Mini-Review: Outland – I Love This Game…

Posted in Blog, Borderlands, Castlevania, Games, Resident Evil, Reviews with tags , on August 18, 2012 by slateman

I think it was last year when I picked up Outland on the Xbox360. It was probably when my PS3 was dead and I needed something new to play. Of course, I LOVE Ikaruga, in fact, I have a section of one of my sites devoted to it. This game is an action/adventure homage to the excellent title and I love it.

Now, my Xbox360 doesn’t receive as much love as it used to. I don’t know why we all have our favorites but I much prefer the PS3 and its interface than Microsoft’s offering. Most of my gaming hours are spent on Sony’s platform and now that Outland was free for PS+ subscribers, why not nab this game again?

So, with brilliant Ikaruga-style mechanics, awesome visuals and a cool soundtrack, this game is a lot of fun to play. It’s not overly difficult, but boss battles can be very tough. I would love to find a complete set of artwork for Outland as it’s just marvelous. The color schemes, the details in the background, animations, enemies and most of all, bosses, all look spectacular and are deserving of their own art book or online gallery.

The gameplay is equally fantastic. It brings the aforementioned polarity to match the progress-and-return 2D method of Castlevania/Metroid/Shadow Complex. I love these types of games. I’m always eager to go back and collect what I missed, aiming for 100% whenever I can (or 200% in the case of the brilliant Symphony Of The Night!)

So, I should really just play the 360 game rather than going back to repeat all this. But it’s just so fun, I don’t mind. Will I finish the whole thing? Perhaps…but it’s definitely entertaining while it lasts! (i.e. until Borderlands 2 and Resident Evil 6 come out to consume all my time!)

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Mini-Review: The Walking Dead – I Really Liked!

Posted in Blog, Games, Reviews, The Walking Dead on August 15, 2012 by slateman

While away I saw the first two episodes of The Walking Dead were free for ps+ subscribers. Having heard good things, and being a big fan of TWD, I was excited. The first few free nights, I got a few hours with the first game and walked away impressed. Of course this is not standard zombie fare. This is a moving game with its share of intense moments. As some choices were presented to me, I struggled with finding an answer that suited Lee. You have limited time on some of these. Do I speak the truth and trust in human nature? Or, do I tell them what they want to hear? Can I keep up with what lies I told one person? Which character do I save or back up? And getting back to Lee, he isn’t just the main character, he’s Lee…My Lee! I absolutely love the protagonist. His eyes are bright and revealing. His mysterious background is curious and compelling. I look at him as if he truly were a reflection of me. He can’t be a killer…right?

I look forward to playing episode 2. If it continues on this path, I’ll be forced to pick up parts 3-5! This is some cool stuff!

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Back From NY!!!

Posted in Blog, Personal, Photos, The Walking Dead on August 15, 2012 by slateman

I spent a week visiting my family back home in NY. I’ve got some new things to write about…I started playing The Walking Dead (PS+ free!!!), Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, and have decided that Alcest’s Les Voyages De Lâme may bethe best album of the year. Until I get there though, enjoy this pic I snapped late at night @ camp a few weeks back. A long-exposure of the moon yielded a pretty good shot!!!

Moonlight Exposure

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DDP:DFK New High Score (Arrange A – 36b)

Posted in Blog, DoDon Pachi, Games, High Scores/Accomplishments on August 2, 2012 by slateman

My PS3 reinstall has been the focus of much of my time lately, but today I wanted to get a few rounds of the good ol’ DFK. Instead of focusing on 1.5, I went forward with arrange mode A (DOJ mode). As DOJ is my favorite ever, it’s a great remix. Today’s score was all due to a great first level. This mode is so fantastic, it’s a new game in its own right. Now that I know the mechanics (oh right, someone wrote a great FAQ on the game!) I can work on score. I had another run afterwards which was bound for greatness…however some distractions (my son jumping all over me didn’t help) made me crash and burn early. I hope to get much more time with the game. We’ll see if I get lucky!

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PS3 Re-Everything Log: Day #6

Posted in Blog, Games on August 2, 2012 by slateman

Today is a light day…but only in terms of quantity. The Choplifter HD PS+ freebie weighed in at a mere 1.5Gb, but it was Infamous 2 which took the cake. The 15Gb download took most of the day. The installation is going to take quite a while, I expect. I’m generally done with my catching up. I’m opting to skip some games entirely. Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One is a 14Gb game that, since losing my save game, I have little interest in revisiting.

