LEGO Dimensions

Posted by John Klein III on July 23, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Walker Dennis and I have been enjoying playing LEGO Dimensions this past month.  I had gotten us to the Prime Time level and something odd happen to the PS4.  We started getting the CE-34878-0 error and I thought the PSN was auto updating our saved file, which wasn’t happening and this past weekend, we got our saved file corrupted.  So I thought “no problem” went to our cloud save and it was barely on the Simpsons level, which is the second level.  All of our progress, our vehicle upgrades, the gold bricks, everything was essentially back to zero.

At least, we’re smarter now, so I knew to quickly get to a million points, go to the Lord of the Rings adventure world, receive the red brick that provides a 2x multiplier, and that was my first goal.  To get to that first million, I highly recommend getting the Knight Rider adventure world, as there are gems for days there, you can easily get to 300,000 with barely any real work, and then you either go into the Knight Industries semi truck, or you go into Devon’s mansion or the warehouse next to his office where R3 is.  Jump out of either of those locations and the world resets itself and you do that three to four more times, and you get a million points/studs/gems.  I go back and forth on the terminology.  So I was putting that entire thing off but Walker Dennis has been eagerly wanting to get back to the Scooby Doo level, Monster Mayhem Mash Up, so again, I’m trying to beat a level a night and the levels are very long.

At least my trophies didn’t get reset, I may have lost my mind if that was the case.

We have added to our list of characters, so we had the Starter Pack of Batman, Gandalf, and Wyldstyle and of course, we had Michael Knight and KITT.  My wife got us Mr. T and his van.  So we lost all of the progress we made to the A-Team Van, KITT, and the Batmobile.

Next, my wife saw that both Aquaman and Chase McCain (from LEGO City Undercover) were both priced at eight dollars.  I had done my research and both are super important to the worlds but Chase gave us a new world so I asked for him.

Thanks to YouTuber packattack04082 for hosting the above video.

I still haven’t had use for Chase’s sixth costume, the farmer one.  I’m sure it’ll become useful eventually.

I also had to redo getting his costumes, the farm land isn’t easy to come across in his world.  I also had to redo all of the gold and the A-Team world, so that I can change Mr. T into the other A-Team members.

Thanks to TheBricksFamily for hosting how to make McCain’s helicopter.

Sometimes, it is just easier to watch a YouTube video instead of turning on the game, loading the game, putting the character on the toy pad and having the game walk me through the process.  Though, doing it through the game, I don’t have to pause the screen, so that’s nice or it is easier to go back a step.  Both come with the pressure of trying to assemble it quickly.  I do enjoy putting LEGO pieces together and following directions, that is pretty fun.

I saw the Beetlejuice set at Walmart and I failed following the Thou Shall Not Hesitate Commandment (the greatest commandment) and didn’t buy it and I’ve regretted it since.

We bought the Marceline set, from Adventure Time, as I saw she was pretty important to the gameplay, plus she was the only one in the Walmart clearance section.  Since I failed before, I was adamant about not passing her up.

Thanks again, packattack04082, for hosting another great video.

So I built her Amp Monster as well and we maxed out all of the vehicles’ abilities and forms.

And our file got corrupted so all of this had to be redone.

My wife bought the Ghostbusters 2016 story pack and that is coming shortly and I bought the Goonies level pack, mostly as it has the 4x multiplier, which stacks with the 2x multiplier, for 8x the collected gems.  I let Walker Dennis build up as he saw fit during the week, but when we played together last, I had him make sure to boost all of the vehicles to get them to the point where they magnetically collect studs from all around them, which is a real time saver.

We have since got all five vehicles fully upgraded and all of their forms unlocked.  We have all of the red bricks we have access to unlocked and paid for.  I haven’t had a real chance to play the adventure lands with him but we have to go back and buy all of the renovations of each of the adventure lands, each one has six but we should have plenty of points to unlock all of them as we visit them.

I was holding off until the Goonies came in but Walker Dennis has been a real good sport of wanting to make progress in the game, which I’m with him on that, and I have to maintain two million points so that I can unlock the Goonies red brick as quickly as possible.  I just want it to get the Rule Breaker achievement in the story missions with ease and to help increase the value of the gems in the Adventure Time world as I had gotten five easy gold bricks and barely had the rule breaker bar filled up a quarter of the way and that was with the 2x multiplier so I definitely need help there.

I also just learned that the giant (than the minifigs) lego bar that turns yellow, silver, blue, and purple, if you hit it when it is a particular color, that color gem comes out.  I’ve been taking it for granted which color gem appears but I noticed it turned purple once and I’ve tested the theory.  So if you see one, wait until it turns blue or purple and break them up at that time.

I’ve looked for a picture but I can’t find one, I may have to take a picture with my phone to see if I can get the right wording of it.

Walker Dennis really liked creating X-PO from the portal Gateway –

http://lego-dimensions.wikia.com/wiki/X-PO

http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/X-PO

I’m at the Lego Dimensions wiki all of the time now!

At first, I didn’t bother making him and then the next time Walker Dennis saw the Voltron main area, he recognized some of the pieces and immediately wanted me to create it.

Thanks to cusman for including the instructions and the video of his first appearance in the game.

. . .

We got another CE-34878-0 error over the course of the couple days it took to write up to this point and I performed the quick option of initializing the PS4.  The full version stated it’ll take a few hours so I didn’t want to subject our son to the long wait (though I could have done it over night, I supposed).  Doing the initializing means that everything is erased and started fresh, which I felt pretty confident that everything else was uploaded from a while ago, and if not, I’ll just commit to getting all of that progress again.  I also knew that the bulk of my games I’ve been playing recently were through the PSN, so those games would be easy enough to reinstall.

