The Spam Thread!

[huckleberrypie]

A few random bits and bobs for Mother's Day...

HSN is so shameless in it's product shills. They are currently hyping up an LG BluRay player with Wifi, and one of the hosts brings out an ancient DVD player from 15 years ago to entice people to upgrade. While it is true DVD players can be large and bulky, most modern-day players aren't that big at all.

I also started playing Batman Arkham Origins for the Xbox 360 (I recently acquired one complete in box for only $20). It's a rather good game so far with a mix of gameplay styles. Sometimes you fight waves of criminals and other times you use your various Bat tools and stealth technologies to solve puzzles and find hidden paths and items.

More on the Xbox 360 soon.

Skooma sure is one hell of a drug, isn't it? Only the deluded will fall easily for such shills.

Haven't played Batman: Arkham either, but they seem to be a brilliant aversion to the usual "licenced games is crap" notion usually prevalent with games based on media franchises.

[cpd2009]

Haven't played Batman: Arkham either, but they seem to be a brilliant aversion to the usual "licenced games is crap" notion usually prevalent with games based on media franchises.

Indeed they are, though I read through TVTropes the initial Xbox 360 release of Arkham Origins was plagued with many bugs and glitches, most of which have been patched now. However, I did come across one section where one of the armed thugs somehow got stuck inside a wall, and I couldn't take him down. I had to restart from the last save point, But, it's a relatively minor dent on a largely stellar (and rather long) game. The cutscenes are amazing.

If I want to play the newest Batman game, I would have to get an Xbox One. Or a PS4. Steam is an option, but I doubt a 750Ti would cut it at high settings. :/

[huckleberrypie]

Haven't played Batman: Arkham either, but they seem to be a brilliant aversion to the usual "licenced games is crap" notion usually prevalent with games based on media franchises.

Indeed they are, though I read through TVTropes the initial Xbox 360 release of Arkham Origins was plagued with many bugs and glitches, most of which have been patched now. However, I did come across one section where one of the armed thugs somehow got stuck inside a wall, and I couldn't take him down. I had to restart from the last save point, But, it's a relatively minor dent on a largely stellar (and rather long) game. The cutscenes are amazing.

If I want to play the newest Batman game, I would have to get an Xbox One. Or a PS4. Steam is an option, but I doubt a 750Ti would cut it at high settings. :/

Arkham Origins would definitely run on your rig, but yeah, the latest Batman game is way too intensive for my rig as well.

[cpd2009]

May as well announce here that I am now the owner of an Xbox 360. I found one at a rummage sale for only $20 complete in box. The console itself is in good shape with little dust in the vents and hardly any scratches or any dings. The controller is in decent shape, but the LB button was very mushy and impossible to use. My current game, Batman Arkham Origins, uses it for the vital "Detective Vision", so a replacement was acquired. It was a bit more dirty cosmetically but I got it mostly cleaned off. It also included a Chatpad attachment, useful for searching for things on YouTube or Netflix.

The games I have so far are Batman Arkham Asylum, Arkham Origins, Tetris Revolution, and Halo 4. Yeah, I plan on trying out the Halo series. It's an FPS, but it seems are more interesting and fun than Counter Strike, CoD, or any of the other generic military shooters.

As far as apps go, The 360 is now my primary YouTube device. The app is much better than the Wii U or Roku versions due to nearly no UI lag and the none of the odd split screen method the Wii U has. Netflix also works good too, but the video appears to have scaling artifacts in HD videos. I don't know if it's the video I tried last night, or if something is off in the Netflix app. The games and YouTube don't have the strange scaling artifacts present.

All I have left to do now is to procure a Xbox 360 Wifi adapter. It's currently connected to Patsy for internet access as my model is dated August 2006 and lacks a Wifi module.

[huckleberrypie]

Perhaps you haven't heard of Master Chief's lesser-known cousin Master Chef yet:


And yeah the likes of COD are getting stale and generic lately. Activision tried to reinvent the series lately, but as the YouTube trailer for their latest game shows, people are now getting burned out at it now that it's becoming DeaderThanDisco.

We did have an NES and a Genesis (yes, a US-spec Genesis which came from one of my relatives overseas rather than the locally-available Mega Drive model) back in the 90s, but apart from my cousin's PlayStation 1 we never got to own any game console past the fourth generation, and thus our gaming choices are mostly limited to whatever our home PC was capable of, be an antiquated DOS game like Dangerous Dave or the demos that came with a DirectX sampler disc lying around the shelf, though in later years I eventually managed to catch up and be able to play whatever AAA title that was out at the time, albeit in medium settings.

[cpd2009]

Perhaps you haven't heard of Master Chief's lesser-known cousin Master Chef yet:


And yeah the likes of COD are getting stale and generic lately. Activision tried to reinvent the series lately, but as the YouTube trailer for their latest game shows, people are now getting burned out at it now that it's becoming DeaderThanDisco.

Same thing happened when people got tired of Guitar Hero and the various clones in the mid/late 2000s. Heck, the same could be said with motion controls. It was the biggest thing when the Wii came out in 2006 and it outsold the 360 and PS3, leading to the Kinect and PS Move. The fad soon died out and it ended up biting Nintendo hard. They tried to reinvent it with the poorly executed Wii U, but it didn't work so well.

