Kaz' Bolthole

April 2013 Multimedia Completion

kazriko — Wed, 01 May 2013 21:03:31 -0600

Books:

4. Machine of Death. A rather interesting look at fatalism. Especially the last story, Cassandra.

Games:

17. Lunar: Silver Star Harmony (PSP)
18. Cthulhu Saves the World (PC)
19. Commander Keen: Earth Explodes (PC)
20. Super Dodgeball (GBA)
21. Commander Keen: Keen Must Die (PC)
22. Heavenly Sword (PS3)
23. Dragon Quest 2 (GBC)
24. Bioshock Infinite (PS3)
24.1. Persona 4 Golden Platinum! (PSVita)

Videos:

17. Adventure Time Season 1. Still interesting.
18. South Park Season 15. Quite a bit better than some of the older seasons.

PS4 memory, too expensive?

kazriko — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:55:00 -0600

I’ve seen a ton of forum posts saying that the PS4’s memory will be so expensive that it will drive the price to stratospheric levels.

The problem with refuting this is that it’s hard for consumers to find information on the price of GDDR5 chips. The closest I can come up with is the following.

If we find two graphics cards that are identical in every way aside from the amount of memory on them, then we might get some idea of how much this memory costs, at least on the retail side. Wholesale prices could be half this amount.

I did a bit of digging on Newegg and found these two cards.

EVGA GeForce 670 FTW and EVGA GeForce 670 FTW+

$420 for the 2 gig model, $460 for the 4 gig model. Companies that make these cards don’t sell them at a loss in general.

Extrapolating, the retail price for 2 gigs of GDDR5 would probably be around $40, putting the price of the entire memory of the PS4 at $160 retail. Sony is probably getting bulk discounts and wholesale prices for this memory, so I would bet it’s $100 or less for the memory in the PS4.

Add to this that it’s a single large APU chip rather than a separate large CPU and large GPU die, and the costs should be fairly reasonable.

Clifford Unchained: "Deal With It"

kazriko — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:42:19 -0600

Clifford Unchained: "Deal With It":

dudehugespeaks:

Yesterday reports that Adam Orth, the guy who somehow caused this shitstorm, is no longer at Microsoft.

Let’s pay attention to the wording here. Resigned. Not fired.

Now, beyond all of the use of the impact font and the “Haha let’s make an internet meme out of this guy we’ve never met” let’s…

I have no problem with the guy personally, but his argument was pretty weak. I don’t agree with the people reveling in his resignation.

Though, when games are universally always-online and you can’t play them offline… That’s when I stop buying new games and just stick to my 200+ game backlog, and start buying old games at trade shows. That’s when I’m going to stick to the handful of developers who still get it, and hope that the rest of the clueless industry’s companies die a horrible death as a lesson to those who will come later.

I think that’s a ways off however. From the looks of the PS4 patents, the PS4 at least shouldn’t require such idiocy.

March 2013 Multimedia Completion

kazriko — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 23:45:06 -0600

Books:

Oops, didn’t finish any…

Games:

10. Alien Breed. A lot shorter than I thought. Also better than I thought at first glance. It helps to A. have the mapping device and B. know how to buy new weapons. I was kind of surprised when I realized that the ammo and key count carries over between play sessions.
11. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. With this, I’m down to 1 Gamecube game. Hurrah.
12. Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. That’s my first GBA game of the year, and leaves me with 4 more GBA titles on my list.
13. Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. An amusing little game that took me years to beat. The ending has lots and lots of frustrating missions.
14: Breath of Fire 2. So, so annoying. I hate old RPGs where there’s constant battles.
15: Borderlands 2. Man, that final boss was cheap. He wouldn’t get any damage in for a long time, then suddenly he’s tossing me in the air and wiping me out in one hit.
16: Final Fantasy 12. After 7 years of playing it off and on, and 90 hours in-game, this one’s done…

Videos:

14. Stargate Atlantis Season 2. What a way to end that. The characters in Stargate shows just keep doing stupid things that get them in trouble though in season 9 of SG1 and Season 2 of Atlantis…
15. Stargate SG-1 Season 9. Curious as to how they finish the first season up. Seems like it’ll be tough to follow up the last episode.
16. Adventure Time: Fiona & Cake. Fairly entertaining. Not quite what I was expecting however.

