Crappy 2016 everyone! What a horrible start it has been right? Between the deaths of Ian "Lemmy" Killminster and David Bowie I have been quite upset because between those 2 I really admired there music. Lemmy I always admired because he just seemed like a cool badass, I mean the guy would play the bass like it was a 6 string guitar, usually polished off a bottle of Jack Daniels everyday and would do a shitload of speed but he always struck me as a salt of the earth guy because he would never take himself too seriously, you would often find him in various roles in tv shows and movies often playing himself, usually in a mocking way, but he just went along with the laughs. I ended up listening to all of Motorheads albums to pay some form of respect to the guy and despite the music getting very samey after a while there were some stand out tracks like Don't Let Daddy Kiss Me which despite being on a very serious issue that happens in our society was a very touching track and very unlike your typical Motorhead. I also ended up listening to another group Lemmy is involved in called Head Cat, which involved him, the drummer from the Stray Cats and someone else who was in a group cat related or something, lol. The group consisted of them doing old rock n roll covers but compared to the songs he would play in Motorhead, the change of pace is nice.
As for David Bowie, I was actually very shocked when I found out about his death. I was in my bed at the time just checking the news before I went to sleep and had to double check because it just seemed unreal. My earliest memories of him I think include hearing him on VH1 or something like that, I definitely recall seeing him preform live on the BBC. I recall when I moved out from my parents I ended up listening to several of his albums including Diamond Dogs and Young Americans. When he made a come back a few years ago with The Next Day I was honestly surprised at how good the album was and was looking forward to the release of his new album Black Star but I never expected him to die before it came out. So as I did with Lemmy, I ended up giving all of Bowie's albums a listen and the body of work he amassed throughout his career is simply amazing. The fact he could go from folk music, to glam rock, to soul and funk music, to progressive rock, to pop, to grunge, to drum and bass and then to rock is simply amazing. The guy had no boundaries and despite such a long career managed to keep himself fresh, he is definitely a talent I will miss.
Real life jazz then. Well the job hunt has been ever going on, I have ended up giving the resume to every fucker I can find on Craigslist but I never get anywhere it seems, ended up doing a couple of interviews but I must have done something wrong because you never hear back from these guys. The gardening work though has picked up quite a bit though so money flow isn't as bad as we was expecting around here, the wife ended up getting a 4k grant so with her starting up classes again recently and needing study materials that should greatly assist us in this time.
Anyway, despite avoiding buying a Gateway over the past 3 years or using any of the major hacks on the 3DS, I finally decided fuck it and went in balls deep with it. I decided to mess around with the downgrader on my old Zelda 3DSXL and was quite successful in setting up an emunand and the cfws, now finally being at the point that I can backup my cartridges, saves and all, and install them onto the internal SD card I was quite chuffed, so chuffed in fact I decided to download my New 3DS and set up the emunand and all the goodies there, so it has finally given me the chance to try and explore and enjoy some of the titles my wife purchased over time like Nintendogs + Cats, Tomodachi Life, Fantasy Life, probably others she has never told me about, lol. But the fact amazing pieces of homebrew like the NTR CFW can allow me to run older 3DS titles at a much higher clock rate to improve performance and loading times without having to load HANS or lose the extra buttons that N3DS has? Fantastic. I know I am probably a sucker for it but I don't plan to pirate with this ability, I probably should looking at my money flow situation but when I look at the backlog which consists of games like Shin Megami Tensei IV, I feel I should be trying to finish those games before starting and not bothering with others, still, lets see how long that lasts right?
Seeing as we are on 3DS, lets move onto games of the month. Despite buying the Chibo-Robo - Zip Dash back in November or so I finally ended up playing it. Despite my initial thoughts that turning Chibi Robo into another 2D by the numbers platformer I have had quite a hoot with it. The game with its whip (or zip mechanic) reminds me of classic Castlevania in terms of gameplay with the usualy Nintendo polish in terms of a platformer. The level select mechanic is somewhat weird and really un-needed in the game in my opinion, at the end of a level have to use a spinning wheel to determine which level you will go to next, now while the random order could be fun, this makes it so you have to repeat a level if you have even completed the level before, which rubs off on me as a poor way to expand the overall play lengh of the game and of the vehicle levels I found to be pretty sloppy. The skating one while being cool just seemed a lot more trickier than it should be and the submarine level, just felt a bit too slow you know? Only other thing I could slag it off is maybe the game being a bit on the easy side. Still if you are the kind of person who needs a score system to rate your games on I would give it a high 6 or a low 7, good solid fun although nothing ground breaking or earth shattering, although there is nothing wrong with it for not being any of those two things.
