PS5 : Mark Cerny’s Wired Interview

Posted by John Klein III on April 18, 2019
Posted in: Websites. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Making all types of buzz is Mark Cenry’s interview with Wired.

https://www.wired.com/story/exclusive-sony-next-gen-console/

The most exciting news for me is that the next Sony console, most likely titled, PlayStation 5 (PS5), is going to be backwards compatible.  That’s awesome news!  I most likely won’t get a PS5 until the following year it is out.  Like, it will come out say Black Friday 2020, and I won’t even be tempted to get it until Black Friday 2021.  Well, tempted, isn’t the right word.  I’ll be tempted to get it immediately but there won’t be any way I’ll get one until the next year.

I do like how Cerny states PS5 won’t be out this year, which is nice.  Next year is PlayStation’s 25th Anniversary, so I’m sure there is some marketing guru who really wants to advertist PS25 and have the 2 fade away and bold the 5 as it slowly moves towards the PS.  It practically writes itself!

I also like how Cerny uses Spider-Man as the example game to showcase what the PS4 can do and what the next console can do with load times and fast travel times.

Cerny stating the PS4’s PSVR headset will also work with the PS5, is also amazing news!

There is a lot of comments over at the PS4 subreddit covering a wide range of topics such as price points and what type of specs are going to go into the system.

Exclusive: What to Expect From Sony’s Next-Gen PlayStation from PS4

 

Redditor, Trav_Hogan, perfectly summarized the article (it is like three pages, if you have the time to read it).

TL;DR

– Not coming in 2019 but developers have been working with the console for some time now.

– 8-Core AMD CPU using 7nm Zen 2 microarcitecture and a variant of Radeon’s Navi family supporting ray tracing. Chipset also includes 3D Audio support. Can produce graphics up to 8K.

– SSD that is specifically designed for the console that potentially makes load times 19x faster. Also has real time in-game benefits such as much smoother streaming in open world games.

– Will have a disc drive.

– Current PSVR headset will be compatible with PS5.

– PS5 will be backwards-compatible with PS4.

– Death Stranding is highly alluded to being a cross-generation title. (Speculation)

– PlayStation will have a cloud-streaming strategy that will become clearer in the future.

I used to be more of a tech guy but the thread has been a learning experience with what the latest SSD cards can do and pretty much everything that exactly is needed to run a console.

People are commenting that it sounds like a real powerhouse of a system, especially if it can run on 8K and most advanced TVs are 4K that the PS4Pro can run on, so it sounds like it could be a pretty penny.  We bought ours from Costco on Black Friday 2017 for $299 and that seems pretty reasonable.  I’ll be willing to wait until the PS5 is in its midcycle before purchasing it if it means we had to wait for it to come down to $299 from $499.  I have never bought a console the first it is out, not even the Wii Plus.

The really nice thing is that, if we keep our PS Plus subscription active (and I hope we do!), we’ll be getting free PS5 games and enjoying some amazing PS4 games, that will be just given away at that point.

People have long memories as I don’t recall the PS3 being priced at $500 when it first came out but we also bought it off a college kid for like $200 and he gave us a slew of games and a complete Guitar Hero set that included drums.  But bless those early adopters and their wallets.

Then again, it being backwards compatible, does make me feel like it will be safe to move to the next system relatively quickly too.  Which I’m sure is what Sony wants me to think.

.  .  .

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

I hadn’t heard of Mark Cerny before, so I checked and of course he has a Wikipedia page.  He was one of the main architects of the PS4 and the Vita, so it makes sense that he would be so involved with the PS5.

Also, on a fun note, he was the game director and writer of Knack, which I’ve enjoyed and he has a close working relationship with Naughty Dog and Insomniac Games.

.  .  .

Walker Dennis and I have beaten the first Lego Movie game and he’s been nice enough to give me the green light to try to obtain the rest of the trophies on my own.  He’s helped a lot with most of them, the ones I knew he might not want to sit through was trying to obtain the final five trophies.  Obtain all the pairs of pants (we just need two more), purchase all red bricks (we’re down to our final four), and collect all of the golden manuals (we only have two levels completely done).  He’s helped getting some of these already but now it is just a matter of cleaning up the rest.  There is also a trophy for building all 15 items in the Bonus World that we earn by collecting all of the golden manuals (each level has five pieces of one manual) and I figure it would be fun to just let him build all 15 of those and then he would be present for when we earn the Platinum.  Since I’ve been so focus on these collectibles, I haven’t played any other games.