Breath of Fire 2

kazriko — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:50:23 -0600

I finished this game yesterday. I really can’t recommend it however… I only finished it off because I’m trying to polish off all my GBA and GC games this year.

If you are foolish enough to play this game however, here’s a few things to remember.

Use a guide when building your city and recruiting people. You’re given a choice on what kind of house to build, but the game doesn’t tell you what benefits each kind of house gives you. One gives you an item alchemy system that can be gamebreakingly useful, but only if you recruit the right people for your town. The others do things like telling you how long you’ve been playing the game. This is a major annoyance for me, as this should be a feature that every RPG has right in the menu, and yet, they lock it away in this game so that you have to sacrifice a much more useful feature to get it. Terrible design.

Once you pick the house that lets you do alchemy, you need to recruit people for it that give you the items to alchemize. The problem is, you have 6 houses you can fill, and there’s tons of people to recruit in the world, and you can’t get rid of someone once you recruit them and figure out that they’re completely useless. Use a guide to find the person who has the GOOD armory, the person who sells fish, etc. I ended up with a house full of cats because I had no idea they were recruit-able, and a useless armory, etc…

Next is the battle system. there’s usually no strategy at all to it, and for most enemies in the game the optimal strategy is just to hit the auto-battle button, and stop it if anyone gets too low on health. Battles are irritatingly frequent as well, happening every 5-6 steps often. You’ll want to keep a walkthrough up and highlight the sentence in the walkthrough you’re currently doing so that you can remember the goal you’re working towards as you’re interrupted 5-6 times while finishing it. The boss battles have a little more strategy, but it usually boils down to staying alive while restoring Ryu’s AP so he can do another 999 damage dragon attack.

The storyline? It’s a bit better than BoF1, but that isn’t saying too much. You can tell that they improved a lot by the time they did BoF3 however… Each game in the series gets just a bit better.

In any case, recommendation on this one: Pass.

Gamecube and Gameboy Advance Goals

kazriko — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 17:30:43 -0600

I’m now done with Twilight Princess. That makes 3 Gamecube games down. Since I shifted Majora’s Mask off gamecube. Wind Waker was January, and Skies of Arcadia was February.

I’m actually making progress on my other goal as well. I’ve gotten 5/7ths of the crystals in Link to the Past. I’ll probably have that done this week. That’ll be my first GBA game for the year.

Posterous is closing down… I guess I made the right decision to setup my blog on Tumblr...

kazriko — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:55:53 -0600

Posterous is closing down…

I guess I made the right decision to setup my blog on Tumblr despite the bookmarklet not being quite as good.

Though, my sharing is now done on NewsBlur’s blog, so this is just my traditional blog here now.

February 2013 Multimedia Completion

kazriko — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:19:02 -0700

Books:

Oops, didn’t finish any…

Games:

5: Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure (PS3)
6. Knytt Underground (PSVita/PS3)
7. Radiant Historia (DS)
8. Skies of Arcadia (GC)
9. Life of Pixel (PSMobile/PSVita)

Videos:

11: Trigun: Badlands. Actually pretty good.
12: My Neighbours the Yamadas. A bit repetitive, doesn’t really go anywhere. A bit like a comic strip turned directly into a show without breaking out of its 4 panel format.
13. Bamboo Blade. Reminds me of Yawara: Fashionable Judo a bit. With this, I no longer have Netflix by mail though. I suppose it’s a good way to end that.

Raptr 2012 Stats

kazriko — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 17:34:00 -0700

Keep in mind, these aren’t exactly accurate because Raptr doesn’t track time on the PSVita and PS3. I do a little bit of it manually though. Persona 4 Golden would have blown P3P away if it did though.