One real benefit of doing that was that I was at the halfway mark in terms of storage, like 5GB, and now we’re at 1GB, so without Fallout 4 being on the system, I’m pretty sure we got all of that space back.  I’ll slowly add my disc games again and the downloaded games, as I feel like playing them but right now, we are all about Lego Dimensions.

While waiting for Lego Dimensions to full load, and then getting the DLC (the adventure worlds) reloaded as well, I started Fallout Shelter, and it was much better on the PS4 than on my phone.  I haven’t gone back to it besides playing it for that almost hour but it isn’t bad in short chunks.  I should play it like I hope to play Knack, where I do a chapter segment and then play another game but instead of a segment (as there are no segments) I’ll just commit to doing it for 30 minutes or so.

My real grief with initializing the PS4 was that we still ended up with the error so now I’m not sure what to do.  I’ve read that people contact SONY and get a replacement PS4 that way but I’m hoping the next big system update might fix whatever problem we’re having.  Gosh, how I wished I knew what exactly happened that afternoon I was driving home when the PS4 wasn’t turned off correctly.

At least I’m being manic about uploading our saved data (which I’m sure is the root of the problem but we’ve made so much progress that I have to live with the threat of the saved file being corrupted) after beating each story mission.  I have a suspicion that it is related to Chase McCain as the game seems to have an awkward pause in-between his costume changes.

The real problem with initializing the PS4 was that my son lost all of his trophies on his guest account.  He didn’t seem to mind, as he’s four, but we played for maybe ten minutes and all of a sudden, he earned like seven trophies, so he’ll probably get the bulk of them back as we play together.

. . .

We are expecting the 2016 Ghostbusters story pack to come in as well as the Goonies pack.  I’m on the Phantom Zone level of the story (the Ghostbusters one), so I’m three more levels to catching up where we left off.  Its been pretty fun going back as now that we have Chase McCain and Marceline, we’re able to get even more minikits than before.

With the trailers and teases for the 13th Doctor coming up, I’ve been really wanting to get back into Doctor Who so we watched the Husbands of River Song Christmas special.  Walker Dennis was really into it until the ship they were on started to crash and then he got a tad scared, which is super cute.  But now I really want that Doctor Who level pack, it is still over $20 but I’m not sure if I can wait until it is under $20 but I’ll give it another month.  I imagine it won’t go down in price that much, due to the franchise still being very popular and the TARDIS being pretty useful in the game.  Our son started calling this other toy of his “Doctor Who box” and that was pretty cute too.  I can’t believe I don’t have a toy of the TARDIS, I guess I never came across one that was cheap enough or not a Christmas ornament.

I also can’t believe that from 2015 to 2016, there was no new episodes of Doctor Who, that sounds amazing to get BBC to commit to doing that.  I was confused as Husbands of River Song and Return of Doctor (Rey) Mysterio were both Christmas episodes and I had to read those Wikipedia pages a couple times as I thought there would be a season in-between them but nope, there sure wasn’t.

I really did enjoy Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald, I keep thinking that she’ll probably be ranked as my favorite of the companions, they (Steven Moffat and his crew) did such a great job with her character and I really like Coleman as an actress too.

 

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June 30, 2018 – S&FwM’s Fifth Birthday!!!

Posted by John Klein III on July 2, 2018
Posted in: Retrospective. Tagged: . Leave a comment

We turned five years old on Saturday!  We’re doing it!

Like always, here’s our latest stats!

All Time Views :                     163,203
Visitors                                   74,322
Posts                                       1,482
Comments : 281                   339
Review Posts : 813                814
Posts : 1,413                          1,482
Categories : 37                      39
Tags : 1,352                           1,365
Followers (Blog) : 146          176
Followers (Twitter) : 368      459
Followers (Facebook) : 8      24
Followers (Tumblr): 48         50
Followers (Pinterest): 73      82
Followers (Total) : 643         791

At 3,602  views – our most popular post is still my post about Bounce Patrol.

At 1,468 views – our most popular comic review has been New Avengers 51, beating out last year’s Death of Wolverine 3.

Best Ever Single Day View : 275 -July 24, 2014 . I imagine this must still be it, it is the only stat I can’t recreate it.

Best Month : May 2018, with 6,157 views

I’m still a tad obsess with getting my visitors from countries with nine views to ten views so if you know anyone in Cape Verde, Guyana, Laos (still!), and Armenia, please let them know they are always welcomed back. Moldova went from 9 to 11 from last year.

Once again, thank you, all of the visitors who have made all of this possible – I wouldn’t keep doing this if it wasn’t for the constant encouragement of visitors.  Thank you.

I’m trying to do a better job of thinking of posts and maybe I should just bite the bullet and start doing posts that are barely 50 words but I never think that’s worthy of a full post but if I do enough of those, maybe it’ll ignite a desire to do longer posts. I’m just not really doing anything besides being the best husband and father I can be and that’s been cutting into my time to do other posts. I should just do posts regarding the television series and movies I’ve seen. I just have to get back into the writing habit.

Thank you again for everyone who has come to the blog, even with the lack of reviews of current comics. People do seem to be coming for older reviews.

Right now, I’m making some slow progress in Lego Dimensions. We saw Incredibles 2 in the theater, and really enjoyed it. Last night, we got an hour into Last Jedi and hopefully we can get back to it relatively soon. Its just hard to find time to do everything I want to do, there are only so many hours in the day but I’m going to work harder with the blog as I do enjoy the outlet it provides.

