Tag: Opinion

Samson Meteor Mic Review

Lately, as many of you know have been toying with the idea of starting a podcast with @torstenvblog and as such, I had to pick up a microphone. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on it tho. Enter the Samson Meteor Mic. It cost less than $100, comes with everything you need to hook it up to your computer an record with no installation required. The legs are adjustable and stable. I have had nothing but good experiences with it. Obviously, there are better-sounding equipment on the market but if you are looking for something to get you started and are on a budget, this may be the one for you. I am also including a video as a 2nd opinion and an Amazon link in case you want to pick one up and help us out at the same time. Amazon Meteor Mic

 

The Forest (PS4)

The Forest is a survival horror game much like many others. It is also sort of like the TV show Lost. You crash on an island with weird stuff going on and you have to survive. The twist here is the cannibals running around that steal you son right after you crash.

Your mission here is to survive on the island, unravel its mysteries and find your son. Sounds easy right? Well, a lot of things sound easy. But can you find food and water while building a shelter all while avoiding people that want to eat you?

The cannibals are smart, they will watch you and occasionally strike but not always right away. Sometimes they will circle around and try to catch you when they think you have left. They also will many times retreat as opposed to dying and will even come back with friends or simply not attack at all if they don’t have superior numbers.

The cannibals aren’t the only enemy, the weather also plays a part. The rain will soak your clothes and getting cold is also an issue. I won’t cover all the dangers, as some of that I will leave as a surprise for those playing the game. As a huge fan of 7 Days to Die Revisted I have to say this game is probably better. At the very least graphically it is, tho it is not perfect. It does have the occasional frame drop and rendering does take a second on occasion in heavily populated areas but none of this is too bad, tho admittedly the game is pretty dark even if you pump the brightness up. Regardless, the game is well worth the $20. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Happy Thanksgiving

As I do for most holidays, I would like to just take this mornings post to say Happy Thanksgiving. I know it is a very American holiday that many of my readers don’t celebrate. In fact, I know quite a few Americans that do not. This is not about all that, however. For those that do celebrate I want to wish you the very best and enjoy a safe day with your families. By all, eat turkey, enjoy a drink but above all, be thankful and be safe. For those that do not, may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sega Heroes (Mobile)

Sega Heroes is a new mobile game from, of course, Sega. It is a puzzle game much like many of the other puzzle fighters out there. You match colors to make your characters attack the enemies, all of which are Sega characters.

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The game is fun and quite honestly easy to play, my only real issue is if you want to collect all the heroes, it is going to cost you some money. Now the game is free, so obviously they need to make their money, my issue is you can’t really choose which characters you buy. I would love to collect all the PhantasyStar characters and I would even be willing to drop a few bucks on them, but I can’t simply buy them, I have to hope that is who I get and that is an issue for me. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Override Mech City Brawl: Preview

Override: Mech City Brawl is exactly what it sounds like, a mech brawling game. Over the weekend I was lucky enough to be part of their preview this weekend with Modus Games. I honestly never expect much from mech games. In my experience, they are usually clunky to control lack any real replay value. There are obviously a few exceptions, and I am happy to say Override is one of them. The preview was lacking the arcade and single player modes and focused on beating the crap out of your friends and other people, it also let you add CPU bots into the mix which me and my friend added in a few times. I will add a few videos below so you can see the game in action.

The controls felt nice tho and with so many mechs to choose from I really thought at least a few would feel like just copy and pasted versions of another but I never felt that. Each mech had its own special moves and strengths and weaknesses. Some take more skill than others to master but all are very viable contenders with none being at a particular advantage. This game will absolutely be on my list of games to watch when it releases on PC and PS4. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Yu Gi Oh: The Movie (2004)

As a kid, I was a huge Yu Gi Oh fan, even as an adult me and my friends played. Yes, my now ex-wife and I used to play. I saw every episode of the original cartoon, I had every variation of Blue Eyes White Dragon, including the Blue-Eyes Shining Dragon from this movie. The irony tho, I had never seen this movie until this weekend. See by this point I hadn’t so much fallen but didn’t really had the chance then, and years later I had forgotten about it. So as I am flipping through Hulu I came across it so I tossed it on.

The first thing I have to say, is the reviews on Metacritic and such are terrible. Rotten Tomatoes gives it 5%. For me, this seems odd, but as I said I am a fan. For me, it was a huge flashback to a show I loved. It was almost like watching season one in an hour and a half, we got to see Kaiba duel Pegasus, but how it would play out if he had his newest deck and experiences. We learned more about what happened 5000 years ago in Egypt, and of course, we saw Yu Gi pull a win from the jaws of defeat in a seemingly impossible manner and this was honestly all I wanted.

Sure maybe it wasn’t the best written or visually, and how dated the formula was is apparent. That being said it was a fun nostalgia trip and honestly 14 years after the movie was released, that is all I truly wanted. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Valthirian Arc Hero School Story (PS4)

Valthirian Arc Hero School Story is a cute and fun idea that is home to one of the worst design choices I have ever come across. We will get to that later tho. The game itself puts you in the shoes of a school principal with the responsibility of building a school and training heroes for the queendom. The queendom consists of one High Queen and five lower Queens, tho as you would assume the High Queen dies and you must find her one heir as the place is thrown into chaos.

The game is fun and easy to control, and there are 2 types of quest, errand quest which you send your students on and quest you send your quest on that you control. Each quest will take a set amount of weeks, but here is where the worst design choice ever comes in. If you send all of your students on errand quest, there is no way to speed up time. You have to sit there and wait for time to pass, slowly. It took over 30 minutes for a few weeks to pass with nothing for me to do except watch the screen. Nothing to build, nobody to control. Just wait. Now, this is easy to avoid obviously, simply send one set of students on errand quest while you yourself control a different set on a quest you control. The weeks will pass no problem, but do not send all your students on an errand quest because you will regret it.

The game is quite interesting and while not 100% original, it isn’t something you see often and it is refreshing to get a taste of it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Europa Report (2013)

Europa Report is a fictional story of a manned mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, but it should be noted it is based off the actual idea that many scientists have and one simple question that again many real-life scientists ask. Is there life on the moon Europa? Obviously, I am not going to answer that question, how the hell would I know? I am just a blogger with an interest in science that picked this movie because of what it was about. So how does a movie such as this stack up? Well much like the mission in this movie it mostly misses its mark.

The movie starts off slow, and I do mean slow. This wouldn’t be so bad but it tends to skip around without warning and without explanation. At one point I thought I accidentally restarted the movie because it skipped back and it was very similar to an earlier part.

The movie also never really speeds up, this wouldn’t be so bad, however, this time isn’t used to make you care about the characters. Not to say the time is wasted, they use it to push how important the mission is which isn’t bad, but really we know it’s important, anyone watching the movie is watching because they love this sort of stuff.

The movie also doesn’t speed up or get interesting until the last 20 minutes or so. Now I will admit, this end portion of the movie is quite amazing. In fact, I won’t even spoil that for you simply because of how amazing it is. It gets exciting, the pay off of the trip is finally found you start to wonder how it will all turn out and even start to see how they will get out of these problems. Scientifically speaking they also do a solid job of making things sound good. That being said, that ending is only worth it for huge fans of science and space. your average person should avoid this movie. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.