Month: June 2017

Picking a third summer MMORPG to play

Bio Break

If you couldn’t tell already, I’ve had a very strange month, gaming-wise. I’ll have a wrap-up tomorrow to go more into depth, but the short of it is that I’ve struggled with cementing my gaming lineup for this summer and have instead been wandering all over the place. More than usual, I mean.

It’s been weird and interesting and personally revelatory, but the end result is that I’ve realized that three is sort of the magic number for me when it comes to online games. It’s just enough for variety (I really can’t be a one-MMO guy, just never could) and an interesting rotation (hitting each game at least twice a week) without being too scattered and making me feel overwhelmed with too many “projects” and goals spread across a half-dozen or more titles.

So three. And the first two are not in doubt. LOTRO, because I love it, I’m…

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Five Games That Should Have Been Included with the SNES Classic

3rd World Geeks

Nintendo followed up their string of positive press earlier this week with the announcement that they will be releasing the Super NES Classic this September 2017. Instead of celebrating this good news, the right thing to do is nitpick this announcement because that’s what we, the people on the Internet, do to achieve happiness – so that’s what I’ll do right now!

But seriously though, the SNES Classic (or the SNES Mini, as some folks have been calling it) is awesome and I’m glad that Nintendo listened to some of the fan feedback, addressing some of the issues that it’s predecessor (the NES Classic) had (stocks and controller cord length). The SNES Classic lineup of built-in games is actually very strong, either having versions of it’s franchises that have improved on the problems of their prequels (e.g. Super Metroid, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Earthbound) or…

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Cerge eTR 11

Micki's Delirium

Yesterday I ran the dailies once eH to cap Cerge, and then right away eTR’d for the 11th time. I’m not getting any closer to epic completionist, though, as I’m doing Primal for Doubleshot (this is the 5th past life in Primal). Anyway, I eTR’d and then right away colored his hair scarlet, lol. Here are the before and after pictures.

 

🙂 that’s all for this post.
Thank you for stopping by.

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State of the Game: Too Hot For TV

Me Vs. Myself and I

The Steam Summer sale has come around once again, and this year things are unique as they usually are. The discounts are there just like each year before it, but this time around the gimmick is a bunch of sticker packs that you can use to fill up pages of a book and presumably get some sort of prize. Collecting the cards to craft the badge nets background images for your profile, which in turn are the same pictures used in the sticker book, so it’s unclear what the purpose is. Perhaps it is explained somewhere that I missed, but presumably it’s just a time waster and a way to convince you to spend more money, as if the massive discounts weren’t enough.

So far there have been games on my wishlist that were on sale, but none that I was really looking to pull the trigger on. My backlog…

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Playstation plus games: July 2017

mrluvvaluvva

IMG_3469Well that’s it; we are officially half way through the year and it has been an amazing 6 months for all gamers! Every major console manufacturer had a good E3 and the future looks fantastic for everyone.

Speaking of the future, Sony announced the PlayStation Plus games for July today and it is a damn good month! Brilliant even! 

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Tower of Frosty Crafting

Even Now

No, there’s not really crafting in Tower of Frost! But I did run Tower of Frost on Sunday’s livestream, and since it was the last night of the 50% bonus Cannith crafting XP weekend, I did some crafting afterwards.

ToF is always a good time. I hadn’t run it in ages, though, and it showed. It’s ALMOST impossible to get lost in there, but hey, challenge accepted! I managed to not get SUPER lost, but there were definitely moments when I wished I had a few Bigby’s Hands in my inventory instead of keeping them all in my shared bank.

Now THERE’S something I’d do if I were ever in charge of DDO for a day – make your bank space, shared bank, and TR cache available from wherever you happened to be. And then I would max out my shared bank space to store my Bigby’s, XP/mana/renown/slayer pots, extra…

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Is Super NES Classic a dream come true?

Bio Break

Coming back to town after a four-day trip, I was excited to see that Nintendo finally announced the much-expected Super NES Classic console for this fall. After the runaway success of the NES Classic (we won’t go into grousing about the shortages and why I still do not have one), it made total sense.

So here’s the rundown: $80, 21 games, longer controller cords, coming September 29. It’s $20 more than the NES Classic and has five fewer titles, but it’s SNES, so it kind of balances out a bit. Naturally, I’m insanely pleased and excited, as the SNES is my all-time favorite console (one that I own in many formats, including a handheld version). And the big surprise announcement of StarFox 2 as a pack-in, a game that had never been released, is definitely thrilling.

Let’s look at the lineup:

  • Contra III: The Alien Wars
  • Donkey Kong Country
  • EarthBound

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Held Hostage, Part II of III: Video Games and Children

AmbiGaming

Welcome to Part Two of our mini-series on the effect of violence in video games on children. For Part One, click here.

Last time, we spoke briefly about the differences between violence and aggression, as well as discussed how correlation between events does not imply causation of one event/behavior because of another. After examining some of the available research, we concluded that, while violent video games cause increased aggression in adults, video games did not cause increased violence. I then posed the following questions:

  • Can video games cause permanent changes to aggression in children?
  • Do video games cause children to become violent people?
  • What effect can exposure to media violence have on childhood development?
  • What might be different about video games than other media? Is there a difference?

So without further ado, let’s jump in to part two and examine how violent video games may affect levels of aggression…

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Three Things MMOs Can Learn From Master X Master

Occasional Hero

As an MMO player who is generally uninterested in PvP in any of its various forms, I’ve never really found MOBAs all that appealing. When NCSoft started talking about this new Master X Master thing, I pretty much ignored it. Just another MOBA for me to skip, right? Plus I don’t really like the name. I think “Master X Master” is supposed to be like “Master Vs. Master,” and I can’t decide if I feel like it’s a stylistic choice that is ok or a minor translation oddity that’s going to bother me (I think the title of “Tree of Savior” is a large part of why I didn’t stick around that game for long). Then I started seeing some chatter surrounding MXM’s PvE game, and I was intrigued. I tried the beta, and I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. The game reminds…

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