 

Until Dawn

Posted by John Klein III on June 6, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

I finally got Fallout 4 platinum-ed and I had Walker Dennis pick out my next game (a traditional I’m going to continue to do, as it was pretty cute) and he selected Until Dawn.

Thanks to PlayStation for hosting the launch trailer.

This was probably my most anticipated game that I receieved for the PS4.  My wife couldn’t find a copy of it to add to the Christmas bundle of games so she got it for my birthday in January.  I just was able to start playing it recently due to finally getting Fallout 4 out of my system, though I could easily jump back into that game but I think it is good to take a break from it.  A nice long break from it as it was all consuming.

I spent a lot of time looking into Until Dawn and it sounded like an amazing game.

What initially sold me what the Honest Game Trailer for the game –

Thanks to Smosh Games for hosting their own video.

Which, thankfully, by the time I saw this prior to Christmas, and by the time I started playing the game in May, I had forgotten most of the trailer though there were moments from that I couldn’t explain and I didn’t want to watch it again without spoiling myself.  What really really sold me on it was this amazing line –

 

Thanks to Tumblr user, sodiumcqueen, for hosting the above image.

Emily’s “Understand the palm of my hand, bitch” was a line that captured my imagination and I wanted it to become my new catchphrase and I desperately wanted to understand the context of the situation.  It is a very intense moment in the game.  She’s slapping Ashley in the above scene and pending on how you got there, Mike has a tough decision to make and Ashley has an awkward decision to make after that.

So the game takes place a year after Josh’s twin sisters had died and the eight friends have come back together the following year to hang out.  Things go horribly wrong almost immediately.  There is a psycho who starts terrorizing them but there is an even larger more deadlier threat beyond him.

There are three ongoing mysteries in the game:  What happened to the twins, who is the mystery man, and what happened in the mines in 1952.

The game has eight characters, four boys and four ladies.  The boys are Mike, Chris, Josh, and Matt.  You barely play Matt.  The ladies are Sam, Emily, Ashley, and Jess.  You barely play as Jess.  At least, I barely did, as Mike, her boyfriend, was not fast enough to catch up to her and she was the first character I couldn’t save.  My initial play, I ended up getting Jess killed, and like a real idiot, I got Mike and Ashley killed as I had Sam flip the switch way to early and I blew up the lodge instead of waiting one more time, so I had to replay Chapter 10 immediately to correct that.  Josh also died but I fixed that by finding the journal that makes him live so I lucked into that.

Once you beat the game, you can either start a new game, or replay a chapter and continue from that point forward.  I’m on my second playthrough now, where I try to keep everyone alive.  I’m in the middle of Chapter 6 and I got Jess to survive through Chapter 4 so I’m well on my way, Matt is still alive and Ashley and Chris are super scared in the basement.  I’m really loving this game.

Another fun aspect of the game, is you can turn on global statistics so you can see what option was the more popular decision.  Of course, I’m choosing the less popular ones to mess with the statistics.  The game out  August 2015, so the majority has long since spoken.

The reddit page for the game isn’t as active as it first was, I imagine, but there is a loyal group of people on it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/untildawn/

This is the website I’ve been using for the trophy clean up –

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/until-dawn/guide/

My plan was to initially do my first playthrough, with no guidance (which I did), then a playthrough where everyone lived, a global statistic playthrough where I choose the least popular option and another one where they all die.

I’ve decided to flip the last two, as I do enjoy trophy hunting, I’m not sure if I’ll get the platinum as collectible trophies (ironically) are my least favorite trophies.  Well, besides multiplayer ones, unless it is simply, log into multiplayer, successfully play the first one, or whatever Uncharted 2’s multiplayer trophies were, I was able to successfully do those two, and never went back to it.

Which were Complete One Cooperative Multiplayer game and Complete One Competitive Multiplayer game, thanks to

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/uncharted-2-among-thieves/trophies/

for having the answer to that question!

It appears most of the trophies I’ll end up getting with the everybody dies trophy, so that’s why I want to do that one third.  I figure, by that point, I would have most of the clues and totems so I’ll make the decision about finding those and getting the three collectible trophies by that point.  Which, if I’m looking at the guide correctly, would be the final three trophies and that already feels annoying to me so I probably will collect all of the clues, as I really do enjoy the story so it makes sense to get the back story of those three events.

Especially after my fourth fun playthrough with the choosing the least popular decisions.

There is a companion app that won’t work on my Samsung Galaxy S7, so that’s disappointing.  The companion app for Beyond : Two Souls also doesn’t work with my phone so I sent feedback for both of those apps but I doubt anyone cares this far removed from the game releases.

Another fun thing I hadn’t realized about the game is that they actually casted known actors for most of the roles.

Thanks to Gaming Since Gaming for hosting this video.

I keep referring (for myself) to the Wikipedia page, so here is that website:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Until_Dawn

Josh is played by Rami Malek, who I apparently saw in Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 but he’s probably well known from Mister Robot and the upcoming Freddie Mercury bioflick, where he plays Mercury.   He is also Pharaoh Ahkmenrah from the Night at the Museum films but I only saw the first one and I sort of recall the pharaoh character.  He was also in three episodes of 24, during season eight, the Freddie Prinze Jr. season.

Ella Lentini plays both twin sisters, Beth and Hannah.  I don’t recognize any of her credits.

Hayden Panettiere plays Sam, the main lady from the game.  We all know her from Heroes and Nashville, amongst a slew of other projects.

