- Slunks
- Level: 36 (33%)
- Rank: Radical Ninja
- Member since: Nov 1, 2005
- Last online: 11/23/09 5:56 pm PT
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Editor - Talk Xbox
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30Jun 08
it was the good times?
- Posted Jun 30, 2008 2:16 pm PT
- Category: People
- 13 Comments
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5Jun 08
I haven't been into updating this horrible blog for a little while, so I'll just give a quick snippit at what's been happening and what's going to happen in short lines of boring looking text.
Countless hours have been poured into Civilization IV over the past month.
Half Life series is slowly being played through and I'll eventually finish it.
New computer is treating me well to some Age of Conan, which I'm happily enjoying.
Old computer worked at my house but decided to crap out when it arrived at Blain's.
After replacing every part, nothing has fixed the PC. We're tired of dealing with it -- Off to terrible services such as Geek Squad.
I'm highly anticipating Civilization Revolution and can't wait to check out the demo later today.
Warhammer Online (Paul Barnett is still my hero) is still my #1 long awaited game and just thinking about it makes my gamer self quiver with unsteady chills.
360 pooped out. Clean it up with some towels and made it all better.
Ordered some Samurai and can't wait for ...
June 18th, where there will be many Rock Bandings, sushi eating, board gaming (Vegas Showdown!), and general goofing off in Colorado Springs.
I'm Everquest's Fippy Darkpaw, James is Kenny G., and Tyler is Tum Craise in the linked picture above.
The word Hell looks weird is Mircosoft Wingdings. - Especially in pink.
- Posted Jun 5, 2008 12:46 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 5 Comments
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5Apr 08
I woke up this morning with a goal to clean out my computer. The PC has been having issues lately when regarding to cooling mostly because the amount of dust build up in it. The fans would kick up even when just typing in Word--yeah, it was that bad. Anyway, I began to take everything off and for the first time ever, I decided to remove the CPU. After about an hour worth of Q-tipping and old ragging the dirt away, I was finally finished and began to piece back the computer.
Having no experience with a CPU before, I was having issues putting it back on. Eventually I realized that I could safely twist it off of the cooling that it was stuck to, making it approximately four hundred times easier. Everything is put back together now, but when I go to turn it on it just sits there on a black screen, unable to give a visual on anything. Signs of that may say that the graphics card could be faulty, but this is not the case. After replacing it with a new GPU, the same exact problem occured. This isn't as if Windows boots up, then all of a sudden I'm missing a file or something, I mean it sits there, never even gets to that point or shows me anything with my monitor flashing, "No Video Input Detected" in my face.
After having so much initial trouble with the CPU, I was thinking maybe it still wasn't placed on there correctly. So I tried a few times and checked for any bent pins. There were a few extremely minor bends, but they were easily fixed and I don't think they would have made a difference either way. Not to mention I grabbed an entirely new CPU from an old PC lying around in the attic and still experience the same dreaded black screen upon turning my system on.
What's weird is that the system won't even turn off if I hold hold down the power button, which makes me have to turn off the PSU. However, if I switch the little red voltage switch over it allows me to turn it off correctly, despite it still doesn't fix the problem. Now I was thinking it was my PSU that went up or something, but I yet again tried an entirely different power supply and I'd run into the same problem again. I also switched to my other harddrive with no luck either.
So, what the heck is the problem? Well, I'm pretty sure it's squared on the motherboard now. Perhaps when I was blowing dust away I slobbered all over a part or something, but either way I believe it's the problem causing piece. Most people know I'll be having a new PC arrive in two weeks, so what's the big deal if I can't use this one? Well, it's going to be Blain's (read: blog below) new computer since he was scammed of the only opportunity of purchasing one, so it means a lot to me to get this thing running correctly again, even if that means buying a new mobo. So when does this crap stop happening to me? It just won't stop as even while I was climbing the ladder earlier to the attic, the fifteen pound door decided to fall on my head, making me fall down a step and my jaw meet metal.
As an update with the account issue, Blain returned all of the payment back to me, so I'm no longer in debt to Paypal. We're still working on getting back the account, so I'll try to keep you guys somewhat updated.
Edit: I should probably add that the problem isn't like I can hear everything on my speakers like it does boot up and I just can't see. The PC gets stuck instantly with all of the lights on the front of the case practically frozen, no blinking at all. May I also say that I've probably inhaled a pound of dust today and accidentally eaten too much thermalpaste.