What strikes me is how few games the average Raptr user plays in a year. 12 games seems like an awfully low number, but I suppose there must be a lot of multiplayer gamers on the site. My top trophy games were all Vita titles. All 3 are excellent. I’d recommend buying a Vita just for these 3 games, but since there’s so many other great titles, I don’t have to.

Hours tracked: 300. Site average: 116.
Games played: 86. Site average: 12
Total trophies: 852. Site average: 69
Rarest trophy: Hotshots Golf World Invitational Platinum. 0.57% of HSG players.

Top 3 games by hours:

Persona 3 Portable, 95 hours.
Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando HD, 28 hours
Ratchet and Clank, 25 hours

Top 3 games by trophies:

Gravity Rush, 64 (8%) (Platinum)
Uncharted Golden Abyss, 56 (7%) (Platinum)
Persona 4 Golden, 40 (5%) (1 trophy short of platinum.)

2013 Gaming Goals

kazriko — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:17:00 -0700

I think I have a gaming goal now for 2013. It’s not too terribly difficult of one though. (I apparently posted this to the wrong blog before…)

I’m going to try and finish all of my remaining Gamecube games. There’s not too terribly many of them left though.

1. Zelda: Wind Waker (I played this in 2003 nearly to the end. I just restarted tonight and I’m down to the final sequence of 5 bosses. I’ve finished the room with the 4 bosses blocking the door, which is where I was stuck back then. Continuing a game after almost a decade… Something I’ve done a couple of times before. This will be the first 3d zelda game I’ll finish though.

2. Zelda: Twilight Princess. I haven’t really even started this one yet.

3. Skies of Arcadia: Legends. I played this a bit 10 years ago, but never got very far.

4. Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Part of the zelda collection disc for gamecube. One I started on the N64 but never finished.

I’ve shifted Ocarina of Time over to the 3DS, and I lost my disc for Paper Mario and the 1000 year door, so these 4 are all that remains of my gamecube collection.

Bonus goal:

Finish all GBA games. Another old system I’m keeping around for just a few games.

1. Zelda: Link to the Past. I’m maybe half-way through this one.

2. Final Fantasy 6. Just started this, keep getting the first 4 hours done then forgetting to go any further.

3. Advance Wars 2. I got some distance into this before.

4. Breath of Fire 2. I’m a short distance into this.

5. Super Dodgeball Advance. I just stumbled on this game at a used game store some time back. It was the only GBA thing they had that was worthwhile.

January 2013 Multimedia

kazriko — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:09:32 -0700

Last year’s status: 8 Books, 43 games, 113 Videos. The goal is to grow the first category and shrink the last one this year… So far, I’m not really meeting this goal, but that should improve when my netflix disc account finally ends in february.

Books:

1. .Hack//Another Birth, Volume 1. Pretty entertaining, seeing the story from another perspective. Though, that will only be the case for the first book as I never finished the other 3 games.
2. Azumanga Daioh Omnibus. I’m not sure what people see in this, I found it a bit bland aside from the rare island cat bit. The characters are interesting, but that’s about it.
3. .Hack//Another Birth, Volume 2. This book seemed to fly by. It could stand to be longer. Though, every time I read one of these .hack books, I want to go pick the series up again and play it.

Games:

1. Corpse Party (PSP) Interesting, though depressing.
2. Wind Waker (GC) After taking a 9.5 year break because I was stuck, I load it up and finish it in one night. That’s #1 down on my goal of finishing all my Gamecube games.
3. Corpse Party: Book of Shadows. Just when you think a series of games couldn’t get more depressing, they find a way to make it much worse. It’s focus is different, and it’s a better visual novel than the first game, but much less a game than the first one.
4. Unfinished Swan (PSN) Short, but pretty good.