Brett Dalton plays Mike, the main guy from the game.  Who I immediately recognized and figured Mike was the psycho (he isn’t) or was going to betray the characters at some point (he doesn’t).  I thought that as he’s Ward from Agents of SHIELD, where that’s exactly what he does, on multiple occasions.  Heck, he even was a bad guy who was secretly good in the Framework, so he can’t be trusted.  I’m not a fan of Ward, at all.

Noah Fleiss is Chris, who was apparently in Storytelling.  Which I only really remember Selma Blair’s section of that film (the first half) and Fleiss is in the second half, and I only remember Conan O’Brien appearing in that story as himself.

Galadriel Stineman plays Ashley, who was in season four of The Middle, a show I don’t watch but that looks to be her biggest role to date.

Nichole Bloom is Emily, who I know her from Shameless as Lip’s college girlfriend, who I really liked.  Lip was my favorite character on that show until they broke him and I started losing all interest in the show but it took my like seven seasons to just give up on it.  She’s in Project X which Malek is also in so I might have to watch that, it was on my watchlist before but I never got around to it.  Stineman was also on Shameless, apparently, but she wasn’t on the List of Characters list so it must not have been a large role.  Bloom wore glasses on Shameless and that threw me off, so that disguise clearly works!  She was in seasons four and five of Shameless, better in four.

Jordan Fisher is in the thankless role of Matt, Emily’s boyfriend.  I mostly know him from winning Season 25 of Dancing with the Stars with Lindsay Arnold, and via that show, I know he was part of Hamilton.  He must have been one of the dancers in Teen Beach 1 and 2 as I don’t recognize him from those films.  He may have been on Teen Wolf after we quit watching it due to MTV’s messed up schedule around season three.  he’s going to be Seahawk on the upcoming Netflix She-Ra show which I hope is good.

http://he-man.wikia.com/wiki/Sea_Hawk

I don’t recognize that dude at all.  Like Bow, but a pirate?  I guess that is the motivation there?

Meaghan Martin is Jess, Mike’s girlfriend, who I’m hoping to see more of in my second playthrough.  She’s in both Camp Rock films, but I only got like ten minutes into and lost all interest.  It was at whatever minute mark where Demi Lovato is the chef’s daughter but she doesn’t want people to know she’s the daughter of the chef and so has to hide that fact.  Which is dumb so I quit.  Also, Demi is way young in the film and that felt weird.  Martin is also in the television series 10 Things I Hate About You and Awkward, which I’ve been tempted to watch Awkward but I haven’t done it.  Too many episodes and that was at season three, who knows how many seasons it is now.  I simply clicked the link and there is five seasons.  She also provides the voice of Namine in the Kingdom Hearts games, and Panettiere provides the voice of Kairi in those games.  So there are some crossovers but not many.

Larry Fessenden, who co-wrote Until Dawn plays the Stranger.  Apparently, he wrote, directed and editted a movie titled, Wendigo, that I have to watch now.

Rounding out the adult cast is Peter Stormare, as Dr. Hill.  I know him from Season One of Prison Break.  He’s been in a slew of films and television projects and heck, he was even the voice of Dregg in the 2012 Ninja Turtles cartoon.

I played TellTale’s first Batman game, and really want to play the second one once it is out on disc, so I was used to the play style.  You move the characters and interact with the environment via pressing X or by quick time actions using the square, triangle and circle buttons.  R2 to pick up things, R1 to get to the menu of clues, and L1 to put a little pep in your step.  I used that mostly during Chapter 10 as I knew what to expect.

It really is such a fun game and I enjoyed it so much!

I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as NyxRising Industries though.

I stumbled across their ten part series, The Blackwood Files, on YouTube.

Thanks to them for hosting their own video.

I saw the first episode, Until Dawn retold via found footage and I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the series and seeing how they incorporate everything.  The first episode is barely 16 minutes so pending on the length of the next nine episodes, I should be able to knock them out relatively soon.  I saw all ten episodes and these are all simply amazing.

You could probably safely skip to Episode 8, to get into the true elements from Until Dawn.

Then nine and ten are pretty amazing and super faithful to the game – all things considered.

Their portrayal of Chris could have been a tad better, but I like what they did with him and all of the other characters.  There are several Community references which I appreciated.  There is a fun silly bonus episode as well as a wrap party video that I would recommend.  There is also a three hour live stream video that I think I’ll pass on at this moment, as I spent a lot of time this past weekend in the world of Blackwoods Files.  I didn’t play the game as much, as this video series was satisfying that itch.

Looks like they do a lot of fun videos like this.

Home

So I’m sure their other video series are of similar quality.

The game is a PS4 exclusive so if you have the system, I highly recommend it.  I read on reddit that Sony announced the PS5 is a couple years away.

Lastly, another great resource for the game is this site –

http://until-dawn.wikia.com/wiki/Until_Dawn

I wish it didn’t have the black background to be more work friendly but maybe I shouldn’t be looking at the site at work, which I don’t do.  Lots of great information on there, especially their character pages.

. . .

A kind reddit user, jayderaine, introduced me to this cool website –

https://howlongtobeat.com/user.php?n=jackalsiii

As they were discussing in a thread how to chose which game to select in your backlog, and many said to based the decision off of the length of the game.  I hadn’t realized there was a website that kept track of how long it took to finish the main portion a game, and how long to fully complete the game.  Which is a fun thing to keep track of and so I took the less than ten minutes to select my current backlog and it wasn’t that bad.  Plus, I’ve been needing a quick guide to which games I own as there is usually two or three of them that I forget about.  So just for my own knowledge, here is the official list of games I have.