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PS3 Re-Everything Log: Day #5

Posted in Blog, Castlevania, Games on August 1, 2012 by slateman

As I have some running around to do today, I didn’t plan on doing much updating. This morning though, I figured I’d grab some patches as I was up rather early. Overnight I got a few demos (not counting towards my re-install numbers) but those were about 3Gb in all. I also queued up the following:

PSN Game Downloads
Awesomenauts – 68Q3Mb
Blue Toad Murder Files – 420Mb
Castlevania Chronicles – 336Mb
Just Cause 2 – 7.5Gb
Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 – 199Mb (had to re-download)
Shank 2 – 1.2Gb
Zombie Apocalypse 2 – 1.2Gb

As for patches, I updated a bunch. Lots of smaller files, but a lengthy process indeed. Let’s see…

This Morning’s Patch Updates
Age Of Booty – 45Mb
Awesomenauts – 17Mb
Blast Factor – 134Mb
Blue Toad Murder Files – 346Mb
Burn Zombie Burn! – 62Mb
Costume Quest – 8Mb
Critter Crunch – 17Mb
Dead Nation – 375Mb
Fl0w – 16Mb
Flower – 10Mb
Journey – 41Mb
Lumines Supernova – 5Mb
Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 – 200Mb
Might & Magic: Clash Of Heroes – 27Mb
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX – 12Mb
PixelJunk Eden – 36Mb
PixelJunk Monsters – 63Mb
PixelJunk Racers – 3Mb
PixelJunk Shooter 2 – 35Mb
PixelJunk SideScroller – 25Mb
Piyotama – 64Mb
Rag Doll Kung Fu – 34Mb
The Simpsons – 2Mb
Söldner-X – 6Mb
Söldner-X2 – 2Mb
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix – 55Mb
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD – 303Mb
Swords And Soldiers – 61Mb
Toy Home – 818Mb
Trine – 51Mb
Zombie Apocalypse – 22Mb
Zombie Apocalypse: Never Die Alone – 14Mb

Now, only one of those is really somewhat large. But that’s not the point. I had to sit and boot up each of those games and allow it to update. There’s no background downloading on these. Once again, the purpose of this is so that I can play any of these games whenever I want. It’s such a nuisance to have to do all this right when you want to play, but my method this week is cumbersome and loooong.

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PS3 Re-Everything Log: Day #4

Posted in Blog, Borderlands, Games, Street Fighter on July 31, 2012 by slateman

As I got up this morning, several downloads were done. I queued up several more and patched some. This morning’s updates:

4 Elements HD – 169Mb
Burn Zombie Burn – 165Mb
Costume Quest – 386Mb
Journey – 589Mb
Marvel Pinball – 272Mb
NBA Jam Demo – 859Mb
PixelJunk SideScroller – 83Mb
Resident Evil 4 – 3.4Gb
Rochard – 1.3Gb
The Simpsons – 21Mb
Tomb Raider and the Guardian of Light – 2.3Gb
Trine – 355Mb
Trine 2 – 1.1Gb

Patches
Braid – 240Mb
Cuboid – 20-something Mb
Plants Vs. Zombies – 12Mb
Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare – 20Mb
Resident Evil 5 – 168Mb
SF3:OE – 18Mb
Tetris – 70Mb

Little Big Planet Patch Sizes
57 / 189 / 22 / 23 / 53 / 113 / 58 / 17 / 19 / 23 / 25 / 82 / 6

Little Big Planet 2 Patch Sizes
7 / 13 / 13 / 12 / 93 / 568 / 19 / 19 / 23 / 173 / 68 / 45 / 51 / 51 / 50

Wait…WHAT? Yep. 13 separate updates for my beloved LBP and 15 for LBP2. They total (umm…carry the 4)…Well, only 687Mb for the first and 1.2Gb for the second. This is absurd. Another 2Gb between two games right there. Oh, plus installations for each. Those total 3Gb of HDD space.

Then you have installations of Skate 2 and Skate 3 from yesterday. Today had a nice 6Gb installation of RE5 and RDR: UN (2.4Gb).

And let us not forget, the General Knoxx DLC, all 1.7Gb of it, was corrupt. Re-downloaded the re-download!!!

My PS3 froze during Tetris. That always makes me nervous.

Now, I went forward and grabbed the Dyad demo and was nabbing one more when I gave up. I won’t count those though. They’re not part of the re-install. I’ll round it off to about 15Gb of data transfer today alone (not including 1.3Gb for Dyad. I’m going to pause for a few minutes and actually PLAY something before turning in. Tomorrow won’t be as active as today.

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PS3 Updates: Still Going!

