Images And Links

I updated all of the images to higher resolution and fixed the links to xbox.com. Apparently, some games have been removed from the site.

Mass Effect 3 - The Reblogening

[Preface] Look who came crawling back to the internet: Me. After an almost two year hiatus I have returned. I got lazy and stopped writing for a while (a year). Then my 42" plasma television blew up and I couldn't play anything at all. Then I moved. But now I'm settled in and ready to start this thing up again. And to help make sure I actually post this thing I will be writing this as I go instead of writing 3 weeks after I finish playing. As of writing this first installment I have yet to play one second of this game aside from the demo.

[Day 0] I've been wanting to play Mass Effect 3 for a while. It's been hard keeping away from all of the ME3 spoilers but I think I've done a pretty good job. I know about Javik but that's about it so far.

[Day 0.1] I've been doing some research on the DLC. Since I am playing this game after all of the DLC has been released I was worried about the cost of buying it all. Especially after buying the ME2 DLC on sale.

There are 9 DLC Packs available:
-From Ashes - 800 Microsoft Points
-Extended Cut - Free
-Firefight Pack - 160 Microsoft Points
-Leviathan - 800 Microsoft Points
-Groundside Resistance Pack - 160 Microsoft Points
-Alternate Appearance Pack 1 - 160 Microsoft Points
-Omega - 1200 Microsoft Points
-Citadel - 1200 Microsoft Points
-Online Pass - 800 Microsoft Points (because I'm renting from Gamefly)

That gives us a total of: 5280 Microsoft Points or $66 (more than the cost of the game at full price)
Removing the non-story DLC gives us: 5 DLC Packs for 4000 Microsoft Points or $50
Removing Omega (the least acclaimed DLC) gives us: 4 DLC Packs for 2800 Microsoft Points or $35
Removing Extended Cut & Leviathan (which make the ending better; I want to be mad like everyone else;
  I'll probably YouTube that stuff later) gives us: 2 DLC Packs for 2000 Microsoft Points or $25
Removing From Ashes (because I'm not paying $10 for a character that should have been in the game anyway)
  gives us: 1 DLC Pack for 1200 Microsoft Points or $15
Citadel I will probably get because I've heard it's amazing and is fine to play after the game is over.

Mr. Bear If You're Naughty

This is a game where you play a teddy bear that stalks and murders other teddy bears using various weapons and traps. It sounds awesome. It is not. I thought it would be stealth-action murdering from the shadows. What it actually is is popping out from the grass and yelling boo. You can just take a weapon and mash the attack button but you don't get very many points and this is a high score based game. What you want to do is sabotage objects around the world and scare the bears when they try to fix them. If you scare them enough they will become insane. Scare them again and they will commit suicide. Scaring bears over and over again gets repetitive fast. Even though the game is really short, the repetition is obvious. The game is only 7 chapters and depending how you play you can finish a chapter in about 10 minutes.

On to what I liked about the game. This is kind of weird but I liked the achievements. Some people don't like achievements but Naughty Bear shows off one of my favorite things about them. There are achievements in this game that instruct you to do things that you wouldn't normally think of doing. Ironic Kills are when you kill that levels "boss" bear with a specific object. Secret Missions are special things to do surrounding that levels theme, like getting the Ninja-Bears in level 2 to kill themselves (Harakiri). Costume Shenanigans are killing a specific bear with a specific weapons while wearing a specific costume. And Challenge Challenges are completing the challenges in a certain way, like not killing anyone during the Insanity Challenge.

After completing the main story levels I got sick of this game. Later I tried to get back into this game. I was playing "4-1 Untouchable: Night of the Dodging Ted". A zombear was attacking a bear and hit me during his windup, when I was behind him. That was the end of that game for me.

If I was downloading anything while playing I would get this message. "A new package has been installed, would you like to activate it now?" If you hit YES the game restarts even if the thing you downloaded has nothing to do with Naughty Bear.

Edit: While deleting the install for this game I found out that this game is 757 MB. That's smaller than Dead Rising 2: Case Zero. They could have put this game on a CD. My largest trailer is 516 MB

Despite my raving for the achievements I don't have many.

Hulu Minus

I've heard people complain about this since it came out so I decided to test the availability of content on Hulu Plus.

I had 29 items in my queue. By items i mean shows or movies not episodes. So the first season of Arrested Development I have counts as one. Out of the 29 items, 15 are available on Hulu Plus.