Videos:

1. Big Bang Theory Season 5. Still drifting away from its roots.
2. Mars Daybreak. Really odd that they’d set this show on Mars. Pretty generic though.
3. Ai Yori Aoshi: Enishi. A bit meh. More haremy fanservice type stuff, with occasional good moments.
4. Tokyo Godfathers. This was really, really good. I should expect that from Satoshi Kon though.
5. The Secret World of Arriety. Good, but a bit depressing.
6. Tales from Earthsea. I get what people are saying about this and its dissimilarity to other ghibli titles, but I still thought it was decent. Also depressing though.
7. Summer Wars. Wow… So corny, sappy, etc… But it’s just so great. I can’t believe I’ve found two such excellent movies in one month. I thought Tokyo Godfathers was great, but this one really tops it.
8. Spice and Wolf season 1. Great show, but only merits maybe 4.5 stars from me. Lots of merchant, currency devaluation, and church politics stuff made it interesting though.
9. Memories. The first one was really the only one about memories. The second? blah blah blah military secrets blah blah. The third? Thinly veiled look at Nazi style societies. The first was decent though…
10. Monster (Naoki Urashima’s) Volume 1. The first 15 episodes were interesting, the 16th one took it to a place I didn’t want it to go… Future ones will be trickier because they’re only on amazon and hulu.

NRA Debate

kazriko — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 01:03:00 -0700

Because the built in commenting system in tumblr is so atrocious, I’m making this post for the discussion of the NRA vs Video Games debate that seems to be happening and the misconceptions therein.

Ultimately, in my view the problem is that the media and the government is trying very hard to divide us and turn us against each other. They started investigating all these causes related to “violence” in order to get movies, video games, the NRA, and other groups to turn on each other and fracture the supporters of the bill of rights into different camps. The NRA/GOA is blaming video games and violent media, the media and video games are blaming the guns, etc. All this will do in the long run is weaken both the first and second amendments as the government gets their fractious supporters to back laws that restrict freedom in one way or another. You’re all just pawns in their game.

You shouldn’t fall for it. Support all freedom, realize that what happened in Connecticut was a tragedy, but an unavoidable and extremely rare tragedy. We need to evaluate this rationally taking the costs and risks into account, and the risk of this happening to any given student are vanishingly small. They don’t justify the kind of reaction that we’ve been getting from it.

The existing gun laws didn’t stop it, and the proposed gun laws wouldn’t stop it either. It isn’t caused by video games or violent media and restricting them would do nothing to prevent this or future violence of this sort. Mental Health laws won’t do anything for it either, and just provide a back door way of attacking the second amendment.

There could be some common sense laws that would cost the government nothing but could reduce these tragedies, but they’re politically unpopular in most of the country. In particular, eliminating the “gun free zones” that just don’t work from schools and other places. Don’t force anyone to carry a gun, but allow anyone who has crisis training and a concealed carry permit to carry their own fire arms so they can protect the people around them. Other than that, none of the proposals out there have any merit whatsoever, or they would do more harm than good by turning schools into mini police states.

Persona 4 SLink max

kazriko — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:20:43 -0700

I finally maxed out all the social links this pass around.

Also beat Margaret. She’s pretty tough even on easy mode though.

Then finished the midnight quiz show.

That means… I’m done for now. I only have the Compulsive Reader trophy left, but I’m burnt out on Persona for the moment. Maybe march or april I’ll go back and get all the books.

More Persona 4

kazriko — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:37:24 -0700

I almost managed to get the 100% social links trophy for P4G on my second pass…

But Ai Ebihara only appeared 2 days a week in January, so that left me 2 events short.

Now that I don’t need to get the Hardcore Risette Fan trophy again, I restarted at 11/7 and changed my tactics a bit. That was a 17 hour rewind, but I’m back to 12/22 with only using 5 hours this time, and at 150 hours total. I still need 18 more scenes to max it out, but the only one where I’m not on step 8 or 9 is Naoki, and he’s easy to max out in January (4 days a week, m/t/w/f). I feel a lot better about my chances this time.