I also ended up playing Grim Fandango Remastered with the wife too. Despite still owning the original on the PC it has become somewhat award to run, so much that a VM called Residual has been developed over the years in a similar way to ScummVM to allow classic adventure games to be run again, but seeing as Escape From Monkey Island is the only other title that would be supported by the VM it is nice to see Grim Fandango being given a spit and polish. Flipping between the classic and remastered look, a similar feature seen in the Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2 Special Editions goes to show you that quite a bit of work has gone into cleaning up the look of Grim Fandango, giving textures a much nicer look, using updated models and adding in a new lightning system. Despite the game running fine I found some issues with it personally, I mean the controls work somewhat fine although it doesn’t seem buttery smooth as I would have liked from it, I mean fuck it beats tank controls I guess (which come included by the way) but the fact the UI in the PC version of the game defaults to the Dual Shock button scheme seemed strange to me, when I looked it up apparently Double Fine but it down to problem they had which started from the development of the game which made it hard to correct later on….which I'm like, ok, cool, fine…..then I look harder and find that someone had made a mod to change the UI to reflect that of a Xbox 360 controller and he didn't have to add shit in, it was always in the game, just needed to be turned on, so Double Fine bullshitting and being lazy? Nothing new some might say, but at least the modding community comes through to fix these little things for us. Short of that a few more mod cons like auto saving wouldn't have hurt things honestly and there does seem to be numerous bugs I found in a single play through, one which had me having to restart from an earlier save point due to not being able to progress. The problems seemed to be with the scripting during certain cut scenes, eg, characters becoming stuck due to others being in the way when they need to exit an area or characters needing to turn or face a certain way to engage in a conversation and hanging. They were very annoying and makes me wish Double Fine would actually patch these things but for 5 bucks I guess I got a good enough walk down memory lane without too many problems, just wish it had a bit more effort thrown at it though.
The other game I have taken a shine to this month, The Blackwell Legacy. I have owned this for several years on GOG but never found the time to sit down and try it, and after I played it and saw how long it lasted, I really should have made some, lol. The game is a classic click n point and is styled with such a look that is reminiscent of classic LucasArts games and plays just as simple as them. Now there was a few mechanics on the game which lost me like being able to use the notepad to link your thoughts into new ones which you need to be able to progress but despite powering through this thing over a couple of hours, I found the game quite enjoyable in spite of its length, some of the voice acting in it is questionable but you for the package you get a well done click and point adventure which has an interesting premise, I look forward to trying the rest of the series in due time.
Anywho those pests everyone hates, Amiibos! This month I have snagged Shovel Knight, Lucas, Blathers, Kicks, Resetti and Celeste. I managed to also get in preorders for Ryu, Roy, Famicom Rob, Cap'n and Rover. So come March when they are released they should make for an interesting birthday gift of sorts, lol.
Right I guess I best get back on with the job hunt or something, have a good month and don't get too pervy with the ladies with Valentines coming up. Peace
As for David Bowie, I was actually very shocked when I found out about his death. I was in my bed at the time just checking the news before I went to sleep and had to double check because it just seemed unreal. My earliest memories of him I think include hearing him on VH1 or something like that, I definitely recall seeing him preform live on the BBC. I recall when I moved out from my parents I ended up listening to several of his albums including Diamond Dogs and Young Americans. When he made a come back a few years ago with The Next Day I was honestly surprised at how good the album was and was looking forward to the release of his new album Black Star but I never expected him to die before it came out. So as I did with Lemmy, I ended up giving all of Bowie's albums a listen and the body of work he amassed throughout his career is simply amazing. The fact he could go from folk music, to glam rock, to soul and funk music, to progressive rock, to pop, to grunge, to drum and bass and then to rock is simply amazing. The guy had no boundaries and despite such a long career managed to keep himself fresh, he is definitely a talent I will miss.
Real life jazz then. Well the job hunt has been ever going on, I have ended up giving the resume to every fucker I can find on Craigslist but I never get anywhere it seems, ended up doing a couple of interviews but I must have done something wrong because you never hear back from these guys. The gardening work though has picked up quite a bit though so money flow isn't as bad as we was expecting around here, the wife ended up getting a 4k grant so with her starting up classes again recently and needing study materials that should greatly assist us in this time.
