First blog of the year, and what is it about? Yup, a smartphone. I've finally moved past the age of dumb phones and into the present. Or, at least, I'm still in the process of doing so. The phone arrived on Christmas Eve, and I've been using it for stuff since then. But it doesn't actually work as a phone yet. The process of getting that to go with the cell phone company has been more of a hassle than it should have been, but now a SIM card is in the mail and hopefully that'll work without much hassle.
But rather than wait until then to write about it, or never write about it at all, I figured I'd do something now. Also I haven't done a blog in a bit and The Moosies got postponed until next week. Not entirely my fault either, I should add! I've gotten the writing for the awards and my top ten done, but...well, let's just say I have a "special surprise" in the works, and due to the nature of it, I can't post The Moosies until next week. Now, don't go getting your expectations wildly out of check like I would. This is still a dumb thing related to The Moosies.
Anyway....
So, the phone I got is a Motorola Moto G, Second Generation. Why'd I pick that? Well, I got a recommendation from a friend who uses it, and a confirmation from a friend that sells cellphones for a living that this is a good one, at least for the price range I was in. Of course, like a dope I ended up ordering one that didn't work with Verizon, because of course Verizon is the one big cell phone company in America that doesn't use SIM cards. But that ended up working out for the best anyway, because switching to AT&T ended up saving money. Not that I need to go into the details of that, but I don't know how I managed to make a stupid mistake work out for the better.
For the most part, I like it a lot. It works as intended, the screen seems pretty nice (it's 720P, and I have no idea how that compares or doesn't to other smartphones, but I'll wager it's lower than the highest end ones), and it's not an Apple product so I can continue not owning any of those. Not that I'm stubborn enough that I would have outright refused to use an iPhone, but I think continuing the anti-Apple jokes into the year 2015 is funny.
The camera(s) in it don't seem to be super great. Apparently it's 6 MP for widescreen and 8 MP for 4:3 pictures, which seems like a weird option to have. I assume MP stands for mega-pixel, and not Minister of Parliament, but rather than do a quick Google search and figure out how that compares to other phones and such, I'll just say I don't know. I also feel like it's bad at focusing because a lot of the pictures I've taken look clear when I go to take it, but then get blurry after the fact. Or maybe I just can't hold the phone steady enough, I dunno. I do know that I've managed to take selfies with it, including this first one I did.
If anything, I'd say my biggest complaint with it is that the screen gets all smudgy from my clammy hands. That's not the phone's fault, but man I still wish I didn't have to wipe the screen off several times a day. But I'm getting more used to it over time, just like how I've gotten used to wearing glasses and the maintenance required for those over the years. Or maybe that's just because my dumb eyebrows keep brushing up against the glasses, I dunno.
My experience with downloading apps and such has been okay. Google's app store works, but doesn't seem especially great. I haven't "bought" anything there yet, because who pays for apps? I'm kidding on that part, but I also haven't felt the need to buy anything there yet. I did, however, end up installing Amazon's weird app store that Google doesn't want to let people install. Or, at least I had to turn on a thing allowing my phone to install apps from untrusted sources, or something.
The only reason I did that was because Amazon gave me five bucks worth of Amazon app store bucks for buying the phone from them. Really though, if I'm spending almost $200 for the phone, they could have done a bit more than that. Or, I guess the thing to do would have been to decide I wanted a smartphone earlier in the year and gotten one around Black Friday, when they were probably cheaper. OH WELL, that's life. Poor decisions based on not thinking about the long term.
So I downloaded a few games from Amazon's app store, and now I'll write about those! I've run out of meaningful things to say about the phone anyway, unless you want to see a picture of the background I'm using for the phone. It's MGS related, of course.
Also, don't get me wrong, just because I don't have a lot more to say about the phone itself doesn't mean I don't like it a lot. I do! Even just for dumb things like being able to check Twitter in the bathroom or in bed. That's worth it just to be able to make stupid/needless comments about tweeting in the nude just to "bother" my friends. And also for checking things before I go to sleep, but you get what I mean.
Social media has me in its hooks and there's no way to escape! Not that I really have any desire to, honestly. I only have about two "real life" friends (in the sense that I only contact them online through email, and then to organize things like meeting up to do stuff in real life), and even then I barely see those people at all these days. Everyone else I stay in touch with online. Well, not counting family, but they don't count. And even if they did, they'd still be vastly outnumbered by "internet friends," who I'm mostly closer with anyway.
There's probably something longer and more profound I could write about my relationship with "social media" and the like, but I don't think this is the time to do that. I'll just say that I am really glad for all the friends I made in the last year through stuff like Twitter and Giant Bomb, and the friendships that got...more friendish over that year. I dunno how to word that, but it's a good thing, trust me.
Anyway, got off topic, but now back to the games!
Crossy Road.
After all the times it was mentioned on Giant Bomb, of course Crossy Road ended up being the first game I played on my phone. And it's all right. It's super simple, and kinda dumb, but it's fun for a little while at least. I don't see myself playing a whole lot more of it in the future, honestly. I already unlocked a dragon in it, and there's not really anywhere to go after that.