Here’s my stats as of 12/22

Automatic:

Fool: Max
Star: Max
Judgement: 8

Team:

Priestess: Max (Dated)
Hermit: Max
Emperor: Max
Lovers: 9
Chariot: 8
Magician: 8
Fortune: 8

Assorted:

Empress: Max
Hierophant: Max
Justice: Max
Devil: Max
Aeon: Max
Tower: Max
Death: Max
Temperance: Max
Moon: 9
Sun: 9 (Yumi)
Strength: 9
Jester: 8
Hanged: 2

Multimedia of the Year, 2012

kazriko — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:55:34 -0700

Books:

Mission of Honor: David Weber
Mistborn: Brandon Sanderson
Much Fall of Blood: Lackey/Flint/Freer
Lost at Sea: Bryan Lee O’malley
Redshirts: John Scalzi

Games: (3 Vita games, pretty impressive.)

Persona 4 Golden (PSVita) (P3P and P4A would also be on the list, but only adding one game per series.)
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (PS3)
Gravity Rush (PSVita)
Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward (PSVita)
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (DS)

Videos: (3 of these are free on Amazon Prime right now.)

December 2012 Multimedia Completion

kazriko — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:20:00 -0700

Books:

I was lazy again and didn’t finish any more books.

Games:

42: Zone of Enders HD (PS3) 12/4

43: Persona 4 Golden (PSVita) 12/26

Videos:

104: Doctor Who: Ghostlight. Kinda interesting?

105: Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric. Actually very interesting how it looped around.

106: Doctor Who: Survival. The original series kinda goes out with a whimper…

107: Doctor Who: The Movie. It’s too bad they didn’t turn this into a real series, because it would have been entertaining. It gets a lot of stuff wrong, but still…

108: Demon City Shinjuku. Terrible… But not as terrible as the next one:

109: Puni Puni Poemy. Agh. If I would have watched this when I was starting to get back into Anime, I think I would have quit watching anime right then.

110: Stargate SG1 Season 8. Most of it gets wrapped up as they gear up for the new Atlantis show.

111: Stargate Atlantis Season 1. Interesting… Especially the time loop episodes.

112: Big Bang Theory Season 3. It starts drifting from its origins, but still entertaining.

113: Big Bang Theory Season 4. More drifting…

With this, I’m approaching the end of all of the stuff I was watching on the disc-based netflix site. I have 2 more ongoing series where I’m waiting for the last discs, but after that I’ll probably decrease my video watching dramatically.

Persona 4 Golden Status

kazriko — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 23:42:00 -0700

P4G finished!

Final Social Link Status is… 18 Maxed, 4 not maxed, 1 not started.

Going to do at least 1 more pass on this game. I missed some of the quests because I didn’t get to the bug catching and fishing early enough. That’s what held up Hermit, for example. I’m really happy that they gave you another month in January in this version. I was able to finish up Lovers, Moon, Hierophant, and Hanged Man because of it.

Automatic:

Fool: Max

Judgement: Max

Star: Max

Team:

Chariot: Max (Dated)

Magician: Max

Priestess: Max

Lovers: Max

Fortune: Max

Hermit: 9

Emperor: 5

Assorted:

Empress: Max

Hierophant: Max

Justice: Max

Strength: Max

Hanged: Max

Devil: Max

Moon: Max

Sun: Max (Ayane)

Jester: Max

Aeon: Max

Tower: 6

Death: 1

Temperance: 0

Quests,

All but 15, 60, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69 finished. 62/69

39 out of 50 trophies.

The ending of this was so good. Much better than P3P’s ending. They even worked in a mention of P4A into it in the true ending.

Kickstarter Status

kazriko — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:32:39 -0700

Much noise has been made lately about Kickstarter and failed projects therein. I figured I’d go ahead and look at the ones I’d backed, and what I’ve gotten from them so far.

Doublefine Adventure. 3/13. $30 I’ve gotten a number of nice videos to watch, though I have no time to watch them. game is still being produced. They missed their estimated delivery date, but understandable because of how much their budget went up.

Order of the Stick Reprint, 2/21. $15 I’ve gotten all my items from this, and nearly everyone has gotten their physical items. The author injured his hand though, so the digital stuff is being delayed…

Code Hero, 2/24 $14. No real communications, no idea if this one will pan out or not.

Gastrophobia Volume 2. 3/14 $15. Got the book, the PDF, and the pin.