Physical Copy

Grand Theft Auto V

Last of Us Remastered

Uncharted Collection, I’m playing Uncharted 3 on it

Uncharted 4

Uncharted : Lost Legacy

Batman : Arkham Knight

Life is Strange

Fallout 4

LittleBigPlanet 3, I still need to buy the TMNT on there, as they are so cute!

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

Inside + Limbo

Flashback Classics Vol. 2, I bought it for my wife’s love for Maze Craze.

LEGO Dimensions

Until Dawn

Fallout 4

Digital Copies

Thanks to the PSN Free Games, I got these added to my backlog

Knack

Beyond : Two Souls

Bloodborne

Bombing Busters

Clare : Extended Cut

Darksiders II

Forma.8

Mad Max

Mighty No. 9

Psycho-Pass : Mandatory Happiness, took me so long but I finally finished one storyline with the guy and now I’m playing it again with K for one more trophy and then I’m pretty much done with it.  It got really interesting towards the end.

Ratchet & Clank (2016)

TrackMania Turbo, I love how this game keeps track of me and the other 511 Montana racers.  That’s a fun statistic.

So a pretty decent back log of games.

Fallout 76

Posted by John Klein III on May 30, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

Like most people yesterday, I was pretty clued to reddit and Twitter.

My phone told me that Bethesda was going to make an announcement soon.

Bethesda’s Twitter page had this –

Their Twitch channel had this as the main item –

https://m.twitch.tv/bethesda/profile

So I followed that, on my phone, at the top of every hour.

reddit was the true hero yesterday.

This thread had the various fun events that broke up the live stream –

Here’s all the little events that have happened during the stream so far. (Whisper guy, thumbs up, etc.) from Fallout

with most of the actual discussion and time killing taking place in this thread –

Bethesda Softworks Twitter: #PleaseStandBy from Fallout

With it all leading up to this teaser trailer!

Thanks to Bethesda Softworks for hosting their own video.

It is a short trailer a minute and 34 seconds but it is glorious!

Lots of speculation going on, naturally, but answers will be given on Sunday, June 10, at 6:30pm, and you best believe I’ll be following that news that evening.  What we can tell is that it takes place in West Virginia, which could be super close to Fallout 3’s DC location.

From the Fallout Wiki –

fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault_76
Vault 76 was a controlled vault, so not one of the experimental ones.  Which is nice for them!  It was supposed to open 20 years after the great war so this could take place before Fallout 3, even!  The year would be 2102 and had 500 occupants.  It is referenced in both Fallout 3 and 4.

I’m so pumped as this could be my first Fallout game that I actually buy day one!  I’ve been super late to Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 and completely missed out on Fallout New Vegas, which I was hoping they were going to announce a remaster of that one just so I can finally play it.

Obsidian had this awesome tweet –

which was pretty fun and I’m sure they were getting questions galore.

The Call of Duty peeps apparently put up their own Please Stand By feed that is also pretty fun.

Apparently Bethesda did this way back when Fallout 4 came out, pretty much exactly the same way.  Two weeks before E3 and with a 24 hour tease before a teaser trailer.  So that’s all pretty good and fun for me.

Whenever I take Walker Dennis to Target for our quest for new Hot Wheels, we keep seeing a Fallout Wallet and these Fallout Shot Glasses –

https://www.target.com/p/fallout-shot-glass-set/-/A-52677207

Apparently the wallet isn’t on their website anymore but I wouldn’t mind the shot glasses now.  It felt silly before but I’m all about Fallout again!

When we got our new Galaxy S7 phones back in February, my wife had me look for a phone case for mine and I thought about getting a Fallout related one but didn’t find one plus I thought it would be silly to have a constant thing related to the game, with me at all times, but now I sort of regret not buying one.

The two I’m able to find now are not available and I’m just going to tell myself that was the case then too.  Maybe I’ll get a new one once the game comes out.

I’m currently playing Until Dawn and working on a post for that game but I wanted to get my thoughts about Fallout 76 while it was fresh and current.

 

What’s a Computer Commercial

Posted by John Klein III on May 23, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

Thanks to Apple for hosting their own commercial.

This is a tad older but it was what started making me take note of which commercials were really starting to annoy me.  If only they didn’t run nearly as long as they do, they wouldn’t have such a lasting impression.

If you stream your entertainment a couple months ago, you would have been bombarded with this commercial.  It seems fine and dandy until literally the last couple seconds.  That nice lady simply asks what the girl is doing on her computer and that response.  What’s a computer?  Like girl, you know what a fucking computer is!

Irritates me so much!

Some streaming sites have no supervisor or anyone apparently watching their ads – or worst, are aware of the problem and are not going to fix it – like the CW app.  They will air a commercial, and then immediately air the exact same commercial.  Some will even air the same commercial thrice times!  Like, is no one watching this?  When I worked for KSWT (a CBS officiate) in Yuma, we watched that channel and knew which commercials aired if one aired twice, someone was looking into it the next day.  Maybe those streaming channels don’t have many different advertisers or someone has an exclusive advertising deal but that sure doesn’t convince me to purchase their product as I haven’t.  I guess they run the risk of free press but it isn’t positive press but if they aren’t talking about you, you aren’t doing it right, is the old adage.

AT&T Commercial : Lady Throwing Items Out of Window

Posted by John Klein III on May 16, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Websites. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

Thanks to AT&T hosting their own video advertising their DirecTV service.

Add this to the growing list of commercials that I’m forced to see, forget, see again enough times to form an opinion on.

AT&T calls this commercial “The Break Up” and I would sure hope the guy downstairs is going to break up with this lady.  This lady who is just throwing his possessions out of the window.  Which I get in an 80s sense of humor but then she throws his guitar which is expensive.  Which I also don’t really care about but then she throws out their cable box and that’s the part that I find objectionable.