I'll say this though, at least all the microtransactions (or in-app purchases, as they're called) are cosmetic, and it's pretty easy to unlock different things to play as without putting in money. As much as I would kinda like to support the developers, I dunno, but 99 cents seems like a lot for one thing in a game that I'm pretty much done with already.
Threes!
Threes, on the other hand, is a whole lot of fun. If you don't know what Threes is, then it's the game all those rip-offs were based on. It's pretty simple, you just slide numbers around and try to combine them into bigger ones. If the playing space thing gets completely filled with no options for combining numbers, the game ends, and the score gets tallied. Like I said, it's really simple, but it's also a lot more fun than I expected it to be, honestly. I've found myself pulling out the phone and just playing Threes to pass the time more often than I expected. Not that I've really had tons of time to pass where all I have for entertainment is the phone. I have more often lately than I usually do, with family stuff going on, but that's all passed, so I probably won't play it as much.
That said, this is going to be a good go-to for quite some time. It's very good, and I highly recommend it if you have a thing that you can play it on.
Desert Golfing.
This one is very simple, and I don't really have a lot to write about it, but I do like it a lot. It's straightforward and fun. And not very easy, a lot of the time. That or I'm just bad at it. That's quite possible too. But it's a great game to pull out, play a hole or two, and then go back to whatever it was that I was doing. I haven't gotten super far into it, as I'm here as of this writing:
Also I'm bad and suspect that's far more strokes than a good player would have up to that point in the game. But I never claimed to be good at any form of golf, and this one is no different. Though, having never actually played real golf (not counting mini-golf), I can say with authority that Desert Golfing is better than real golfing.
I'm going to keep swinging away at Desert Golfing, slowly but surely. I dunno if I'll get into the thousands of holes like some people have, but we'll see.
Hitman Go.
Hitman Go is pretty great. It manages to distill the Hitman spirit down into a turn based phone game that has a good sense of style, is challenging, and a lot of fun. If you know literally nothing about the game, I'd suggest you go take a look at GB's Quick Look (technically of the iPad version). It's presented as if Hitman was a board game, with Agent 47 being moved around spot by spot, whilst trying to avoid enemies, find things like briefcases, and occasionally assassinating a target. The levels are all small, and can be completed quickly...at least at first.
The game ramps up the difficulty pretty quickly, but in a way that I really like. It's challenging, but so far nothing about it has seemed insurmountable. And when I do overcome a particularly hard level, it feels all the more satisfying. On top of it already being fairly challenging, the every level (after the tutorial ones) has three objectives to complete. One is always for completing the level, and the other two are optional. Each one gives a stamp, and progress through the game is gated by the number of stamps collected. Or, at least progressing to the next "sets" of levels is. Each set is represented as a different board game, and you need the stamps to get those. Inside each one you need to complete the levels in order to advance.
The optional objectives, at least so far, have come in three flavors. Some require finding a briefcase, some getting through the level without killing anyone, and some with doing it in a set number of turns (each movement costing one turn). The first two of those usually aren't that hard, or at least that much harder than playing the levels without doing them. But the third? Some of those get really hard. To the point where it's taken me quite a bit of time to get some of them. There is a hint system, but I haven't tried it yet, partly because I think getting more hints (after you run out) might be a micro-transaction thing. But I don't know for sure, I'm just going off what I remember Brad saying in the Quick Look.
I've completed the first two (gotten all the stamps on those levels except one in the last level in set two) of what appears to be seven sets of levels. Though, at least two of them are marked as only having 8 levels, but those are based on previous Hitman games, so that should be cool. Despite the fact that Absolution is the only other Hitman game that I've played. I do have three of them from PlayStation Plus, but of those Blood Money is the only one I'd really like to play, and I'm not sure of the PS3 version of that is a port of the 360 version, or if it's an HD port of the PS2 version. I'd rather not go through the trouble of downloading and installing it only to play an inferior version of the game. And I've tried using the internet to find this out, but my half-assed Google searches haven't really yielded anything.
Anyway, Hitman Go is great, and I'm definitely going to play it through as far as I can, which will hopefully be all of the levels. You should play this game if you have something it's on, and have any interest in this sort of game. It's quite good. I do wish I had something bigger than my phone to play it on, though.
That's it for the phone games I've played! Nothing new to talk about in terms of other games that I've been playing either. Played some Super Smash Bros for Wii U recently, and Mario Kart 8. I was finally able to play Sportsfriends and Towerfall in four player last night at my cousins' house. A lot of fun was had, but Super Pole Riders was easily the favorite (not counting Smash Bros, which is still king for me). But Super Pole Riders was definitely the funniest game we played yesterday. At one point my dad was literally crying from the laughing so hard after one particularly grueling duel between the two teams (The Surmountable Germans and The Overconfident Losers (I was on the Losers) (also none of us are German)).