- Posted Apr 5, 2008 6:38 pm PT
- Category: Computers
- 15 Comments
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31Mar 08
$338.46
Yesterday I sold a gaming account and was successfully scammed via Paypal due to no protection or information given to or for the seller (me). I understand that this kind of stuff happens all the time, and it's just unfortunate that it happened to me. There was almost no way around this and I've learned my lesson to execute any transactions over Paypal regarding to any account. May I add that I've sold quite a few accounts before this and have had nothing but smooth transactions. Where did all the scammers come from and why doesn't Paypal address the issue with a little more security to all users? Fix the hole in your system, Paypal.
Here is an audio recording of me fully explaining everything that's happened thus far, and then calling Paypal fraud services. You can skip to about the fifteen minute mark to hear the phone call.
Here is said video I mentioned in the recording.
Nothing more I can do.
- Posted Mar 31, 2008 10:33 am PT
- Category: N/A
- 10 Comments
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28Mar 08
Congrats on having the side of your face in a picture from a Kotaku article!
Brian pulled some strings, obviously.
- Posted Mar 28, 2008 11:42 am PT
- Category: Pets and Animals
- 3 Comments
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27Mar 08
I'm currently playing through Viking: Battle of Asgard for my review (I'm a day behind). The game has had a pretty positive side thus far, despite some issues with the camera. I won't give any say on how else I feel, so instead this video will be here to show you some of the crazy action that takes place in the game. Beware of very minor spoilers. Also, the beginning may look a little overwhelming, but it clears up as it goes on.
And here's a random extra I made during some downtime.
- Posted Mar 27, 2008 6:57 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 5 Comments
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26Mar 08
To those tagging/asking me: I shall always remain mysterious.
- Posted Mar 26, 2008 4:53 pm PT
- Category: N/A
- 4 Comments
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17Mar 08
I'm excited to play Warhammer Online because Paul Barnett wants me to be.
Paul Barnett, Design Manager
"To mangle a famous quote: 'Fudge the game for the Intellectual Property, fund the Intellectual Property for the game and always make tasty fudge.' "
View Profile >>- Posted Mar 17, 2008 8:38 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 2 Comments
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8Mar 08
I becomes before e, but it should never be included in your review.
- Posted Mar 8, 2008 4:19 pm PT
- Category: Writing
- 6 Comments
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7Mar 08
Text below includes minor spoilers from Gears of War and Assassin's Creed, read on at your own risk.
I recently flew through the campaign that is Army of Two for my review, and while it was loads of fun blasting through enemy forces with an over-egotistic attitude, the ending was a major letdown. I'm not going to solo out this game alone since many titles have had terrible endings over this generation. The story itself was pretty decent all around, but it wasn't the most motivating tale to be told. Am I starting to notice a trend as of late, or is it just me? An ending is possibly the biggest impact that the game will have on the player, and the story is the only thing to get you to that ending, so why not focus on it more? I can't spoil anything about Army of Two's ending, but let's focus on some other recent short-coming endings and poorly told stories from this gen.
Story: In Gears of War you play as Marcus Fenix, fighting through hordes of Locusts your main objective is to fire the lightmass missiles to destroy the tunnels that haunt the planet. Throughout the hours you spend, you learn nearly nothing about the characters around you or even yourself. Marcus has been in prison for awhile and knows squat of his Dad's past. Dom has a long-time connection with the surviving people that give you the jeep. Baird is a handy mechanic with a snappy attitude and Cole was a former linebacker who has the need to rap over the game's credits. None of the characters backgrounds are fleshed out and their admirability only comes from their personality. You may say, "It's a shooter, it doesn't need great story!". Truth be told, nearly all games need a story. Something that motivates you to keep on playing is the most important aspect of the game.
Ending: Last month, I finally got around to Assassin's Creed which is a game well-known for its abrupt ending to gamers that have never even played it. As Altair, you betray your brotherhood by carelessly breaking the (omgpun?) assassin's creed. Through a second chance for life, you're given nine targets to murder. The story here actually unfolds to be decent and it has a nice, climatic last hour. But the last minute is so downright abrupt that you may not even realize it's over. It leaves itself wide open for sequel so much that they should of replaced the "ending" with a commercial that says, "Hey, buy our next game! - Jade".
For Army of Two, it does an okay job of providing a story, and a less than okay job of the ending. The gameplay is fun, and I need to get some online 2v2 going before I start writing the review. But it's just sad to see a game's potential being held back by their overall lack of an interesting story. Bioshock did a great job of combining both aspects and making one of the greater games of last year. So hopefully my story-driven needs will be filled up again by it once I get around to it, which should be soon.