The selection is weird. The shows aren't consistent even within channels. For example, I can watch Fox's Bones but not Fringe. I can watch ABC's Cougar Town but not Better With You.

The UI is messed up as well. There is a fixed amount of characters that you can see for the titles of episodes. At the top layer (while browsing) the show title is included. For a show like TDS it appears as (the full title of the show)(colon)(space)(three letter day abbreviation)(comma)(first letter of the month)(ellipses) like this:

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Thu, A..."

When selected it shows the episode title without the show title so you have a little more room. This is fine for TDS but the titles for some of the TEDTalks can be quite lengthy.

For example at the top layer you can have: "TEDTalks: Ric Elias: 3 Things I Learned Wh..."
When selected it shows: "Ric Elias: 3 Things I Learned Whil..." (you lost 10 characters and gained 2)
When selecting it again it shows: "Ric Elias: 3 Things I Learned While My ..."(you gained another 5)

There is no way to show the entire title. I had to go to hulu.com to find what it was:
"TEDTalks: Ric Elias: 3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed"

On the website the title is word wrapped. And that is something they could easily show at the bottom of the picture on either of the "after selected" pages.

Lack of content and UI problems aside. I will say one thing in favor of Hulu Plus, it looks amazing. Not the program but the actual shows. Speedtest usually shows my download speed at around 3Mbps. And I was streaming full HD in seconds. It actually looked better than my cable connection. My cable box is component while my 360 is HDMI. Still, when I watch a video on Inside Xbox it buffers every 10 seconds. I didn't buffer once after the initial loading on hulu and the quality never went down.

If I had never tried it I would have brushed it off as hulu trying to take peoples money. As a person who has tried it, it's starting to appeal to me. Not $8 a month appealing though. Mostly because I use hulu.com so I don't have to watch TV on my TV. I can watch a show while gaming. What they need is a picture in picture mode.

All you need to survive a Zombie Apocalypse is a little duct tape.

As I was playing Case 0 I was thinking "Man, I'm really in the mood to play Dead Rising again'. For some reason I forgot they made a sequel while playing the prologue to the sequel. You play as Chuck Greene. A man that I can only assume hasn't covered any wars at all. He can however build a motorcycle with just duct tape. The game is pretty much a demo for Dead Rising 2. It's short at about 2 hours a playthrough but I did it about 5 times before I finished. Not having a jump kick by default was jarring since it's a go-to move for running around without using up weapons. My second to last playthrough was devoted to rescuing survivors. I thought that collecting all of the survivors would be time consuming and come down to the wire. In fact the opposite occurred. I was waiting around for survivors to become available. None of the achievements were very hard. For $10 I wouldn't have bought it. For $5 it was an okay deal. For $2.50 it was a definite get.

PM:CE:DX:OM:GW:TF:BB:QN:IC

So, if I were to describe Pac-Man I would do so thusly [sic] (this is not a quote). You play as a large yellow ball traveling through a maze eating small yellow balls while ghosts chase you. If you eat a medium yellow ball you can then eat the ghosts (Pac-Man is weird). Pac-Man Championship Edition Deluxe is exactly that and yet is still very new and different from the old games.

If you played the original Pac-Man Championship Edition then you'll recognize a few things that came over from that game. When you eat a piece of fruit the half of the maze on the opposite side resets and changes configuration. You also spark when turning early.

New to this game are the bombs and ghost trains. Bombs save you when you are in a pinch. Sleeping ghosts will be sitting strategically throughout the level when you get near one they will be angered. If no other ghosts are following you they will start following you. If there are ghosts following you the angered will wait for the other ghosts to come near it and the join the ghost train. Eating a power pellet will allow you to eat the train of ghosts. Ghosts in the ghost train will still pursue you when they turn blue. Sleeping ghosts do not get angered while they are blue. Sleeping ghosts can also sometimes carry power pellets. Ghosts with power pellets that are in your train allow you to keep your power meter up longer. You have nine courses and a free mode. you can change the visuals on the maze and the characters individually.

There are several modes:
Score Attack (5 min.) - This is your basic mode. It's similar to championship mode from Pac-Man CE.
Score Attack (10 min.) - Like Score Attack (5 min.) but twice as long.
Ghost Combo - Eat as many ghosts as you can before your power meter depletes. It's 10 min. long and you can stop whenever you want.
Time Trial - You have to eat a certain amount of fruit as fast as possible.
Time Trial (Short) - Like Time Trial but broken up into ten shorter challenges.