Haven't really touched anything single player focused in a while. The reason(s) being that I've been so focused on writing stuff for The Moosies, doing various family things, consuming GB GOTY content, and dealing with depression stuff (which hasn't been bad lately aside from one bad day). Well, I suppose I did play through Ground Zeroes the other day when I was trying to decide on some Moosies stuff. I didn't really intend to finish it again, but I did because it only takes about half an hour at this point. I should have tried using the phone app thingy as the in game map, but I didn't think to od that. Maybe next time!
I still want to go back and do some more stuff in Dragon Age, and I still want to finish Wind Waker HD. Plus I have Mirror's Edge (from when EA made it free for that Sony thing), Deadly Premonition The Director's Cut, and this month's PlayStation Plus stuff. Not sure how much of that stuff I'll write about, but I'd really like to bring PS+ Catch Up back after the brief hiatus. I kinda have to if I want to keep having things to write about until the next new release I want which is...in March? Is that when Bloodborne got delayed to? I can't think of anything else in the meantime that's coming out at all, actually.
That said, I do have really, REALLY high hopes for video games in 2015. MGSV, Bloodborne, The Witcher III, Batman Arkham Knight, Uncharted 4, No Man's Sky, Mortal Kombat X, Just Cause 3 (I think), and maybe even a Legend of Zelda game! But probably not that last one. If this lineup of games is as good as it has the potential to be, then 2015 will probably skyrocket to be my favorite year in video games. Ever. I'm not kidding at all. Look at those games! Those first four especially are all games that I am INCREDIBLY excited for. I'm a little worried that the Batmobile stuff in Arkham Knight is quite misguided, but I still think (hope) the rest will be the majority, and make up for it. So far as MGSV, Witcher, and Bloodborne go, well, I've got more than enough faith in those developers to pull off what they're aiming for.
But outside of games? I don't really know what to expect from 2015. 2014 was a roller coaster with super high highs, and very low lows. I don't know if anything this year could match the glowing feeling I had after I came out, but I'd take a much more balanced year than one where I got as depressed as I did last year. That's not to say I think this year will be completely smooth sailing. Of course it won't, that's expecting the impossible. But if the lows could be a bit less low, and happen a bit less frequently, well, that'd sure be an improvement.
Either way, I'm excited. 2015 is going to be grand. I've got PAX East to start preparing for! I'll be there along with a couple(?) of my oldest friends, and I'll be meeting a bunch of my internet friends for something that will surely be very stupid, and very, VERY fun. I can't wait. :D
Conversely, I probably have to finally get a job at some point this year, and start putting serious thought into what I'm going to do with my life. I can't live and mooch off of my dad forever. Haven't got the slightest clue where to start any of that, but I'll figure something out. Probably. It'll be interesting, if nothing else. Too bad the whole novel writing thing didn't work out, and I wasn't able to make any progress on my third book in the last six months.
Not that at this point I had any expectations that anything I write could ever be even remotely successful, but I'd still like to get back to that at some point. I dunno if I ever will though. I'd say that maybe I should try writing something else before returning to my dumb trilogy (of which I was on the final part, but of course I made it too big in scope which helped lead to me stopping working on it), but I'll run a lot of the same problems. I dunno.
A Farewell to Patrick.
As I'm sure you already know, Patrick Klepek recently announced that he's leaving Giant Bomb. And while I don't have anything long, or profound to say, I just felt like I should give a little farewell to Patrick in my blog. He was a fantastic part of Giant Bomb, and I know I'm going to miss him a lot.
I know a lot of people don't care for Patrick, and honestly, I didn't at first. I didn't hate him, but I was mostly indifferent to him. But over the years, he really grew on me. And, I'm not really sure how to put this into writing, but I feel like Patrick helped make me a better person, in a way. Like, he's always the one that wrote articles about "issues," and linked to all sorts of stuff I'd never have read otherwise in Worth Reading. Again, it's hard to put into words, but his work for the site helped make me more aware of stuff, and care more about issues relating to the video game industry, and the websites and such that cover video games.
Does any of that make any sense? I dunno, I don't really have any examples to give, but just trust me on this. And believe me when I say that I'm really sad that he's leaving. I wish him the best of luck, and I'm going to continue to follow whatever it is that he's doing next, but the site's not going to be the same without him.
I also think he's crazy for leaving Giant Bomb, but what do I know?
Bye Scoops.
Anyway, that's it. The Moosies should be up some time next week, and hopefully you'll enjoy that. I know I've been promising a Luigi themed text adventure, but I should warn you that the end result of that ended up being...different than what I had originally planned, and a lot smaller than what I had planned. The actual Moosies awards are still on par, I think. And yeah, I know I could post them now, and post the "special surprise" later, but I'd rather do it all at once. You can wait a few more days. Not having The Moosies isn't going to kill you. And if it is, then I give you permission to have, "It was all Moosey's fault" engraved on your tombstone.
I should maybe go back and change some of the text in the Moosies that makes it really obvious it was written before the end of last year. Or not. No one's going to care that much. Probably.
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