Any games in this generation you thought held up in one department, but didn't in the other?
- Posted Mar 7, 2008 2:02 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 2 Comments
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5Mar 08
Don't believe what you think, believe what it is.
- Posted Mar 5, 2008 2:03 pm PT
- Category: Writing
- 14 Comments
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1Mar 08
No, you're not seeing double. I actually did buy another Xbox 360 (used). It's official, my old console has performed the unmentionable. The disc drive simply will not read anything I throw in it. My realization sense hit me (read: Slunks sense) and I began to think, "Crap. I'm going be without a 360 for a month ... and a writing job." - So I crunched some numbers and realized that it wouldn't be too bad if I executed this crazy plan I came up with: Buy new $240 used 360, get old one fixed, a month later my new one will return fixededzorz, and I'll trade the new one in for $110. Not too bad, but it got even better as I revealed my plan to my fellow gamers at Ye Ol' Game Shoppe. One of them was actually interested in buying the newer one for $200, making it a no brainer for me. Be pain free for a month at the cost of $40 by the end? Hell yeah.
Sure, I'll still have to pay Microsoft $90 to fix my disc drive, but that's inevitable either way. But today I picked up a few other items as well. (enjoy the professional quality)
"Oooo"I picked up Bioshock, a game that people would qualify me as late to. But I didn't just pick up Bioshock, I only handed a single Jackson for it, brand spankin' new. There was a major sale at my local FYE, and it was selling for a mere $20. I couldn't pass up the offer for getting one of last years greatest, and I wish that I could of picked up some other gems there too. I've also been in love with Lost Odyssey for quite some time now, and the game keeps on growing on me with each passing session. For collectors sake, I also picked up Prima's official guide for it. (extra high-quality pictcha!)
"Ahhh"Just from taking a glance at some sections before buying, I could immiedately notice that they squeezed in as much detail as they could for this one. It almost makes me want to run through the game all over again just to pick up every little item available. Now you can go back and find everything that you missed on disc four, but it's a little hard to comprehend where to look in the guide. It's not like, "Oh, I know I missed this side-quest, so I'll find where it is.". But unfortunately there's not enough hours in a day to convince me to start over my now sixty seven hour long adventure. I still have a million other things and achievements to get first.
So yeah, another 360. It's kind of weird looking over and seeing that I have two big hunking white boxes lying there. But once I get off my lazy butt and call Mr. Microsoft, I'll be waiting for the coffin.
Special thanks to James for NOT picking up my call when I was in dire need of another man's opinion.
- Posted Mar 1, 2008 4:14 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 10 Comments
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29Feb 08
Over the past month I've been experiencing disc drive issues with nearly all of my game collection. Some games seem to work better than others for some oddball reason, but I still have to open the tray and then close it approximately ten to fifty times for it to read. If I was a normal human being who writes about games on his own free time, I wouldn't mind sending it in for repairs. But since I've joined back with Talk Xbox, it makes a little more of a tricky situation. Sure, it's merely volunteer work, but I take the quality and frequency of my work very seriously. I'm trying to squeeze every little second of gameplay I can from my slowly dieing 360. During my [sloppy and rusty] Lost Odyssey review, it took me six days to get my review up. That's not too bad for such an epically long RPG. But I could have made it five if I didn't have to reload my saves so many times due to disc read errors.
Xbox Live Arcade games work completely fine, so that's an exception. I recently finished up another review (still awaiting publishededness) on Commanders: Attack of the Genos and encountered no problems at all. So potentially I can keep reviews going with arcade games. Since I finished Commanders up, I've had no other games on my horizon for a couple of days. I decided to go back to Lost Odyssey and run through all of the side quests and rack up as many achievements as I can before my next game hits. But man, this s'morning I was getting pretty frustrated with my disc drive. I spent nearly an hour and a half turning on/off my 360, opening/closing the disc tray, and flopping the console on both its horizontal and vertical sides. The disc condition is fine, as are all of my other games. It's just a matter of time before everything in the 360 clicks and runs the game as it's supposed to.
It never does this.
Usually it takes about twenty tries for it to boot up the game and run fine, but this time was different. It wouldn't run the game no matter how many times I tried. I was thinking to myself, "Is this it? Has my 360 finally kicked the bucket? Jumped the shark? Or has done whatever weird phrase that relates to death?. - But somehow I eventually get the game running fine. How, do you ask? Are you ready? ... I used the billion year old (no really, the cavemen did it) method that everyone knows. I hit the console with my bare hand twice right on top of its shiny white casing. Not hard, mind you. Game boots up, everything's fine and I'm back to playing probably one of my favorite RPGs of enternity.