12/12a
200/200g

mygamercard.net shut down so no gamerscore pics for now.

Past Affect 2.5 - The DLCening

If you've read many of my posts you know that I have a particular hatred for DLC, most of the time. My recent tweet, however, may lead you to believe the opposite. I did indeed buy all of the DLC (to date) for Mass Effect 2. They were selling at a one day only price of 200 msp each. Combine that's cheaper than Lair of the Shadow Broker sells by itself: 800 msp. So the penny pincher in me caved and I bought them. I hurried to put Mass Effect 2 at the top of my GameQ and surprisingly it was the next to arrive.

Risky Actions

Risk is probably my favorite board game, with Monopoly being a close second. So when I found out they were making a version of Risk for the 360 I rushed to...wait for it to go on sale. And then I decided not to get it because I was out of money. But when it went on sale again I scooped it up. As with all good game updates it has classic Risk hidden in there somewhere. I played it and it's just as good and excruciatingly long, but without all the tiny and sharp army men embedded in your carpet. The campaign is short and is more of an introduction to the characters than a real game. It is pretty funny and very well animated. I was actually surprised that Penny Arcade wasn't involved because the art style reminded me of them.

Update 1: If there was an achievement for 100 dice losses in a row I think I'd have it by now. The computer cheats so much. I have 10 guys you have one guy. Why can't I take your country over?

Get Over Here

Seriously, a man with a hook on a rope that he can use to pull people towards him and he's called Scorpio? It would have been less obvious to call him link.

This happens to be another third person game that gives me motion sickness. The first I ever encountered was Tomb Raider. First-person games don't make me sick. Although many people did I didn't get sick watching Cloverfield. Not all third person games make me sick. I was fine playing Assassins Creed, GTA IV, and Prototype. It's only certain games. Crackdown, for example, made me nauseous. I tried sitting far away, after resting for a day, and it seemed to make me feel worse.

Due to this affliction I'm probably not going to 100% this game. The races, which I was dreading anyway, seem out of reach.

Doritos Crunch Coarse / Frito Way

Doritos Crash Course is miles ahead of the last Doritos "game" we were given. First off this game is actually fun. It is similar to Japanese Game Shows like Sasuke (Ninja Warrior in America) (Example). They animate your avatar and it looks pretty good. When you accidentally run off a ledge your avatar pulls out an umbrella to try and slow the descent. The hammers either knock you backwards into the bars holding them or knock you forward into the TV screen.
Secondly, this game is hard. I blew through Doritos Dash of Destruction in about half an hour. Crash Course ramps up in difficulty. It starts off pretty easily but then gets progressively harder as you go through the countries.

Harms Way by Doritos is an interesting game. I'm not a big fan of racing games, Burnout excluded. And I'm definitely not a fan of xbla racing games but this one has a little twist. You can be one of 4 cars in the race (yawn), or you can control one of the turrets around the outside of the track and shoot at one of the cars. The achievements in this game are a little easier than Crash Course. I would have 200/200 but online seems to be broken in both games.

Shouldn't I Remember Harvest Instead?

That's right. Limited Edition baby. I got my copy just after midnight on launch night.

I liked the campaign. It was pretty varied. In "Long Night of Solace" you get to pilot a Sabre and enter a space dog fight. In "New Alexandria" you fly in a Falcon and set down on the top of skyscrapers. And in "The Package" you are repairing turrets and it kind of plays like a tower defense game.

This was by far the easiest halo in terms of achievements. I got all but two in under a month. They were all campaign based achievements so I didn't have to worry about multiplayer triple kills.

Update 1: Haven't played Halo in forever. Loved the single player but I kind of fizzled out on multiplayer way too early.

Update 2: The new DLC seems to have multiplayer focused achievements. Not sure if I'll get it right away. I'll definitely get it eventually.

Excitebike HD

I have been wanting to buy this game since it came out. Then I found out that it was 67% off on Black Friday so I snatched it up. The early levels are fun but difficulty really ramps up. The physics are really unforgiving. You have to remember exactly when to hit the break, hit the gas, lean forward, lean backward, go faster in this section, go slower in the next, and in later levels multiple permutations of these things at the same time.