I’m getting pretty excited to finally buy the Lego Marvel Collection.  It occurred to me that I should trade in our XBox 360 and original Wii to GameStop when they do another one of those double credits events for consoles.  I know we won’t get much for them, but even if we earn back a total of ten dollars, we’ll be that much closer to our goal.  I can usually save $40 pretty easy but then Walker gives me those big brown eyes of his and I usually end up buying him some Lego set or some other silly item.

So those are some of my standing goals.  I’ll get back to Batman : The Enemy Within one of these days.

.  .  .

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/network/vue/game-of-thrones/

PlayStation has teamed up with HBO to promote a little known show called, Game of Thrones.  There are three events that you can get three sets of avatars and a pretty cool dragon dynamic theme.

The house avatars were nice and I will never use actor avatars but it is nice to get them.  They slowly rolled these out with the house avatars being on Friday, then the actor ones on Saturday and the theme with bonus avatars on Sunday.  Which makes sense and all I wanted was the theme.

That and I really want that TellTale Game of Thrones game.  I couldn’t get my wife interested in it as she didn’t quite recognize the House Forrester or Ironrath.

I’m only at the beginning of Season Two and I have to catch up while our current HBO subscription lasts.  My wife doesn’t think she can watch two seasons at the same time, which I get, but I’m not sure if I can watch it on my own.  She saw the first episode of Umbrella Academy and wants me to watch it so we can watch it together but I don’t think I can do it as I’m just enjoying my gaming time.  I should just make time or do an every other night, either play a game or watch a show, and do that until I’ve seen Legion Season Two, the first Umbrella Academy episode and maybe a few episodes of Game of Thrones but that all seems pretty ambitious.  Plus, all of the shows I have saved in my Netflix queue.

.  .  .

PlayStation Store Deals that I’m aware of thanks to psprices.com :

Burnout Paradise Remastered is 75% off for PS Plus subscribers at $4.99 and 65% off at $6.99 for non-subscribers from $19.99
God of War is 40% off at $29.99 down from $49.99
Fallout 76 Tricentinnial Edition is 35% off at $51.99 down from $79.99
Kingdom Come : Deliverance is 33% at $39.99 down from $59.99 and BestBuy has it at 26% off at $29.99

Squares for the Vita remains at $4.99 and Ms. Pac-Man stays at $3.99, my two cheapest games that if I had a spare nine dollars, I’ll snatch both of them up right now.  I really should just buy Burnout Paradise Remastered as $4.99 is as cheap as it has ever been.

Pretty much any game over ten dollars is too rich for my blood but those seem like good prices for those games.  I suspect dog companions are never coming to Fallout 76 but one day, it will be a $20 game and I’ll probably get it at that point.  By then, all of the bugs should be worked out right?  Also, when it becomes a $20 game, is probably when a new batch of characters will be joining so I won’t be the only level 5 guy walking around new to the world.

.  .  .

https://www.cbs.com/shows/amazing_race/cast/216124/

We watch Survivor, Big Brother, and Amazing Race through the CBS All Access app, so I haven’t been shown any advertising for Amazing Race 31.  We also don’t get to see the episodes until the next day but I just learned that Amazing Race aired last night!  So hopefully we can watch it tonight.

Britney Haynes, my all time favorite Big Brother House Guest (from seasons 12 and 14!) is teaming up with Janelle who was on Big Brother 6, All Stars (7), and 14.

They are taking on fellow Houseguests, former Survivors, and former Amazing Racers.  I can’t believe Britney is only 30!  No wonder she looks as great as she does and after three kids too!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Amazing_Race_31

From Big Brother is Fruit Loop Dingus, Nicole and her fiance Victor, also from Big Brother.

The Reilly Sisters, Rachel (for a third season of Amazing Race) and Elissa.

The only Survivors I recognize is Rupert and his lovely wife, Laura.  I’m sure I recognize the other two groups’ faces but there isn’t any connections there.

Same for the Racers, I recognize their faces and I like the two sets of friends from their previous seasons.

Should be a pretty grand season, no real jerks and I don’t watch the show for any drama, I just want them to compete.  Sort of like how I watch Survivor, the camp stuff isn’t the thing I’m most interested in, I stop looking at my phone to watch the competitions and then I stop for the tribal discussion.  Everything else is just misdirection and editing, which is misdirection for the most part.

Though I do like to see the teams interacting as there is a huge aspect of Amazing Race’s production that I wished I knew more about.  Like, I wouldn’t mind a documentary series that shadows the main series for a season just to see what it really is like to race.

I would love to be on Big Brother and Amazing Race is a close second.

