Category Archives: Video Games

Do you really know who's in the kitchen?

Posted by Roy on

Random title, I know but I feel that this post is going to be a bunch of random talk that it won’t make much sense and probably will not tie in well with any aspect of stuff I’ve written on before. It’s more an update on me and despite my best efforts to keep this blog focused on my car and video games, it will once again divulge into another aspect of my life. It’s always been a problem I’ve had because I have a ton of interests, none of them interest me enough to the point where I can exclusively talk about them in numerous ways to keep them reading for any unfortunate person who decided to stumble upon this place. Regardless of the potential randomness of this post, let’s carry on.

In the last month since my last post, I’ve attended the Gun Safety class required in Massachusetts to apply for a License to Carry. This in most states is called a gun permit, and exclusively deals with the right to purchase, possess and transport firearms. Also in that time I applied for a Class A license, which means that I would be able to obtain firearms that would be considered high capacity firearms and also have the ability to carry a concealed weapon if I so chose to. Unlike my father, I do not wish to carry a concealed weapon, however I do wish to own guns. They are something that I was raised around, and going to the range and shooting paper targets or skeet is fun to me. Before anyone chimes in that guns are evil, I just want to say that I completely believe in the mentality that guns kill people like pencils make spelling mistakes. In the hands of someone knowledgable and level headed, firearms are just as safe as anything else.

Just before the gun safety class, my father revealed to me that his present to me for graduating from university was going to be a Taurus PT100. This is a .40 caliber pistol that holds 11 in the magazine and one in the chamber, thus making it capable of holding 12 bullets. In the weeks that have followed, I have gone shooting with him several times at the Springfield Sportsman Club in Monson, MA. I definitely was nervous shooting it at first, which was a bit weird because of the fact that I have handled more powerful guns, and was never afraid of them. I feel that it had something to do with the fact that I was the first person in my family to shoot it, or that it was going to eventually be mine. Either way after the first round of firing went through my nerves slowly settled.

I must say that I do love it so far. I still have to sight it in and all that. I want to shoot it a couple more times before actually potentially dedicating a whole post to it. Hmm… Potentially a new aspect of this blog could be reviews of all the things I’ve shot. First one would have to be my Taurus, then the Mossberg 500 from last weekend… It wouldn’t be that bad all I’d have to do is go home and spend the day at the range with my dad.

Switching gears, literally… My car has hit 10,000 miles! That’s right my baby has hit 10,000 miles on September 13th, 2010. I was driving home from work and was almost at my apartment when the ticker hit. I took a couple pictures with my Droid’s camera, and documented the fact. Unfortunately this method of capturing the moment will have to stop since Massachusetts just passed a new law where it is a 100 dollar fine if you are caught using your cell phone for any other than besides a phone. (So basically no texting, tweeting, looking at facebook in traffic) Oh well, after 10,000 the next big one is 25,000 or 50,000 and both of those are a decent ways away.

As for my manual driving skills, I can definitely say that there has been a ton of improvement since I’ve started my new job back in June. The constant stop and go traffic has made me really comfortable with starts, however I know damn well that when I actually purchase a car that actually has some torque I’m going to have to be more careful with the amount of gas I give. I still refuse to do hand brake starts on steep hills. This is only a problem when I get home from work and there is that massive hill. I should probably practice that more but I just… I dunno. I think that I’d have to still apply more gas. Maybe I’ll try it on my way home. It’s been awhile since I’ve stalled…

On other news: The games I’ve been playing since the last post have been, Dragon Age: Origins, Sims (Becky got me into it again… UGH) and Minecraft. If you haven’t heard of Minecraft… go to Youtube and check it out. I might do one of those videos to show Becky how my town has been going, but other than that probably not.

Goodbye XBOX LIVE. It's been fun.

Posted by Roy on

On August 30th, 2010, Major Nelson announced that Microsoft was going to increase the price of Xbox LIVE from 49.99 a year to 59.99 a year. After the rush of people who shouted and scream about it, myself included, everyone cooled down and just accepted that there was nothing they could do about it.

I on the other hand have accepted that I am letting my Xbox LIVE Subscription to expire. Now I’ve only been a member since Jan 2008, so I don’t want to make everyone believe even for a second that I’m going to be talking about the good ole days. There wasn’t any reason for the price increase given, but many speculated that it was because of the addition of Hulu and ESPN. If this is true, then that’s enough reason right there. I pay for a TV subscription, I have ESPN on my TV, why would I want to watch it through my XBOX? And if I wanted to watch a show on Hulu, chances are it’s already on NetFlix.

But there are really three reasons why I am letting my subscription expire.

