Tag: video games

Updates required

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As my annual aging draws nearer, I guess now is as good of time as any to bust out a good old fashioned “back in the day” kind of posts.  But over the weekend, I wanted to watch a stream of a League of Legends match because of course I would.  But instead of watching it on a computer screen, I figured why not watch it on my big screen television, because such a thing is possible?  So I turned on the XBOX One that I have no games for, because I basically plunked down $300 for a glorified app player, so I could log into Twitch and watch.

But first, there’s an updated that needed to be applied, and it was somewhere in the vicinity of 2.3 GB.  Even hardwired, that’s still a little bit of time to move that much data.  So I sit around with my thumbs up my ass waiting for this update to download and install, before finally, it’s completed.  Turns out that I don’t have Twitch installed on my XBONE, so I have to download that.  Update required.

So while Twitch is updating, I figure why the fuck not just get on my PC and just watch it on a monitor instead, so I turn on my computer, only to find out that there are now Windows updates that need to be installed, and my virus protection software has found updates and would like to apply them.

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The most frustrating game since Battletoads

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The difference with Battletoads was that you had a very finite number of lives, and once you were out it’s game over, and there were no substantial number of continues.  And when that happened, your NES controller typically went through a wall, foot through the console, and you didn’t have to worry about giving the speedbike levels another shot, and you could move on.

And if it was anything like Battletoads/Double Dragon, the game itself was aware of when you used cheat codes, and penalized you at the end of the game subsequently.

The point is, Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze was pretty much the most frustrating game I’ve played in ages.  If I were a kid completely devoid of discipline and Prozac, the WiiU control would have been destroyed at least 72 times by the time I finally beat the game, but it was my girlfriend’s (I know, right) system, and she would have ditched me at the curb if I did such.  Needless to say, it made me feel boiling levels of game rage that I didn’t know I even still had anymore.

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This game is going to scare me beyond anything else

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is a preview trailer for a game called The Hum: Abductions, where it’s essentially a game about people being abducted by aliens. It’s also essentially a game that is going to make my childhood fears be personified in a video game.

When I was 10 years old, I had a fear of aliens. Not like FOX pictures Aliens with Ripley and Bishop, but the whole concept of the existence of waif-bodied, giant-headed, large-eyed aliens, UFOs, abductions and all the wacko conspiracies that existed in regards to them. It didn’t help that shows like Sightings and Unsolved Mysteries existed that had the occasional episode about them, and I’m not entirely sure where the fear stemmed from, but I became really, really afraid of aliens for a little while.

I’d have bad dreams about aliens, being abducted and having all sorts of weird tracking devices implanted into me or just straight up killed in experimentations. It was so bad that I was afraid of nighttime, because the sky was dark, and I’d be able to see all the flashing lights in the sky that I now know and can identify as particular aircrafts, but when I was a kid, every flashing light in the sky was clearly a UFO, full of aliens that had malicious intent for humanity.

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Either the franchise is sputtering or I’m growing up

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: There’s a new Resident Evil game being released in 2015, Resident Evil: Revelations 2.

And I just don’t care.  It even has Claire Redfield as the main protagonist of this game, as I’d been clamoring for over the last few installments of the game that have repeatedly had Chris, Jill, Leon and Ada in them.  Yet it changes nothing at all, and I’m just completely unenthused by the announcement that another chapter of RE is coming out.

This means that the franchise as a whole is really sputtering, dying, drying up, or all of the above, OR it means that I’m simply growing up, past caring about the franchise.  Perhaps it’s a combination of both, as well as a few other factors, like the fact that I can’t stop playing League of Legends, and that I’m pretty bad when it comes to expanding my horizons beyond a few things at a time, much less spreading out my attention over numerous video games.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Sunday

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In spite of all of the mad rushing and hard work put into the weeks and days prior to the coming of this year’s D*C, there was a surreal moment on Sunday morning when I woke up, and thought to myself, “is it really Sunday already?”  Needless to say, the weekend quite literally felt like it flew by way too fast, and there was that melancholy feeling of wanting to see as many people as I could during the day, and to empty out my cooler as expediently as possible before the end of the convention.

And after feeling like I had too tiny a number of photos taken on Saturday, I really wanted to spend a good chunk of Sunday doing what I really enjoy doing the most; simply walking around and taking pictures.  Eventually the daylight hours gave away to night, and as has been something of a thing I’ve enjoyed doing, felt the compulsion to dress nicely.

Really, I just wanted to wear my wingtip shoes, that there is probably zero photo evidence of anywhere out there, but if I was going to wear wingtips, I needed to dress accordingly to match it.  Which brings us to the suit vest and tie.  I LIKE TO DRESS NICE, OKAY?

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Saturday

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Saturday’s gallery is vastly smaller than what a normal Saturday gallery should be, but that’s entirely due to the fact that I myself was in costume for a good part of the late-afternoon into the evening hours.  Now as much fun as I had being Fifth Age Taric, I’d be the first to admit that I spotted a lot of things that I’d really liked to have taken pictures of, had I not been in costume.  And Taric’s not exactly the kind of costume where I could sneak a point-and-shoot with me to take some B-roll shots, since both my hands are occupied in costume.

Regardless, most of Saturday’s highlights are lots of League of Legends costumes; I wandered around the gigantic group shot area outside of the Hilton, and waited out the group pictures, since to be perfectly honest, I hate taking pictures of monstrously sized groups, preferring more to take pictures of individuals or in small pairs or troikas.

Not saying there’s no pictures of things not LoL-related, but it’s pretty obvious to what has and is my preferred subject to take pictures of.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2014 – Friday

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Admittedly, and embarrassingly, I admit that I spent the vast majority of Friday morning/afternoon dealing with a rager of a hangover from the previous night’s shenanigans.  That being said, I kind of felt like I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I normally do at a D*C, but at the same time, I was wondering if there were many things that me personally, wanted to take pictures of.

I’m not saying that what was out there was utter garbage, but it’s no secret that the unofficial rule of costuming is that the big guns come out on Saturday; Fridays are like for the secondary tier of costumes, or something along those lines.  After all, I can attest to having more than one conversation with friends and acquaintances that echo such a sentiment.

Regardless, there was still plenty of things to take pictures of, and again I’ll have to remark about how I’m disappointed in myself for being so negligent and unpracticed to have gone the entire weekend with my new camera and new lens operating without the image stabilization that an amateur like me probably really needs.

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