Wrong Way On A Dead-Way Track

Last night I received my first legitimate shock while playing Telltale's The Walking Dead adventure game. I finished Episode 3: Long Road Ahead, with many of the original party dead or left behind.

The most shocking was the reporter girl's death. Heh, I've already forgotten her name. Lilly, heart attack dad's bitch daughter, blew her freakin' head off. So I left Lilly in the ditch and drove away. That will probably come back to bite me in the ass.

If they don't die on-screen, they don't die.

Anyway, I'm happy to be rid of heart attack dad and his bitch daughter; I have been wanting to get rid of them since episode one.

Also, we met a wise, old homeless man named Chuck. He kind of reminds me of Gandalf because he was wise enough to tell me that I should have a plan and that I should teach Clem how to shoot a gun.

This seems like very wise council, except I'm not sure I even know how to shoot a gun. In fact, I hate guns in this game. Two times in episode three I had difficulty with, you know, dying. And both involved guns. I'd prefer a blunt melee weapon over a firearm any day in the world of The Walking Dead. But, for some reason, the game insists on making me use guns.

I also encountered my first serious glitch in the game: the action options and target reticle didn't load in one area. When I entered the area, I could walk around, but I couldn't interact with anything. I couldn't talk to the people there and I couldn't open the door at the other end of the area. Luckily, I could go back the way I came and re-enter. After a couple minutes trying other options, I had power down and restart the game. Luckily, this didn't happen during an action sequence; it was one of those, you-need-to-talk-to-everyone-to-progress sequences.

Shocking, but boring and glitchy...not a good outing for The Walking Dead Episode 3. In my honest opinion, I think the series has gone downhill since episode one. We'll see how four and five work out.

Colonial Marines: It's An Aliens Thing

To my surprise, Amazon delivered my copy of the Aliens: Colonial Marines on Saturday. Only four days behind the February 12th release. The collector's edition looked good. Damn good. The game? Well, that's another story.

After playing the game for just one hour, I had seen and killed more xenomorphs than were featured in the entire Aliens movie. That's a lot of dead aliens in just one hour. Too many, in my opinion. Then I had to start killing Weyland-Yutani goons and that just pissed me off. I really don't like the FPS that features completely incompetent human enemies and allies. To just shine the spotlight on my first two computer-controlled squad members: Shaquille O'Neal and Bella were idiotic, invincible, and made of ammunition. At first I thought it was funny to watch them shoot the walls and boxes that enemy soldiers were using as cover. It was hilarious, and then it just became sad. They were just tracking enemies and firing blindly (and they hardly ever killed anything).

I just want to put Shaq and Bella in an empty hallway with two enemy goons, weld the doors shut at both ends of the hallway, and watch all four of them pretend to be stormtroopers. Again, at first it would be hilarious, and then it would be embarrassing. But the really sad part would unfold when I dropped two aliens in the hallway from ceiling vents. Deadly xenomorphs my ass. There were points when Shaq, Bella, and I were waiting behind a closed door listening to the mad-scientist mercenaries fighting with the aliens. And I was thinking: alright, we'll just let them duke it out and we'll clean up whatever's left. That's a terrible strategy because apparently computer-controlled mercenaries and computer-controlled aliens just play patty-cake with claws and bullets.

Just kill them all yourself. It's the only way to be sure.

A couple things did impress me. I was worried when I used all of my pulse rifle's secondary fire grenades. A sliver of survival-horror right there. I did find Hudson's chestbuster-ruined body and his special pulse rifle; however, the legendary weapon did not make my character scream obscenities whenever he fired at aliens (I was mildly disappointed).

The best part was being chased by a larger alien (one that I believe birthed from Hudson) that the Internet is calling the Raven. Maybe there's a connection between the loud-mouthed bird from Edgar Allen Poe's famous poem and Hudson being the voice of ominous despair. I like it, let’s go with that.

Hudson's raven xenomorph chased me into my absolute favorite part of the game: the sewers aka home of the boiler aliens. The sewer was creepy by itself; to add to the tension, I was completely unarmed. Up to my knees in sewage, I found myself surrounded by alien carcasses. The character calls them husks; but they reminded me of the white, dying E.T. White and crusty as a sign of decay works. It was unnerving to see the first supposedly-dead alien body get up and walk around. Over the radio, Shaq tells me their "vision is based on movement" and that I have to stand still for them to leave me alone. Thanks Alan Grant, I haven't heard that one before.

Further through the level, I had to activate little machines that the boilers would sprint to and immediately explode all over. I was kinda disappointed by the whole kamikaze act. The boiler creepiness dropped severely after I realized they were so easy to trick.

I haven't gotten much further in the game; that's about three hours of gameplay (and I'm going slow).