Wasteland 2. 4/17 $15. Due date is still almost a year out, so no comments here.

College Ruled Universe, aka Ballpoint Universe. 4/7 $6. Received the print, they have demos up. They missed their due date, but they’re not doing badly.

Tales of the Emerald Serpent. 4/18 $5. Received ebooks, all is well.

Pebble e-paper watch. 5/18 $115. They missed their due date, but good communications. Hoping for this before March next year.

Two Guys Spaceventure. 6/12. $75. Decent communication, though they’ve been a little quiet for awhile. They’ve started sending out shirt surveys. Still 2 months left in their deadline.

Quest for Infamy. 6/6. $10. Their deadline is this month, no idea if they’ll hit it or not. Demos out, but I haven’t tried em.

The Gamers: Hands of Fate. 9/7, $25. They seem to be doing well on filming this. It’s not due out for 9 months though.

Liftport. 9/13 $1. I’m not expecting anything from it, just a dollar in the tip jar. :)

Project Eternity, 10/16 $20. Their due date is way out, so *shrug*

Sportsfriends, 12/10 $15. Due date is way out.

So, 3 are late, but I think they’ll pull through and have delivered some stuff already. 3 delivered everything I wanted. One is late and probably won’t deliver. The rest are way, way out.

Not too terrible so far.

November 2012 Multimedia Completion

kazriko — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 01:00:51 -0700

Books:

Whoops, didn’t actually finish any books this month. Tried to get into a couple, but…

Games:

36: Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward (PSVita) 11/1 Platinum!

37: Rayman Origins (PSVita) 11/8

38: Picross 3D (DS) 11/9

39: Arc the Lad (PS1/PSVita) 11/13

40: Ratchet and Clank: Up your arsenal HD (PS3) 11/16

41: Suikoden 1 (PS1/PSVita) 11/20

Videos:

Actually, a pretty slow video month. Mostly just grinding down the last of old Doctor Who now that they’re reliably available on Netflix. Only 5 discs left!

97: Doctor Who: Time and the Rani. Interesting, but *shrug*

98: Doctor Who: Paradise Towers. Actually a pretty good episode.

99: Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen. I almost fell asleep during this one.

100: Doctor Who: Rememberence of the Daleks. I don’t remember much about it. ;)

101: Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis. Wasn’t too bad, a bit amusing.

102: Doctor Who: Battlefield. Dipping its toes into the Arthur/Excalibur myths, and making them inter-dimensional combatants…

103: Big Bang Theory season 2. Kind of jarring how they get rid of the medical doctor character so quickly in this season…

October 2012 Multimedia Completion

kazriko — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 13:47:00 -0600

Books

9. Mistborn. Excellent book, I really want to go find the sequel now.

Games

33. Assassin’s Creed. A bit draggy and touchy at times, but it was enjoyable enough. I’ll get to the second one sometime here.
34. Disgaea 3. Still one of the better tactical rpgs. I like 4 better though.
35. Folklore. I marathoned this for Extralife this year. Great game, better than I thought it would be.

I also platinumed R&C1 and R&C2 HD.

Finished Zero Escape 2: Virtue’s Last Reward as well, but did it after midnight today, so it’ll count next month.

Videos:

Since I dropped netflix streaming and am only using Amazon Prime and Netflix by Mail, I haven’t watched as much this month. Still quite a few things though.

90: Kino’s Journey. One of the best anime series I’ve watched in a very long time. Quite a bit of wisdom in it. On amazon prime.
91: World of Narue. A weird wish-fulfillment sort of comic. Not terrible I suppose.
92: Indian Summer, however, is terrible. Worst anime I’ve seen in months.
93: Doctor Who: Trial of a Timelord. 14 episode long epic, uneven in parts, but with a good ending. With that, I’m done with Doctor #6.
94: Puss in Boots. Not as good as the Shrek movies, but not bad.
95: Kung Fu Panda. Actually, a pretty good movie.
96: Stargate SG1: Season 7. A pretty interesting season. Amazon Prime.