my cousins had it and was always a bit jealous of that since the graphics were so much better than the 2600's. But man that controller SUCKS for platforming games like Burger Time.



Another room had a mix of classic video games and old computers that you could play games on. For computers I saw a few there I've never seen before including a Commodore Pet, an Apple ///, and a C64 with a dual-disk drive. They even had my old Apple //e there where someone was playing Oregon Trail.



They did a great job with this room as they had 80's music playing and even had some 70's/80's artifacts to set the atmosphere.



But they also had some modern stuff like 4-player Smash Bro's.

[Spoiler]

The next day was the real start of the show. Those that pre-purchased tickets could get them the day before. I waited in line for about 10 minutes to get my tickets. Those that got their tickets the day of the show waited a bit longer.



There were a few things I wanted to see at the show and being able to play the Wizard of Oz table was one of them. This is a new pinball table that is still being worked on and has mainly only been out in the prototype stage. But when I went over there there were like 15 people in the line so I decided to try later. I had two days the line would go down.

But it didn't. I never saw the line less than 7 people and said screw it and never bothered to wait to try it out. A bit of reget there but also knew my game would last all of a minute when I got up there after waiting a long time.



As you can see it was quite packed there.



Games to play were all over the place but the main play area was the Arcade hall which had a bunch of pinball machines and arcade games packed in together in a single room - all free to play. After about 30 minutes they turned the lights off and then it really felt like an old arcade. They had some odd pinball machines there too including the Trilogy Brewing Company pinball game. Score 100,00 and put your beer mug under this tap and get some beer!



And no it wasn't working. Just there for the fun of it.

There was also a Miss World table that no one seemed to be playing.



And then found out why some people might be hesitant (NSFW). I played it a few times.

Spoiler for Hiden:

I'll post some more pics tomorrow from the event. There were a lot of neat things set up there including a bunch of old video and computer game systems. Plus about 10 iMac systems set up to play the original Quake via LAN. Talk about a lot of fun and time flying by.

So what is the Up to Par Tournament? Well I knew I would suck at any of the pinball tournaments as I haven't played pinball in forever beyond the virtual pinball, so I did the Up To Par Tournament. You're given a list of 15 video games and you choose 9 of those games from the list. Each video game is on a different system. Some going as far back as the 70's up to current systems (e.g. Vita). You basically play one game and try and score as high as you can. Your final score determines your stroke for that "hole". You add up the score at the end and the person with the lowest score wins.

Here's the 15 games you could choose from. I don't think anyone saw what games you would be playing until right before you got taken to the tournament.



I basically wanted to have fun so I tried to choose a bunch of games I hadn't played before:

Jungle Hunt (on an NES?)
Typing of the Dead (Dreamcast)
Pole Position 2 (Atari 7800?)
Galaga (unsure what system)
Gates of Thunder (TurboGraphix)
Raiden (Don't recall)
Geomety Wars 2 (xbox 360)
Duck Hunt (NES)
Zen Pinball 2 (Vita)

Was doing great on a few of the games, kicked ass in Pole Position 2. Was getting real tired at the end and tanked on the last two games. Including Zen Pinball 2 (Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back table) which I figured I would do last and do the best in. You had to score as many points as you could with a single ball and I lost it like 10 seconds in. Ugh!

But it was still great fun and my caddy that was with me was a great guy too and I think he appreciated that I played a few games others probably wouldn't have chosen. Here was my final score:



Didn't place at all with that score. Oh well. Was doing it for the fun of it.

So I went to this this past weekend. Been really pining to play some pinball and this turned out to be the perfect way to to it. Had a fantastic time even though I had gone by my self and played a ton of games both pinball and all types of video games. It exceeded any expectations I had. Here's some picture heavy posts recapping the event.

I showed up on Friday. The show doesn't officially start until Saturday but they have a few tournaments and other events going on Friday. I did the Tom Taylor Tour and the Up to Par tournament. The Tom Taylor tour was off site. Basically this guy has over 300 pinball machines and electromagnetic games in his warehouse. You get there at 3pm and can play as much as you want till 8pm.

Most of the pinball tables were from 50-80's but he had quite a few from the 80's-90s too. Here's just one of the rooms with a few classic arcade games and a bunch of EM pinball machines.



Only 100 tickets to the event were allowed and 300 machines so plenty of machines were open.



It was just room after room full of pins and arcade games. This one had a bunch of modern style pinballs, including a Baby PacMan which is a cross between an video game and pinball machine. I played it a few times but sucked.



He also had the Hercules pinball machine. The worlds largest pinball machine (the ball is the size of a billiard ball). Unfortunately it was not up and running. But you can see the size of it here.



Here's another room. There's a ton more pins to the right of this image and you can see another room fill with pins in the distance. Along the side of the wall here you can see a bunch of these plastic hand-held pinball type games from the 50's just covering the wall.



I was there from 3 till around 7 when I had to call it quits as I had the Up to Par tourny at 9. So reluctantly left to get some food and downtime. Plan on going to this next year for sure. There were a bunch of games I didn't get to play. But I did get to play a few of the pins that are in Pinball Aracde including Gorgar, Firepower and Central Park.

Started replaying this again recently. When I had to choose a server the population status on each of them either displayed High or whatever was above that (Full?). So wondering how they are going to hold up with a new influx of players. It is nice having a bunch of players running around in the game (at least in the starting areas).

That looks pretty good to me!