Posted in Blog, Borderlands, Games, Street Fighter on July 30, 2012 by slateman

I’ll have to say that this is going more quickly than I had anticipated. Now, first off, it’s still summer vacation and I don’t have to work. Second, I got this all started on a Saturday night, so I benefited from a low-traffic summer Sunday and Monday morning. However, I did patch about half of my retail games and caught up on PSN games and DLC rather well. As I mentioned yesterday, the downloads just get bigger though as time goes on. I downloaded Infamous which was a 7Gb file. Newer games, PS+ games, etc all increase. But, my speed is fantastic! I just got the Borderlands: Zombie Island DLC (just under a gig) in half an hour, and that was with my router crapping out for a part of it. Claptrap Revolution is next, 1.36Gb and I’m starting at 9:15. Let’s see how this one goes!

@10am, the download was finished and both DLCs installed. This isn’t that bad!

@1pm, I queued up some more. Starting to get big. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is 1.6Gb. Street Fighter III is 620Mb. BloodRayne: Betrayal is just under a gig and the two Super Street Fighter IV updates total 1.9Gb. That’s almost 5Gb right there. My network has slowed down it seems, but while I plan on just letting this run, I expect it to take some time. Overnight and early morning seem the best times to update this stuff.

@1:38: Might & Magic done. 1.6Gb in <40 minutes? Cannot complain!!!
@1:53: SFIII done. 620Mb in 15 minutes
@1:55: Plants Vs. Zombies done. 90Mb in 2 minutes

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New PS3: Reformat / Re-Download / Re-Install.

Posted in Best / Worst, Blog, Borderlands, Games, Skyrim, Street Fighter with tags , on July 29, 2012 by slateman

As I’ve now managed to kill two original fat PS3s in a little over 15 months, I’m stuck with the arduous and painfully-long process of redoing everything. Last night, I tossed firmware 4.21 on a flash drive and formatted my awesome 320Gb drive full of everything I loved. All my games, patches and many of my save games are lost forever. Oh yeah…again!

So, last night, around 11pm, I started doing it all. I queued up my old downloads, things I grabbed back in 2008 or so. Overnight, my PS+ auto updater finished those and synched my trophies. I later grabbed whatever save games I had backed up online. This morning, I started grabbing bigger games. Söldner-X and its sequel tallied about 2Gb. Things are going to get big soon.

The next step, (well, I’m still in my 2009 downloads, mostly) will be to plug in each game disc and start it up, downloading patches along the way. The game that killed my system (it was a coincidence), Arkham Asylum, is a Game of the Year edition, so fortunately everything was there. However, about 275Mb went to Brütal Legend, a game I will likely never get around to. I’m going to need to grab the three Borderlands DLCs I purchased and I fear Skyrim will be large as well. How big was Arcade Edition for Super Street Fighter IV again?

Ultimately, all games are dwarfed by Burnout Paradise and Heavy Rain. The former has a series of seven updates. I know this because I did this reformat/re-download/re-install nonsense just last June. As I write this, I’m just finishing up the first of those seven updates. You know, the 385Mb one. That is followed by a 154Mb update. Then, just five more after that.

I can’t recall the precise size (turns out it’s 1.15Gb) but huge is the Heavy Rain update that included the much-sought-after Move controls (/sarcasm). I always wanted to go back to that game. The problem with these updates is that I can’t let them go overnight. I have to sit there and let them run. I’ve got a good connection, but a gig is still a gig of waiting. And better yet is when you download a big PSN title, install it, boot the sucker up just to find out a patch larger than the original install is waiting for you.

Burnout’s third patch was only 35Mb; its fourth a meaty 250.

I should’ve just gotten a slim last spring when my original launch model died. And I shouldn’t complain too much, as I have a functional PS3 here, a nice 320Gb drive, a good connection and a Sunday where traffic is always faster than weekdays. Note to self…Back your shit up next time. This is your fault.

Burnout Patch Updates:
Patch #5 – 133Mb
Patch #6 – 176Mb
Patch #7 – 413Mb
Burnout Paradise Total Patch Size = 1.26Gb

Oh, and before I sign off here, I really wonder/fear how this will all work in 10 years. I can still play any PS1 or PS2 game I own, any NES or SNES game. Not being able to play your stuff or missing out b/c of patches is just going to be strange. Will there even be a PSN? I LOVE me my PS3 as you should know…but how things are going really bothers me. Knowing my copy of Final Fight on the PSN won’t let me play it at all w/out being connected is insane. And don’t get me going on digital distribution. I don’t like it and that’s not gonna change.

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DDP:DFK FAQ Posted

Posted in Blog, DoDon Pachi, Games, Guides with tags on July 14, 2012 by slateman

My first new FAQ in over 2 years, I really wanted to get this to a completed state before I got interrupted and lost my passion. So, while it’s still missing some things (i.e. I have to buy Black Label!) I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done. I look forward to finishing this, but for now, check out 1.0 of my DoDonPachi: Daifukkatsu FAQ! :D

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