So in the future, when the world is ending and a robot war breaks lose, what happens when House-PRTCTmdl422.70 suddenly stops working as your house is being raided with weird, flying mechanical lazer-shooting Ron Paul heads? Just kick your life-savior in the shin, he'll boot up just fine.
- Posted Feb 29, 2008 12:38 pm PT
- Category: Science
- 5 Comments
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14Feb 08
- Posted Feb 14, 2008 12:27 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 14 Comments
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18Jan 08
If you know me, I'm not the one for keeping updates on my blog regularly. There's just too many people going "HERZ WUT I DID TDAY LOL" to fit in. But it's getting late and I feel like pumping out a easy going, generic blog for you guys on what I've been up to as of late. Hell, I'm not even typing into Word right now! I'm such a daredevil, and I feel dangerous. But anyway, here's a short list of what I'm up to, and what's to come in the future.
I recently purchased Neverwinter Nights 2 for Kenshin836 "Catch Phrase" 'Naffer and we've been playing it nearly non-stop ever since installation. I reviewed this game initially when it was released, and it received a well-deserved 7.5 from me. Certainly a good game, but it unfortunately doesn't get everything that it goes for correctly. It's a buggy mess, and a graphic engine that makes you work out for hours on end only to break a sweat--That's a poor, late-night analogy for laggy omgwtf engine. But it does get one thing right, and that's pulling off that DND feel. Building up that character of yours is exciting, and there's a decent story to boot. After about twenty-five hours later, we've finally passed Act I of III.
Approximately three weeks ago I sent back my stratocaster to be replaced. At the time, the express plan wasn't available for my wallet, so I had to do it the slow way. Meaning that they send me a box, and I send my stuff back. When they receive it, they send my new one out. I mysteriously never got an e-mail with tracking numbers, or maybe it went straight to the spam folder and was deleted. Either way, I'm not sure on the date it's suppose to be back, but I can only hope that it will be soon. I refuse to play through the solo career without a working stratocaster, I think the guitar itself is great (when working!) and changes the enjoyability of Rock Band's guitar tracks. - I also did the express plan for a new drumset, mostly for read-errors happening once every twenty to fifty notes. The unreliablity kills me, but stuff happens and I can live without my plastic instruments for a little while.
Call of Duty 4 is amazing. I have barely even touched the singleplayer mainly because the multiplayer is so refreshing and the experience/LVLUP! system keeps you coming back for more. It's no wonder why certain people are addicted to it. Games like these made me wish I had more time to play them. - Carcassonne is still the same 'ol Carcassonne I knew back when I reviewed it; charming, imaginitive, and the little brother of Catan. I like to lay in my bed and squeeze a few games in as I'm falling asleep. That might sound a little disrespectfully ironic for a board game, but it's a nice way to end the night. Warcraft III churned back up again recently and me and Kenshin love getting up a couple games of Nazi Maul (more hilarious than one may think?) and a few other custom games as well. I enjoy the ladder play of Warcraft, but I need tons of practice for that. I'm good, but some of the people you run into on AT or solo can be amazing. Fun nonetheless!
-Drove into Space
Ugh! Last Sunday my HDD went crazy on me, and apparently my hal.dll was missing/corrupted. After countless hours of working on the issue and single digit hours worth of sleep within the couple of days after that, I pretty much have things settled. I tried rebuilding my boot.ini, unsuccesfully stripping the Windows disc of it's hal.dll to replace mine, and a couple of other things I can't even think about explaining. It came down to (thanks, Matt!) installing Linux so I could access the files I needed, uploading them to the internet, switching over to another hard drive and downloading said files. I still have a few other things on my old HDD that I need to transfer over, but that's the last thing I feel like doing. I just wanna play games, damn it!
-The Future
I have a video project in the works. There's certainly a lot of work going into this, and should be on a decent level of quality as Behind The Scenes of GTG was. Although, of course, I'm aiming for much higher. I have a couple people helping me with graphic design and constructive scripting, so it should turn out well. It's really all I can say, because although the title of video itself is generic, I'm aiming for a higher, more caring matter. Also, I'm looking towards a new PC in the next month or so. While the current one now can run pretty good for a five year old PC, it's getting up there in age and cannot be upgraded any further without some major work. Gotta keep the technology updated, or else I'm behind!
-But For Now
Off to play games while I can. sleep. Work.