1.) Never really use my xbox anymore. When I do I use it to play Fallout 3 or Forza, both of which I play by myself. I have been giving my PS3 way more love because my girlfriend has one and we play together and also because I love the games. It’s an amazing system and don’t get me wrong, XBOX is amazing too but until Fable 3 I don’t really feel the need to actually buy and play anything for it.

2.) Awful Connection. I don’t know what it is about my FiOS, but my XBOX is the only thing that cannot regularly connect to it. The XBOX is connected via ethernet cable and it still refuses to get an IP address. This is the only device that doesn’t, my laptop, my ps3, my desktop, hell even my cell phone connects with no trouble whatsoever but the XBOX consistently has problems to which I just turn it off and go play something else. So even if I did want to play Call of Duty or Halo, or any multiplayer game I did buy for the XBox I cannot.

3.) I never use ANY of the services besides online game play. This is what bugs me the most is that I’d be paying 60 bucks a year to play games online. The reasoning why it’s not even half that cost is because of the fact they support NetFlix, Twitter, Facebook and now Hulu and ESPN. I truly feel that it should be the same as a TV signal provider. You get a base package unless you want more, then you pay extra to get that more. Why couldn’t xbox just say oh it’s 30 bucks for the ability to play online and visit the marketplace then charge extra for the extra features. It’s not even like they have dedicated servers. Even if you willingly pay the 60 bucks, you’re just being pointed to someone else’s xbox and they are hosting the game. Why do I even NEED Microsoft to do that?

Ultimately though, I come from a family who has taught me that you shouldn’t needlessly spend on things that you don’t really use. So sorry XBox, but it’s time for you and I to part ways. Maybe one day we can be friends again. Until then…

GOD OF WAR 3!!! And other gaming related stuff.

Posted by Roy on

God of War 3 came out on March 16, 2010 and has been consuming my soul a bit since then. I got the final trophy last night that allowed me to platinum the game, this makes 5th game that I have gotten the platinum trophy in. (The other four are Dante’s Inferno, God of War, God of War II and Madagascar Kartz)

I must say that the story kept me playing, even after beating it once I willingly jumped into another play though at a higher difficulty.

I would highly recommend the game to anyone who has a PS3. Now that I am done with that, I am going to attempt to get the platinum trophies in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Heavy Rain. After I’ve completed this, I am going to start playing Batman: Arkham Asylum and maybe Resident Evil (Or I might just have Becky play it with me to get it done because I don’t really like it so far)

To wrap this up, here are my gaming cards for XBL and PSN for anyone to just add me on.



Been away for a bit.

Posted by Roy on

Not that anyone reads this regularly or cares but whatever. I do this because I’m bored and that is the end of it.

So I got my car in July, It’s March… that’s… 8 months? That’s going to be coming up soon. I’m excited for Spring because I can finally drive around with my windows down and wash the car and have all the fun of warm weather again. A lot has been happening lately, with Toyota, with Xbox, with PS3, with School and Jobs and people. I really don’t want to deal with the car topic right now, so let’s go with the combination Xbox/PS3 thing.

Continue reading →

Review: Assassin's Creed II

Posted by Roy on

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, and probably some other one, I don’t really care. I played it on the Xbox 360.
Release Date: November 17th, 2009

When I first found out about the game several months ago, I was a little skeptical about what was going to be happening in it. The first one started out really interesting than sort of got really repetitive. It was rather annoying to wander around in the real world at a slow pace and then when you went into the Animus you had to sit there gathering information by either pick pocketing, sitting on a park bench or beating people. The worst was that you didn’t do it once, you did it for every assassination target and had a minimum number of events you must do before you could actually get out. However, that was Assassin’s Creed, and when I saw the trailer for Assassin’s Creed II it gave me some optimism that the game had changed.

I did get the game for Christmas and I started playing it a couple days later.

Storyline

Luckily, I was right in my optimism. The storyline of this game was a lot more interesting than it was in the first one. The missions were actually different and a decent amount of fun. Be it there was some repetition, but of course that’s going to happen. The dialogue between the characters actually gave purpose and meaning to the missions that you were doing. You wanted to kill the assassination targets not because you wanted to, but because you hated them for what they did to you. Well… you in the sense of the character Ezio.The ending was incredibly interesting and perfectly sets up Assassin’s Creed III. Again I like to keep this section short, because other gaming websites tell you about the storyline and personally I wouldn’t want to give out any spoilers.

Graphics

They aren’t the best I’ve seen, the thing that bugged me the most was the mouths of the characters. The artists tried to make the mouths look/move realistic but it just kind of looks a bit goofy.