My last little bone to pick: alien acid blood doesn't work at all like it should. I thought, as soon as I encountered my first alien, that I should keep the critters at a distance and avoid the bodies at all costs. Now, obviously, the game can't render every single dead alien melting through the floor where they die. But the wrong way to go is to give me a melee attack that stuns the alien so I can blow them apart while they stand there surprised, shocked, or frustrated from getting bonked on the head.

At least have the alien body do damage to the player who walks right over it. I don't want to see a space marine tea-bagging a dead xenomorph body in multiplayer. That's just wrong.

It's melt-your-dick-off wrong.

Blogging: How To Proceed

There's plenty of new shit to do now that 2013 is here and kicking. The first on my list is evaluating Google and its blogger service. I'm going to do some experiments here and the first has to do with images.

It seems that the images in each of my posts are actually getting hits and not the post itself. For a while, I was perfectly fine with this: the images get uploaded to a Picasa web folder and linked in the blog. This maintains the image name and that's what gets the hit in Google's image search. Crazy pictures seem like a cool way to attract readers to my blog.

But.

I don't think anything is actually getting read. So I'm uploading images to my imgur (account, gallery, thing) and linking to them in each blog post. This way, the images themselves will not pull hits to the blog; the images will pull hits to imgur. This will show if I'm getting hits based only on the post content and keywords or labels.

The Google AdSense service has denied my request for an account twice now. A sneaking suspicion tells me that I did something wrong when I tried to create my account. It's Google numbers all over again. Another likely explanation is that most of the images that I've used (up to this point) have been blatant copy-right violations. I own very few of the images found in my blog.

My crazy chronicle seems like the perfect spot to place some gaming-related ads. Maybe I'm just wrong about that.

October, November, and December of 2012 and January of 2013 have all drawn over 150 hits per month. By Internet standards, that's not that good. But by my standards, it'll do just fine. I'm curious to see how the hits dip.

Mad, Mad Scientist

I wish I were a mad scientist. Is that enough to constitute a blog post? One wishful sentence. Probably not, but that doesn't mean it's any less true.

Part of the problem is that I don't have a laboratory. I have access to a space that could be a lab, but no one has given me permission to clean the space up and transform it. Sad. Like a hermit crab without a soda can.

What would I do in this imaginary laboratory? Research, develop, and build computers, robots, and (oh yeah) hack and modify video game consoles. This seems like a phase I go through: it gets cold and dark out in the world and I desire to take things apart and build something better.

Things have flared up again with the original Xbox. I found a pretty sweet and thorough video about the soft-modding process and swapping out hard drives. The original Xbox has an 8 GB hard drive (which seemed like a lot at the height of its console days) that can be easily upgraded to 320 GB or even 500 GB. Considering that I have 8 GB SD cards spilling out my ears now, upgrading doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Finding the right kind of hard drive might be a challenge. In the video, the guy pulled one out of an old computer. I'm not sure I will be able to do that. The computer stuff is always a little complicated. I've successfully soft-modded a Nintendo Wii and completely bricked a Phat PSP. So, despite some success, I'm always a little nervous about this sort of thing.

I'll have to take inventory of older computers that I have around and see what I've got for hard drives. My biggest problem with this stuff is that if I do it (or attempt it) then I stop messing with it for some time, I'll forget all about it and how I did it.

My Wii is probably my best excursion in this realm because I kept track of everything that I did step-by-step and I have a folder with all the set-up files, channels, emulators, and everything else that I downloaded still on my computer. I also use this modded Wii enough that I remember everything. That's important too.

I Hate August

This is what I think of August:

It's too hot to do anything.

August is when I start the count-down to Halloween.

School starts in August

There are no good holiday's in August.

No good games come out in August.

August is for slackers.

Re-Router For Diablo 3

With too few hours into my Diablo 3 witch doctor, I can't really complain about the game yet. Nor can I shower it with praise. I've enjoyed the little time I've spent hucking spider grenades at goatmen. However, one foe as popped up and presented a challenge that I had not suspected. Last night, whilst fighting spiders with spiders, my router melted, ate itself, and then died. In that exact order. Now I can't play Diablo 3. And I need a new router.

I know I could plug straight into my cable modem; however, I used the downtime to revert to Diablo 2 and kick some ass in Kurast. The always online issue has been a hot topic as of late. I don't see Diablo's requirement to always be connected to the Internet as a violation. But it is an annoyance. For instance, if Diablo 3 didn't require an Internet connection, there is no way that I would be running out to replace my router right away. I want to play this game. And I'm enjoying this game. But this is the first time that I've ever owned a game that I don't feel is completely mine.

I hopped over to Diablo 2 for many reasons: I was already in my click-demons-to-death mood, both games are installed on the same machine, it wasn't time to go to sleep, and I didn't have to be connected to the Internet. There are plenty of games that I love to play that do not require an Internet connection. I wish Diablo 3 were one of them; I understand why it is not. But still, if, for whatever reason, I don't have access to the Internet, I will play a game that does not require access to the Internet. Duh, right?