Not only is that highly irresponsible but extremely dangerous!  If he got hit by it, that’s assault.  It isn’t even funny in a small way.

I found this website :

https://directv.pissedconsumer.com/directv-commercial-where-woman-throws-mans-belongings-out-201803171213049.html

Wherein I’m not alone in finding the ad a poor use of television time.  It also seems counterproductive, I wouldn’t want to purchase or pay for a service that thinks this is a good idea to promote.

That’s not even dealing with the race issue, which I hadn’t really noticed while watching the video.  That doesn’t show African American women in a positive light.

I also don’t get how she already has digital cable after throwing the box away?  Did they already have digital cable so the box was no longer needed?

People are also commenting on what if it was the man throwing her stuff out the window and how that would have been received.  Probably not worst but it would have been different as I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it portrayed that way.  It is almost always woman throwing man’s stuff out – usually justified in more than a thirty second ad but throwing an electronic item out the window should never be allowed.  Like pouring bacon grease down any drain, it shouldn’t happen under any circumstances.

Who is this commercial directed towards?  Young women who just suffered a horrible break up?  That seems pretty niche.

Ancestry.com – Kyle Merker

Posted by John Klein III on May 7, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Websites. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Hulu has been playing this commercial for what feels like forever –

Thanks to Ancestry for hosting their own video.

I’ve seen it enough to where I wasn’t paying attention to it, to paying attention to it, to taking it for granted, to forming an opinion to now wanting to learn more about it.

My main thought was, how do you grow up German and turn out not to be German?  How does that work?  Your father tells you, you are German and that’s how you self-identify.  But who told him?  His father, who was told by his father?  So I thought of poor Kyle and his family and how at some point, someone must have tried to dodge their family history and said they were German and your life is the story you tell, so that becomes fact.

I finally had a moment of free time that I thought I’ll just google “German Ancestry Commercial” and I found this very helpful blog post –

http://www.kyleinexile.com/?tag=ancestry-commercial

Kyle has his own blog, which is pretty cool.  Of course, he writes about the experience and there are other posts about the commercial and his opinions on it being aired.  I like how one of them, he apologizes for being obsessed with it.  Hey, I completely get it, you are on television and probably seeing the commercial a bunch if he is using Hulu.  Might as well ride that 15 minutes as long as you can!

My wife has mention how much she wants to treat me to an Ancestry DNA test for Christmas, ideally, she wants to get everyone’s done, like our nephews and both sides of our family and really get this done.  Which we know how silly it would be to get our sisters DNA tested as it should be the same result.

What I want to do is get mine, my wife and our son’s DNA tested and see what story develops from that.  We can branch out from there.  I’ve been really tempted to get an Ancestry account started.  Especially when they were airing Who Do You Think You Are? but Ancestry is $44 a month for the full membership or $199 for six months (I wonder why they don’t do a year, besides it being $300 and that doesn’t look great on a website).  I wonder how that account works.  Does all of the hard work stay on there, but you don’t have access to it after your membership expires but you can renew it and just pick it right up?  I imagine that is how it has to be.

. . .

My father was adopted so I didn’t know anything about my grandfather, besides he named his son after himself – which is always bizarre to me.  What is even more bizarre is that my father named me after himself but I put a stop to that nonsense with Walker Dennis.  No reason to keep the legacy of a dude who didn’t even keep his own son and yet we are continuing the family name.  My father didn’t have an easy life, he still doesn’t, and his adoptive family were not a treat but they took in this boy and gave him some opportunities but besides a seldom reminder of how hard he had it, it isn’t like we talk about his family.  Real upstate New York farmer types around the Syracuse area.

We were filling in Walker Dennis’ family tree for his baby book and I asked my mother for some additional names, as it asked for more than just two generations – which is pretty cool – and she offers up my father’s mother’s name, which I didn’t even think we had that information.

My sister has since had a third child, Erin, that we have to update the baby book with.

 

Comixology April 19, 2018

Posted by John Klein III on April 19, 2018
Posted in: Purchases. Tagged: . Leave a comment

I’m not sure if these were free last week or two days ago but I’m pretty sure Marvel offers up free comics only once a month now instead of once a week.  I haven’t found an article that states this outright but I’m going to start tracking this.

These three comics are up for grabs!

Fantastic Four 570, Hickman’s first Fantastic Four Comic

New Avengers 1, bold new team! The original number one.

Spidey 1

Lego Dimensions : Knight Rider World

Posted by John Klein III on April 6, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

My son and I are deep into season two of Knight Rider.  He’s a big fan of KITT Rider.  I finally came across the Lego Dimensions Knight RIder Fun Pack at GameStop.

Which, of course, he loved.

Which, also of course, started making me want to see how it played in the official game.  My lovely wife found the game on Amazon for $40, down from like $120 when it first came out, so for Valentine’s Day, we got it for him as a gift.  It was going to be an Easter present but I couldn’t wait that long, plus, I was hoping we could get some sets for Easter.  He’s really into Ghostbusters now so I’m hoping to get one of the sets for him so he can get Echo-1.

We bounce between Classic Knight Rider on the NBC app, Real Ghostbusters on Netflix and 2008 Knight Rider whenever he points to it on the NBC app.  I can’t get a feel for his routine when it comes to the new show.  I read that it gets the feeling of the classic show, after the 13th episode but we’re on the fourth episode so we’re never going to get there.

Luckily, I found this video when we got home from GameStop –

Thanks to HappyThumbsGaming for hosting the video.