- Posted Jan 18, 2008 4:45 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 7 Comments
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28Dec 07
I'm Glad that I:
Received my drivers license
Got a car
Wrote for a few websites
Have a job
Cleared Vandal Hearts
Became a better writer
Can still have fun playing Warcraft III
Flew to Texas to see James
Met everyone on GameSpot as I did -- Much love
Am still apart of this lovely chatroom
Don't play World of Warcraft
Played through Shining Force I again
Teared up at the end of Okami
Played Okami
Have awesome parents
Saw Rush live
Am friends with Old Daddy Logan
Can still make people laugh
Got to expert drums (Rock Band) without too much trouble
Bought a 360 for my friend
Became a decent golfer
Have gotten into board games again
Beat Oblivion ... to wish I played the expansion
Beat Gears of War ... and loved it's multiplayer
Beat The Darkness (personal favorite of the year?)
Beat Dead Rising ... a lot
Beat Guitar Hero III ... and more
Beat Okami ... and loved it
Beat Resident Evil 4 ... again
Beat Streets of Rage II ... many times
Beat Theme Hospital ... for the first time
Beat ... a billion other games
Listened to so much of Nobuo Uematsu
Played Okami
Listened to so much of Rush
Don't have a girlfriend
Am giving Neverwinter Nights 2 another shot
I hate that I:
Have too many games on my shelf to play
Pissed a couple people off
Don't put money away for college
Am not quite the same as I used to be
Can't time travel
--
That's 'bout it. - I think my good outweighs the bad.
- Posted Dec 28, 2007 4:43 pm PT
- Category: N/A
- 13 Comments
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23Dec 07
Whoa, where the heck did all of these games come from? - I work a lot for only having a part-time job, usually five to six days of the week on long shifts. But after sitting my boss aside to talk with him, he's decided to go a bit easier on me; therefore I should have some more time to catch up on what I'm so behind on.
GAMES!
But that's not the only thing. I would like to jump back on board with the whole writing thing. Oddly, I have been playing a lot of board games and doing write-ups on those. However, when it comes to video games, I haven't touched a letter on my keyboard. Back when I was writing for a previous website, I enjoyed it. I was doing what I loved, enjoyed my co-workers company and rarely paid a dime for what I wrote about. Around the same time I was called up for a real, write signature here and you're hired kind of job. Unfortunately, what responsibility comes with writing about video games, as me and others have stated before many times, is that you have to actually beat them before jotting down your facts and opinions.
Beating games can be rather hard at any given time, especially when you only have so much time in the day to sit down and grind. The problem is that I'd work half the day and come home, only leaving half the day to play these games. When you have strict deadlines (2-4 days for a review) as you do, and considering games take anywhere from 15-30 hours or more to beat, it's sometimes hard to come by time for yourself or even your other job. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that it comes down to one or the other. So I wound up leaving a hint of resignation on the site's forums, and never came across the time to look back.
In conclusion, I'd like to take another attempt at frequently writing video game reviews. On the contrary, I'm not looking for work quite yet, just some fun writing on the side when I get the time to. I currently have about a half-dozen games to enjoy and review. Those being...
Assassin's Creed (Barely Touched)
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Ditto)
Civilization IV: Gold Edition (Currently Playing)
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (Currently Playing)
Rock Band (Soon to be Ready)
So let's take it slow this time, and not rush into things. My short employments thus far have probably hurt more than helped, which isn't good for the future. Hopefully I can fix that sometime sooner rather than later.
Edit: But right now I'm being distracted by Neverwinter Nights 2, LoTRO Trial, The Witcher demo and Team Fortress 2.
- Posted Dec 23, 2007 3:27 pm PT
- Category: Writing
- 7 Comments
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20Dec 07
Ahh, good ol' Tom Sawyer. He went n' painted some fences and because of so, he created one of Rush's many well-known songs of all time. This video's production was scattared all over the place. It originally included me on the drumset in PIP, which would of been nice. But the fuzzyness of my webcam combined with a window that takes up 1/4 the screen doesn't end up working well. I wanted to have some other footage than just me making a mess of Neil, so I ... well, you'll see.
Also, I'm patiently waiting the arrival of my coffin for my bass pedal. While taping it back in two works pretty effectively, it's rather hard to play hearing it rub at my feet. Especially also when it wears off at the end of your one and only recording of Tom Sawyer.
- Posted Dec 20, 2007 6:38 am PT
- Category: Games
- 5 Comments
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12Dec 07
One of many nights.
(Ashuku on finger throbbers, Kenshin on throat knocker and me on the skits.)
- Posted Dec 12, 2007 6:10 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 5 Comments