This might be a reason that I don't play or enjoy Diablo 3 as much as other gamers.

Picking up a new router means a trip to the local MicroCenter; it's always fun meandering through the store and checking out new technology. The old Netgear router (may she rest in peace) has been due for an upgrade; I'm pretty sure the thing is about seven years old. Old enough that my Nintendo DS can't connect to it. That should've been the reason to upgrade long ago. Must trade Pokémon.

If the replacement router can instantly connect to my DS, I might drop Diablo and move right back to Soul Silver in trading mode. Setting up the router should be quick and if I can plug and go with ethernet cables, I might be right back into Diablo 3. We'll see.

Or I might go back to Kurast and brain Mephisto. Actually, this sounds like the most fun.

WTF? Really Spider-man? Really?

So I get weird emails from Sony Pictures in my spammy yahoo account. This was in that mailbox this morning. I was excited, then horrified, then repulsed, then just sad.

Data Without Borders

Tragedy struck yesterday morning. Performing my normal Sunday morning responsibilities as the designated technical export for our youth group, I was setting up the Sunday school classrooms to play a couple video clips. Boring stuff mostly, but one was the scene from The Last Crusade with Indiana taking the leap of faith to reach the Holy Grail. Awesome. Anyway, I finished the setup and my laptop borked. Just gone. Like all the internal components completely disappeared. Unfortunately I had to do my job so I set my computer aside and hopped to a back-up machine. The entire morning I just figured that my little Acer, my mobile writing machine, was a goner.

After I did the standard plug/unplug/remove battery shuffle (which didn't solve anything), I hopped on the interwebs and discovered that this is a pretty common problem for Acer machines. I was able to fix and update the bios, but the scare really got me thinking about data back-up and what steps I should take to avoid a real disaster in the future.

Being the avid PSP gamer that I am, I was instantly reminded of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and the Militaires Sans Frontières or MSF for short. I need a solution that is essentially data without borders. A means to access all of my data from any machine. My first thought was Dropbox, which I have, but only a measly 3.25 GB free account. The only problem is that I need my 3.25 GB account to transform into one of those free 16 GB accounts. To do that, I have to recruit users to Dropbox. And I'm doing that with some assistance and success. But I need a better option.

Lifehacker posted a timely article about backing-up data today and it was a stern reminder that I'm not doing everything that I can to keep my information safe from the inevitable failure of technology. That's correct people. Technology will fail. Stuff will break. The glass is already broken. So is my laptop.

Getting Back To It

Puzzles. I like puzzles, especially the complex ones that challenge me to understand the how and why something works. If it’s extremely complicated, I love sifting through instructions with detailed explanations. Anything from simple Lego instructions or cooking recipes to how-to hacking guides or circuit schematics (which still look like weird little maps to me).

The challenge has always been the draw for me. Can I do it?

Under normal circumstances, the answer is yes, but with a little help. I'm ok with that, which is why I love sites like gamefaqs. Their all-text guides and forums are usually my go-to-place for videogames that have me stumped. Similarly, instructables is a great place for DITY guides and advice; I turn there for ideas on how to do anything and everything.

The puzzles that have confounded me the most as of late have been the hacking of current and recent game consoles. The long gone, but not forgotten, Sega Dreamcast was my first successful excursion into the world of console modding. Not sure why I held onto that old girl, but I never traded in my Dreamcast nor my three favorite games: Code Veronica, Jet Grind Radio, and SW: Demolition. After finding a boot disc iso and the right burner program, my library of DC games went from 3 to whatever the internet has to offer.

High off the fumes of success, I turned my sore little fingers (from hours of button mashing through Marvel Vs. Capcom 2) to my phat PSP. Hacking that little bugger was much more difficult, even with the guides. After two weeks of step-by-step trial and error, I finally bricked my PSP-1000. Eighty bucks down the drain. I did buy it used, but I was still pissed. Eighty bucks is big money to me.

Failure is part of life. I still have that bricked PSP as a friendly reminder.

The next target was and still is the Xbox (the first one, the old one). Why the Xbox? Well, I was initially going for the XBMC set-top box. That was the goal when I started. Now, the ultimate achievement is XBMC with retro gaming functionality. I’m talking emulators and roms from NES to N64, maybe some PS1 (if that’s even possible).

Using the Splinter Cell and Action Replay dongle softmod trick I installed/accessed the replacement dashboard Evolution or Evox. Success, right? And I stopped right there, not wanting to screw something up.

Therein lies the greatest barrier: I had to be willing to fail and completely destroy my Xbox. At the time, coming off the PSP disaster, I wasn't ready to brick another perfectly functional console. Frozen and afraid to try. Afraid to continue. It's basically the same as failing. So, time to get back to work; I found a good place to help pick up where I left off.

I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.

~Michael Jordan