Despite no one wanting to compare any game to Super Meat Boy I'm going to right now. They are both platformers. They both have discrete stages. They both use trial and error to pass said stages. Super Meat Boy however seems more fun to me. I played the trial of Trials HD and I thought the levels were interesting. But many of the later levels are so unforgiving about how to get to the next section I never felt that I could do it consistently. SMB on the other hand is the exact opposite. Since there are only two mechanics to worry about the trial and error actually helps you become consistent. And since most people hold down run the entire time you really only have to worry about when to jump and for how long.

I Beat The Meat

They have big box art on xbox.com now.

This game was awesome. It is in the same style as other platformers such as N+, and IWBTG. The humor is very similar to Castle Crashers, as is the art style. That wasn't surprising since it was a sequel to a newgrounds game. The game has a ton of unlockable characters, many from other platform games.

These are my current stats (will update):

Chapter 1: The Forest 100%
Chapter 2: The Hospital 100%
Chapter 3: The Salt Factory 102%???
Chapter 4: Hell 43%
Chapter 5: Rapture 36%
Chapter 6: The End 50%
Chapter 7: Cotton Alley 100%
Chapter I: Teh Internets 40% - Finish=2.5% A+=5%
Chapter -1: The Killscreen 0/?

8/12a
140/200g

I Got Joose'd

I don't normally post about alcoholic beverages because I don't drink that often but the controversy surrounding alcoholic energy drinks got me kind of interested in trying Four. The store I went to didn't have any so I bought Joose instead. Judging from the can you would guess it's grape. Judging from the name you might guess it's dragon fruit. Research leads me to believe it is indeed grape. I required research because all I could taste is alcohol. I've had vodka less harsh than this stuff. I didn't blackout or anything though. Should this stuff be banned: no. Should there be more awareness about its dangers: sure, why not.

Comparing it to Smirnoff Ice which is the only other malt beverage I've had I personally prefer Ice.
Comparing it to Blue Ox which is my favorite energy drink I'd choose Blue Ox hands down.

It seems like drinking a Vodka Red Bull would be cheaper and taste better.

Xbox 3Shitty Part 4 - Download Again - Download Again - Ad Nauseum

I found out something interesting after my internet connection died on me. I decided to play Peggle because I don't like getting achievements while offline. But since I got my new(ish) 360 back I can't play any games offline I haven't re-downloaded, apparently including Peggle. While going through the list of XBLA games I have I noticed something interesting. Every game you have purchased, so not trial games and demos, shows your gamerscore. Games you can't play offline don't show the list of achievements on the right. So I made a list of games that showed the gamerscore but not the achievements and re-downloaded them. It was around 20 and it took a while. I realized afterward that it probably would have been faster if I had used Xbox Marketplace to download them.

Harmony of the Castlevanias

Apparently the new xbox.com broke all of my links so I'll have to redo them.

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair is definitely not HD. That being said I didn't hate the graphics. The sprites were reused but as far as I know the stages were all new and they looked better.

Before I bought this game I thought it was going to be in the style of "metriodvania" like Shadow Complex. The ability to zoom out and see the entire level is an interesting feature. Once you have cleared a level it's pretty useful to get around. There are similarities to Symphony of the Night. Specifically the large number of equipment and spells.

Right after I bought the game I was worried that the single-player game wouldn't be that fulfilling since it was designed to be a multiplayer game. I decided I would play through the entire game on normal solo. Then I started playing multiplayer on hard.

I was obsessed with this game.I played it almost every day for about a month  After a while the online community died down. It became more difficult to play Co-op and Survival games are non existent.

Edit 1: When the first DLC stage came out, teams would be disbanded if someone didn't have Chapter 7. I finally broke down and bought chapter 7. Then I promptly lost interest. 400 msp's well spent. Hopefully I will go back to it when more DLC becomes available.

Edit 2: First 2 DLC characters came out: Yoko & Julius. They're interesting but not interesting enough to keep me playing for long. How much money will I sink into this game?

10/12a
175/200g

A. Wake. I see what you did there.

I loved this game: the story, the atmosphere, the flashlight combat system. It's just a very different game. I haven't played survival-horror games in a while but this is one of the few games I actually found scary. Well, maybe not scary, but creepy. The fact that I have a fear of the dark didn't hurt either. I'm not as bad as Alice though. When enemies are coming up the game starts to get blurry, the music changes, but you don't see anything yet. Then they jump out at you. It really gave me a sense of peril. Even worse are the poltergeists. Having a truck flung at you and being unable to dodge it easily adds to the "Holy Crap I Don't Want To Die" feeling.