Anyway, despite avoiding buying a Gateway over the past 3 years or using any of the major hacks on the 3DS, I finally decided fuck it and went in balls deep with it. I decided to mess around with the downgrader on my old Zelda 3DSXL and was quite successful in setting up an emunand and the cfws, now finally being at the point that I can backup my cartridges, saves and all, and install them onto the internal SD card I was quite chuffed, so chuffed in fact I decided to download my New 3DS and set up the emunand and all the goodies there, so it has finally given me the chance to try and explore and enjoy some of the titles my wife purchased over time like Nintendogs + Cats, Tomodachi Life, Fantasy Life, probably others she has never told me about, lol. But the fact amazing pieces of homebrew like the NTR CFW can allow me to run older 3DS titles at a much higher clock rate to improve performance and loading times without having to load HANS or lose the extra buttons that N3DS has? Fantastic. I know I am probably a sucker for it but I don't plan to pirate with this ability, I probably should looking at my money flow situation but when I look at the backlog which consists of games like Shin Megami Tensei IV, I feel I should be trying to finish those games before starting and not bothering with others, still, lets see how long that lasts right?
Seeing as we are on 3DS, lets move onto games of the month. Despite buying the Chibo-Robo - Zip Dash back in November or so I finally ended up playing it. Despite my initial thoughts that turning Chibi Robo into another 2D by the numbers platformer I have had quite a hoot with it. The game with its whip (or zip mechanic) reminds me of classic Castlevania in terms of gameplay with the usualy Nintendo polish in terms of a platformer. The level select mechanic is somewhat weird and really un-needed in the game in my opinion, at the end of a level have to use a spinning wheel to determine which level you will go to next, now while the random order could be fun, this makes it so you have to repeat a level if you have even completed the level before, which rubs off on me as a poor way to expand the overall play lengh of the game and of the vehicle levels I found to be pretty sloppy. The skating one while being cool just seemed a lot more trickier than it should be and the submarine level, just felt a bit too slow you know? Only other thing I could slag it off is maybe the game being a bit on the easy side. Still if you are the kind of person who needs a score system to rate your games on I would give it a high 6 or a low 7, good solid fun although nothing ground breaking or earth shattering, although there is nothing wrong with it for not being any of those two things.
I also ended up playing Grim Fandango Remastered with the wife too. Despite still owning the original on the PC it has become somewhat award to run, so much that a VM called Residual has been developed over the years in a similar way to ScummVM to allow classic adventure games to be run again, but seeing as Escape From Monkey Island is the only other title that would be supported by the VM it is nice to see Grim Fandango being given a spit and polish. Flipping between the classic and remastered look, a similar feature seen in the Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2 Special Editions goes to show you that quite a bit of work has gone into cleaning up the look of Grim Fandango, giving textures a much nicer look, using updated models and adding in a new lightning system. Despite the game running fine I found some issues with it personally, I mean the controls work somewhat fine although it doesn’t seem buttery smooth as I would have liked from it, I mean fuck it beats tank controls I guess (which come included by the way) but the fact the UI in the PC version of the game defaults to the Dual Shock button scheme seemed strange to me, when I looked it up apparently Double Fine but it down to problem they had which started from the development of the game which made it hard to correct later on….which I'm like, ok, cool, fine…..then I look harder and find that someone had made a mod to change the UI to reflect that of a Xbox 360 controller and he didn't have to add shit in, it was always in the game, just needed to be turned on, so Double Fine bullshitting and being lazy? Nothing new some might say, but at least the modding community comes through to fix these little things for us. Short of that a few more mod cons like auto saving wouldn't have hurt things honestly and there does seem to be numerous bugs I found in a single play through, one which had me having to restart from an earlier save point due to not being able to progress. The problems seemed to be with the scripting during certain cut scenes, eg, characters becoming stuck due to others being in the way when they need to exit an area or characters needing to turn or face a certain way to engage in a conversation and hanging. They were very annoying and makes me wish Double Fine would actually patch these things but for 5 bucks I guess I got a good enough walk down memory lane without too many problems, just wish it had a bit more effort thrown at it though.
The other game I have taken a shine to this month, The Blackwell Legacy. I have owned this for several years on GOG but never found the time to sit down and try it, and after I played it and saw how long it lasted, I really should have made some, lol. The game is a classic click n point and is styled with such a look that is reminiscent of classic LucasArts games and plays just as simple as them. Now there was a few mechanics on the game which lost me like being able to use the notepad to link your thoughts into new ones which you need to be able to progress but despite powering through this thing over a couple of hours, I found the game quite enjoyable in spite of its length, some of the voice acting in it is questionable but you for the package you get a well done click and point adventure which has an interesting premise, I look forward to trying the rest of the series in due time.
Anywho those pests everyone hates, Amiibos! This month I have snagged Shovel Knight, Lucas, Blathers, Kicks, Resetti and Celeste. I managed to also get in preorders for Ryu, Roy, Famicom Rob, Cap'n and Rover. So come March when they are released they should make for an interesting birthday gift of sorts, lol.
Right I guess I best get back on with the job hunt or something, have a good month and don't get too pervy with the ladies with Valentines coming up. Peace