We did have an NES and a Genesis (yes, a US-spec Genesis which came from one of my relatives overseas rather than the locally-available Mega Drive model) back in the 90s, but apart from my cousin's PlayStation 1 we never got to own any game console past the fourth generation, and thus our gaming choices are mostly limited to whatever our home PC was capable of, be an antiquated DOS game like Dangerous Dave or the demos that came with a DirectX sampler disc lying around the shelf, though in later years I eventually managed to catch up and be able to play whatever AAA title that was out at the time, albeit in medium settings.

Back in the day, we had an original NES and later a Super NES. My oldest brother had a Sega Genesis at one point, but beyond that we stuck with whatever Nintendo brought out. I personally didn't really own a major gaming system up until 2000 when I inherited the old SNES which ended up getting lost. I later reintroduced myself to retro gaming through the various clone systems and gained a fat PS2 and later replaced that with slim PS2.

The only times I ever got a current gen system were a Wii in 2011, and the Wii U last summer.

[huckleberrypie]

And now VR's the in thing these days, with pretty much every technology company scrambling to take a piece of the pie and GPU manufacturers coming up with chips that are able to drive games at playable rates on headsets. Whether it'll be the norm for the next decade or so or end up as another fad is anyone's guess.

[cpd2009]

I got through the main campaign of Batman Arkham Origins, and all that is left is to tackle the sidequests. I will put that on the back burner for now and focus on Shovel Knight for the Wii U. Shovel Knight is an indie game made in a Retraux 8-bit style and full 8-bit chiptunes and sounds. Shovel Knight ended up being so successful, it eventually got a physical retail release on the PS4 and Wii U. I played through a few of the first levels, and already it's shaping up to be a wonderful game. It makes inventive use of the Wii U gamepad as well. I also tried some Wario Ware: Smooth Moves. The motion controls were rather well done, and adds a level of challenge to the minigames. It would be a lot better if I had an apartment with the ability to perform the movements while standing.

Maybe the Wii/Wii U aint so bad after all. Yes, Nintendo still made huge mistakes with it's marketing, started losing it's creative talent with some of their IPs (I'm looking at you Mario), and alienated third parties. But if used right, the Wii/Wii U can have good games and control schemes.

Now... lately I have been making some more home movies for my family using Ruby. Problems arose in terms of rendering times. I have a 720p camera, and to burn a 90-minute-or-so DVD takes nearly three hours with her old AMD Athlon X2 CPU. I use Magix Movie Maker 2015. There are times I consider getting a new computer, at least for media creation. If I end up making more home movie DVDs, it may be necessary to get a higher end rig at some point.

Patsy would still be my main PC and it would still be placed on a KVM switch with the potential new rig. I would probably go for something with a higher end Core i5 or i7. On eBay, there are like new PC towers with i5's or i7's and all they normally need is a hard drive and an operating system.

A second option is to consolidate everything into just one PC, that PC being Patsy. I used Passmark to compare the CPUs between the two, and the C2D E7400 gets a 1783 while the Athlon X2 5000+ gets a much lower 1320. I don't know how this would translate into performance gains with Magix 2015.

The latest release, Magix 2016 seems to introduce hardware-accelerated encoding. If that's true, all I would need to do is get Ruby a 750Ti and PSU, and upgrade to 2016 and hopefully get a slightly faster rendering time.

It will be a while before I decide on anything. Those all-in-one PCs do look sweet, but they tend to lack in performance.

[cpd2009]

Did a bit of a switcher-roo at my computer desk. I got another one of those under-monitor surge protector boxes and decided to have Timothy and Ruby share the KVM using an HP 1702 monitor I found recently at a rummage sale. Patsy now has the AOC 1080p monitor all to herself, using DVI.

[cpd2009]

You know... I may have been a bit too harsh on Nintendo in the recent past. They still won't get off easily on their current and past mistakes, but after playing games on my 3DS and Wii U as of late, I'm starting to refine my opinions on Nintendo just a bit.

Today, I started playing through Super Mario 3D Land for 3DS. I did play it for a bit in January, but at that time I was getting a bit disappointed with Nintendo. Now that my feelings are changing a bit, I tried it again. While it still uses the well-worn plot of "Mario goes to save Peach from Bowser", I really do like the combination of the 2D style gameplay meshed with the nearly free roaming 3D exploration of Super Mario 64. It's shaping up to be a good game so far.

As for Wii U, I'm halfway through Shovel Knight and I am intending on purchasing StarFox Zero. Some people don't mind the gamepad control scheme while others hate it. Who knows how well it will work for me, but seeing as how the gamepad setup can work when properly utilized, I think it's worth a shot.

If anything, I guess I get a bit concerned about Nintendo sometimes. They are making some attempts to be original such as their creation of Splatoon and taking so much time to create the next Zelda game. But it's apparent that with most of their IPs, they are just recycling the same storylines and plots while introducing new gimmicks or gameplay elements to keep things interesting. They are still good games, but a bit of variation with plotlines or gameplay is necessary to keep things from going totally stale.

I have been into Mario games since childhood, and while I do get a bit annoyed when they release another NSMB game with same storyline and better visuals, I still do enjoy playing through them. Nintendo could instantly make the NSMB series better by changing the basic storyline away from the "Bowser kidnaps Peach" formula and use another Mario villain instead. They could also make a proper sequel to SMB2 with veggie throwing and Wart. Or, make a true Super Mario 64-esque game in the vein of Galaxy.

I think I'm starting to like the 3DS and WIi U once again. The 3DS is a great portable gaming system, and the Wii U has it's flaws but they just seem to have a degree of fun that other consoles don't have.

It would have been much better if Nintendo still had true third-party support, which i hope they will get around fixing once the NX is revealed at E3.