Having to reload while surrounded by enemies in cramped spaces balanced out the abundance of ammo, a thing some people frown upon in the survival-horror genre.Who cares that you have a chest of unlimited bullets if you're getting hit to much to shoot.

I've got a funny story. During Episode 4, after the car crash you and Barry are separated. He is armed with a flare and he gets attacked. When he kills a Taken an achievement popped up for me.
-Collateral Carnage: 20 Taken have been drowned, electrocuted, or dispatched by some other indirect means.
I guess Barry counts as indirect means. But the fact that he gave me the achievement was hilarious to me.

With a game like this where I'm trying to follow a story I just like to play through it and immerse myself. I don't go through and try to get achievements. I really only went out of my way to get...
-Carny: You have heartlessly knocked over five defenseless can pyramids.
,which I did.

There are collectibles. I HATE collectibles. As mentioned above I didn't really try to get all of the collectibles. If I saw a thermos I picked it up. And who are all of these people leaving their thermoses everywhere. The manuscripts I tried to collect because I wanted to read them to get more of the story. And the hidden chests were just useful but I guess I didn't get them all.

I played on hard knowing I wouldn't go back on nightmare. So getting all of the manuscripts wasn't going to happen. Some of the manuscripts are only found on nightmare difficulty.

Stats:
Kills with revolver: 260/100
Kills with flare gun: 19/50
Kills with shotgun: 88/50
Kills with hunting rife: 32/50
Kills with flash bangs: 61/50
Kills with vehicles: 23/15
Indirect kills: 72/20
Poltergeist objects destroyed: 87/20
Birds Killed: 646/1000

Batteries used: 193/100
Manuscript pages found: 86/106
Coffee thermoses found: 81/100
Can pyramids knocked over: 5/12
Chests found: 27/30
Radio shows found: 10/11
TV shows found: 13/14
Signs found: 15/25

35/50 a
560/1000 g
0/2 dlc - aside from the price these actually look pretty interesting. If I owned the game I might have bought them. Well one comes free with the purchase of the game.

Blood of the Gods

I finally tried Mountain Dew Throwback. I love that little hillbilly. Then I found out that all Mexican sodas have cane sugar rather than High Fructose Corn Syrup. So I go down to my local supermarket to buy a MexiCoke which I actually had a few weeks before. While I'm in the "ethnic" aisle buying ramen because I'm as broke as an HP laptop, I see bottles of Jarritos Mandarina and this Sangria flavored soda.

I drink the Jarritos and it's just ok. I actually think Orange Crush is better. Then I drink the Sangria Señorial. This stuff is awesome. It tastes a lot like my favorite carbonated beverage of all time, Black Cherry Faygo (reppin' the D). In fact it might taste even better. It is more expensive unless you count the cost of shipping it takes to get to Colorado.

Sam Fisher: Not So Stealth Assassin

Despite what people have been saying I liked this game. It allows you to be as stealthy or as run-and-gunny as you want. My poor memory is keeping me from remembering why this game sucks compared to previous installments.

It wasn't that long but I didn't expect it to be. Deniable Ops is really fun. I found the level design of Deniable Ops better than the campaign.

It definitely needs more suppressors. Half of the pistols aren't even silenced. I would like to have a suppressor on every gun. Hell, give me silenced grenades.

Weapons unlocked through Coop? When will these companies learn that I don't like multiplayer and start catering to me instead of the millions of people who do.

*Update*
So I cheated and played through the multiplayer game by myself. Unlocked and upgraded all of the weapons and beat all of the levels by myself. Take that social interaction. Let it be known that Nic is very good at playing with himself.

*Update 2*
I finally beat all of the P.E.C. Challenges. It took longer than the game did.

35/54 a
700/1000 g

More Nic In More Places

On my half-birthday I decided to spread the awesomeness that is me to even more sites on the internet. I have new links on the sidebar:
True Achievements
Gamefaqs - A long time coming.
Wikipedia - I was supposed to do this on my last birthday.
Steam -Which is funny because I have yet to find a game my laptop can actually run.

I also have a couple of new Gamercards.