That way, my son didn’t have to wait until we got the game to build KITT.  That would have been pretty unacceptable.  I knew there must have been instructions somewhere online for it.  The packaging tells you how to build Michael Knight, not like one couldn’t figure it out on their own.

When he was carrying around the box the mini-figures came in, he really wanted the other two versions of KITT that can be made with his pieces.  Which, if they were like three dollars each, I would totally buy so he could have all three running around.

One is Goliath, the truck Garth (Goateed Michael Knight) and another is an airship –

Still a super missed opportunity the show never had Garth drive KARR, probably would have happened in the fifth season.  Seems like an obvious choice but maybe too obvious?  Would have been a cheap episode to do as well, it really writes itself!

In the game, Walker Dennis really don’t like KITT not being in his proper build but we need him to be a truck sometimes (for tolling purposes) and a jet (for flying purposes).  So I usually transform him back.

Walker Dennis is really obsess with Bad KARR and wanting to see him in the game.

Thanks to kwingsletplays for hosting the video that contains the KARR storyline.

The game is super fun and as soon as it instructs you to place the characters on the gamepad, you can throw Michael Knight and KITT on it and paly from the very beginning.  It olds seven pieces and we have six with those two and Batman, Gandalf, and Wildstylez, plus the Batmobile so its pretty fun having all the characters on the screen at one time.

We haven’t played in a while but I’ve been having an itch to do it.  And it doesn’t take much time to swap one game disc for another, I’m just lazy about not wanting to do it.

As I couldn’t find any real information on the Knight Rider world, which makes sense as how many people were super excited to buy the fun pack but I wanted information and only really found the one FAQ.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/144665-lego-dimensions/faqs/72740/knight-rider-world

I could not find a comprehensive list of what characters were needed so I had to make one myself –

Knight Rider Expectations from Legodimensions

So the list breaks down like this :

(T)he requirements of the Knight Rider World. You’ll need characters that can or have access to the following – Dig, Intelligence, Deflect, Disguise, Mini Access, Diffndo Spell, Drones, Swords, Smash Red Demo objects, and the TARDIS

So the most important characters will be Hermione and Mission Impossible’s Ethan.  They will get you access to half of the gold bricks.

I also know at some point, you’ll need the Goonies pack and the kids are helpful towards some of the gold bricks too.

There is an air race that I can’t seem to get activated. I could when I had Michael Knight jump through it so maybe I need a flying character that doesn’t require a vehicle as KITT Jet can clearly get me up there but then nothing. Which lead to me really putting studs towards him.

So Hermione and the Mission Impossible set are on my short list, up there with the Doctor / TARDIS / K9 set.  I wanted the Scooby Doo one but then I ended up buying Walker Dennis a Hot Wheels Mystery Machine so he’s good now.

In game, I’m pretty much stuck on the Simpsons level, not stuck, just not made any progress but clearly I don’t have a lot of characters as I’m missing out on several items that need key characters.  I got KITT pretty powered up, having all three builds unlocked.  That was a high priority and I’ll probably stick to unlockables for the Knight Rider World to dedicate what I purchase next, except for sweet deals I come across, which I haven’t come across any.  I thought for sure it would be happening with the news that the game isn’t being supported anymore.

I’m hoping to buy a slew of items while they are on sale or on clearance before they become rare collector items.

As we like Arrow, I would love to get the Green Arrow figure for the game but he is a costly fellow, just like Supergirl, another one I would like to own.

My wife would like to get all of the Harry Potter folks and the Lord of the Ring sets, so those would be nice.  Walker Dennis wants the Ghostbusters ones as he’s all about the cartoon, Slimer, and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  He really enjoyed the movie, not as many ghosts or Slimer as I remembered but that film really holds up.

Here is the page that contains all of the sets –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Dimensions

The ones we really want –

Story Packs

Ghostbusters

The Lego Batman Movie

Level Packs

Back to the Future, I’m a fan but my son would just want the DeLorean figure.

Portal 2, my wife and I loved that game.  I wished GLaDOS was an option.

Doctor Who, I really enjoy the idea that all 12 (13 with the War Doctor) Doctors are represented whenever the Doctor dies.  Shame they can’t update the disc to include the new 13th Doctor.

Ghostbusters, as long as we get an Ecto-1, one way or the other.

Mission Impossible, just because Ethan Hunt is required for several of the Gold Bricks in the Knight Rider World.

The Goonies, I like the film enough but we need the Skeleton Organ for one of the gold bricks in the Knight Rider World.

Team Packs

Scooby-Doo, for that sweet Mystery Machine

DC Comics, as I want my son to have a Joker to the Batman (that’s how they get you).

Harry Potter, for my wife

I wouldn’t mind a Teen Titans Go! for Raven and Beast Boy but they are not a high priority.

Fun Packs

The Three Lord of the Ring packs (Gollum / Legolas / Gimli)

The Lego Movie Bad Cop just for the police car.

DC Comics, I’ll want the Wonder Woman, Superman and Bane ones but I’ll be fine with Cybord and Aquaman too, especially if they are pretty inexpensive.

Ghostbusters, Stay Puft with Terror Dog (is that what they were officially called?!) and Slimer

Harry Potter, for Hermione Granger, I would just pass on the Team Pack, if it was up to me.  Which it is as my wife isn’t even watching us play and Hermoine checks a lot of boxes.  I’m sure Ron would have been planned for Year 3, if they were given the chance.

It looks like a big list but really it boils down to Doctor Who, Hermoine, and Mission Impossible.  From there, I’ll have to see which characters I’ll still need for the gold bricks.

. . .