Controls

The controls of the game system seem to be rather interesting. The truth of the matter is they were simple to use, at least the basics were. Horse riding was still a huge problem from the first game and they were a bit sensitive for my tastes. What I mean by sensitive is the fact that you could be running full speed down a hallway, attempt to turn into a doorway only to make a sharp turn and run up the wall. This kind of happened a lot to me when I was depositing the feathers in the Villa.

Achievements

This is the first game in awhile that has no multiplayer to it, so all the achievements were based on the campaign. This allowed me to actually focus on some stuff and actually get 1000/1000. The most difficult/tedious achievements were the “No Hitter”, which is fighting 10 guards and killing them without getting hit., and “In Memory of Petruccio”, where you collect all the feathers. My last achievement was the No Hitter.

One achievement I wish they carried over from Assassin’s Creed was the synchronize the view points. Maybe they took this away to get rid of some of the repetitiveness, but this time there was a reason to go up onto all of them. All the view points were in the city and in order to make your way around the city effectively you would want to see the mini-map.

Christmas goodies

Posted by Roy on

This Christmas was very, very, very good to me and I’m very thankful for everything I got. Here’s a quick list

  • Bruins 3rd Jersey
  • UMass Jersey
  • Bruins Hoodie
  • Lucic Tee shirt
  • Bruins pajama pants
  • Red Sox Hoodie
  • Scrubs Season 1 and 2
  • Cargo Net for my car
  • 1.5 Terabyte Hard Drive

I also received several games.

For the xBox 360

  • Prototype
  • Assassin’s Creed 2
  • Brutal Legend
  • Need for Speed Shift
  • Forza Motorsport 3
  • Hawx
  • Left 4 Dead 2

I also got a PS3 and Uncharted.

The day after I purchased NHL 10, Metal Gear Solid 4, and the God of War 1 and 2 combo pack.

So I have a lot of games to play hah.

Review: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

Posted by Roy on

So I’m really bored at the Learning commons, and figure why not do a post about a game that I’ve been playing a ton of since it came out. That would be Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

At first I was very skeptical of the game, there wasn’t much about it before it got released but then again I wasn’t really looking for anything. I was paying closer attention to Halo: ODST and Assassin’s Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2.

I’m actually glad I got this game. I played through the storyline twice, and it’s simply amazing. I love the places you fight, and the plot is just simply amazing. I cannot complain whatsoever with that. I’m not going to give away any spoilers, but then again if you wanted Spoilers you’d probably go to another site and read their review (Why are you reading this anyways are you crazy?)

My biggest gripes with the game is the multiplayer.

There are a lot of problems just with guns. First thing, Akimbo shotguns… Really? As if a shotgun needs to become anymore powerful. I understand Halo did this too with the Maulers but there is  a big difference between the two. In Halo the effective range of the mauler is really short, whereas give someone the high class shotgun, and make it akimbo, it becomes a freaking sniper rifle. I’ve been killed with Akimbo 1887 from like 30-40 feet so many times it’s not even funny. The worst part is when you walk around a corner you have zero chance. I mean, I’m not going to lie one of my 5 custom classes has akimbo rangers but those are sawed off shotguns and between the two of them have 4 shots. The Akimbo 1887 have 12 shots between the two of them.

Not to mention the Javelin. They fixed the javelin glitch, but there is still the problem of a gun that is supposed to be for vehicle use only getting fired when it’s not locked onto anything. It’s a little annoying when you are spawning and then all of a sudden you have a javelin missile land on your head and destroy you.

Another thing is the maps. There are some decent ones. But there are some that just allow one team to Dominate way too easily. The map I’m thinking of is Karachi. In Domination a good team will just take Points A and B and allow the other team to take C. This forces them to spawn in a place where there are only 3 exits, two of which can be covered by one Tower, and the other that can be covered by a long street.  This sucks if you’re on the team that fell into that trap, because there is little you can do to get out of it except be extremely efficient with an M16 (I’m talking headshots only on everyone there.)

The customizable kill streaks are really cool, the death streaks are okay, but I’d rather have something point out that I am on a death streak and I’d rather not get screwed out of a kill because someone is on one, but I guess it prevents veterans from destroying a team with some newbies on it, so  it has it’s pluses.

The coolest kill streak I have seen would definitely have to be the Nuke. I’ve only had it happen twice to me, and I haven’t even had it unlocked yet but it’s just kind of epic to see happen.

Special Ops are… annoying I guess. I hate how if I get 99% of the way there is always one guy I miss and death brings me back to the beginning. I spent 10 minutes getting that far and now I have to start over. More often then not I just say screw that and go back to the beginning. I guess it would be easier if I hate a teammate but let’s be honest, I work better alone on these sort of things. The only person that would probably work well with me would be Avi