I do like how they have a Powerpuff Girls Team Pack and a Fun Pack so you can get all three of the girls.  Tricky to not just throw them all in and just not have a vehicle but that’s how they get you to buy two of them.

Teen Titans Team with Raven and Beast Boy and the Fun Pack with Starfire would be fun, once we got the Lego Batman pack with Robin.  Without Robin, that team doesn’t quite come together in my mind.  Shame there is no Flash representative, especially with Supergirl and Arrow having figures.  I’m sure he would have been part of the third year.

Other fun ones would be A-Team for that sweet van and Back to the Future for the train.

. . .

http://videogamefan.wikia.com/wiki/LEGO_Dimensions:_Year_3

Here is what would have been part of Year 3.

Looney Tunes would have been nice for me but Walker Dennis doesn’t have any real conncection to them.  I should work on that.  I tried to get him into Tiny Toons but starting with the pilot wasn’t smart on my part.  I’ll try again if it is still on Hulu after we get done with Ghostbusters, if we ever do.  Season One has 75 episodes alone!  Though I’m ready to jump out once they become Slimer & the Real Ghostbusters.

Kong and Godzilla would have been fun, though I wonder how that would work in the levels themselves.  Probably just much smaller?

We probably would have eventually gotten all of the Arrow-verse sets.

Probably would have added the Hobbit to our wishlist.

Year Three would have been ambitious with Willy Wonka (for some reason?), Matrix, Planet of the Apes, Jaws, Jetsons, and the Flintstones.  I just found out that Hot Wheels made the Flintstones car so I have my eyes open for that.  I doubt I’ll ever see it while he’s still interested in Hot Wheels.  Which I hope he never outgrows that hobby.

Year Three would have been pretty fun!

Where’s My Dick?

Posted by John Klein III on March 30, 2018
Posted in: Fun With YouTube. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

You know when you are in a public restroom, and you unzip your pants and can’t find your dick.  That rare instance when my boxes move just an inch to the left or right and all of a sudden, a slight panic occurs.  Especially when there isn’t a divider between the urinals or even when there is one but your shoulder is clearly moving too much like you are searching for something.

I might be thinking about it too much.

Then there are dudes who would make a friend and start talking with each other by the sinks.  There isn’t enough space in here to be having conversations!  It is super awkward to walk by them and then asking them to move so I can wash my hands.  Something I noticed neither of you have done yet!

Oh, and if we make eye contact or nod at each other as we vaguely recognized each other, please please PLEASE wash your hands!  Like, dude, we walk by each other in the halls on a fairly routine basis.  The only thing I know about you is that our offices are nowhere near each other and you didn’t wash your hands that one (ideally) time.  At least do that thing where you just push the soap dispenser, turn on the water and count to three and dry your hands off.  Go through the motions, is all I’m asking.  Also, while you are going through the motions, just wash your hands.

I totally get that washing your hands means you might have to pee again in five minutes as cold hands or wet hands does something mentally where you feel like you have to pee again.

And these are grown professional men!  Even the general public are still professionals in some capacity.

Imagine going into a restroom and seeing a grown man peeing at a urinal but with his pants around his ankles, like how a toddler does it?  That would be a funny sight for maybe a second but it would make me feel uneasy about that fellow’s state of mind.  It feels like it should be a red flag.

Though I’m a loon for still being worried about being stabbed in a bathroom like Carter in Season Six Episode 13 of ER, Be Still My Heart

http://er.wikia.com/wiki/Be_Still_My_Heart

Thanks to YouTuber ecinajx19 for hosting the video!

Though, in my mind, that takes place in a bathroom and as the stabber leaves the bathroom, we see poor Lucy on the floor.

Like, I think about it all time when I’m entering a bathroom.  Some childhood fears one doesn’t simply outgrow or forget.

ER is one of the hardest shows to Google, something I’m sure they didn’t think about when they named it.

Whatever happened to Kellie Martin, I had a huge crush on her on that show.  ER had quite a few crush worthy doctors and nurses!

Apparently she’s done quite well for herself on the Hallmark channel, good for her!

Sherry Stringfield

I liked her when she came for Season Eight.  I missed out on most of the early seasons.

Maria Bello

Who I don’t remember being on ER, at all.  I was first introduce to her on the amazing Mr. & Mrs. Smith series with legend, Scott Bakula.

Alex Kingston

Who got way hotter on Doctor Who.  They did her character all types of wrong.

Maura Tierney

I’ve been a fan of hers since Newsradio and she just gets better every new project.

Parminder Nagra

Linda Cardellini

Who doesn’t love Cardellini?!

Ming-Na Wen

Apparently she was there during Season One but I didn’t see her until Season Six.

and of course, Kellie Martin!

That’s a pretty great lineup for any show!

15 seasons, and I’m sure I missed out on the first few and skipped out on the last few as well.  It was the 90s, you could sort of do that with these types of shows.

Which I remember, even at the time, thinking how much can one Chicago-based hospital handle with all of the disastrous that happened within its walls?  Without it being shut down, I mean.  After the second helicopter crash, I was pretty much done as my suspension of disbelief had finally found its limit.

. . .

On an episode of Turtle Soup, Ryan and Father Preston were talking about how they do that thing of using a paper towel to open the exit door of the bathroom and I’ve started doing that as well.  It makes sense too, why wash your hands and then touch the door that you just know other dudes are touching with unwashed hands.

So I catch myself having the same thoughts as I enter a bathroom and leaving the bathroom.  Funny how the ol’ mind works.

This remembers me of when I was a kid on a school trip and we were all taking a potty break and I saw an adult peeing in a stall with the door open and he used his foot to flush the toilet.  That was a real game changer that day.