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Man of Medan : Dev Diary # 2

Posted by John Klein III on April 16, 2019
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Thanks to PlayStation for hosting these videos!

Part One was posted two weeks ago and Part Two was posted a week ago and I only now learned about both!  I have to step up my google searches!  In fact, I almost didn’t realized there was a Part Two!

Another great developer interviews with Art Director Robert Craig, Audio Designer Hywel Payne, and Animation Director Jamie Galipeau.

A lot of time is being put into making sure the water sounds like water and the boat feels like being on a boat.

The biggest take away is that I haven’t missed a dev diary episode AND THE GAME COMES OUT IN SUMMER 2019!!!

I knew it wasn’t going to be December 2019 but I can’t wait to spend time with the game, probably in July or August, right?

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Pictures-Man-Medan-PlayStation-4/dp/B07K16Z92L/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=man+of+medan&qid=1555078571&s=gateway&sr=8-1

Amazon still has it listed for December 31, 2019 but that makes sense.

Thanks to PlayStation Access for hosting their own video!

I saw the beginning of this seven months ago but I wasn’t addicted to their channel then so I was pretty dismissive.  Now I’m all about Rob and Hollie and their is a lot of content in this video to enjoy.

I really like the design of the compass decision making interface, that looks really cool.

I wonder if the plan is to still release two games a year?  I know the game isn’t supposed to be Until Dawn’s ten hours, it will be more like five hours, and $30 isn’t that bad for what I’m hoping is a lot of content and plenty of replays.

I can see them releasing one game this year and then maybe two next year, once they know what the demand is for the Dark Picture Anthology.  I’ll be buying all four games, that part, I’m sure about.  Especially if they stay at the $30 range.

I should look into what actually is required to upload game footage as that would be very fun to make a Let’s Play video of my first playthrough.

It does feels like it is only me talking about this game and WhatCulture Gaming

Who ranks the game on their list of 10 2019 Games that will Change Everything!

I still say Man of Medan is my most anticipated game of 2019.  Still surprises me that no one has made a subreddit for the game.  Maybe once there is an official release date.

Turns out, someone has made a subreddit for the game!

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

I was about to do it myself but now I don’t have too.  Though there was only two posts in there and I’m trying not to flood it with videos but the first post was from three months ago with one comment and another was from a month ago with zero comments so I’m trying to bring some life to it.

.  .  .

Well, I finally did it!  I completed my Ultimate New Game Plus run of Spider-Man PS4!  I thought the Doctor Octopus fight was going to be hard but I kept dodging and web attacking and he went down in a quarter of the time it took me to do the first time.  The first time, I just kept trying to throw things at him and kept my distance.  This time, I stayed close and kept webbing his arms and launching myself at him.

I was going to share the image getting five 100% of the game but I didn’t get all five lines to show up on the same screen.  The Main Game / New Game + / CTNS : The Heist / CTNS : Turf Wars / CTNS : Silver Lining.

I figured out how to take a picture of the PS App on my phone.  If you want to know how to take a screenshot of your Android phone, press the power button and the volume down button at the same time.  Pretty handy!

.  .  .

I’ve started the second episode of Batman : The Enemy Within.  I’m going to have Wayne tell ties and Batman be honest, if those options pop up this time around.  Batman fought Bane, and I had the option to call either Gordon or Waller.  I choose Waller as it was my first chance to try to make her happy and she said if I played ball, she will put Gordon back in charge once this is all over.  He’ll be upset but he’ll understand the situation.

.  .  .

Still no word on when Lego Movie 2’s DLC is supposed to come.  We were playing some of it last night and it is still a pretty fun game.  We even played Lego Dimensions for a bit.  I still really want to get the Fantastic Beasts pack, it is affordable and it would be a lot of fun.  Plus, we have Green Arrow and Flash’s STAR Labs is a secret location and that’ll be fun to explore that area.

https://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Beasts-Story-not-machine-specific/dp/B01IG33O5K/ref=sr_1_1?crid=49PQROSBT3YT&keywords=lego+dimensions+fantastic+beasts&qid=1555081400&s=gateway&sprefix=lego+dimensions+fan%2Caps%2C258&sr=8-1

$27 isn’t bad for a new (and our final) gateway and six proper story missions and three additional trophies.  One of these days, we will own it.

.  .  .

I just bought this cute German Shepard using BrickLink.  I went with seller, dmahon1983 through his site, Freedom Brick

https://store.bricklink.com/dmahon1983#/shop?o=%22showHomeItems%22:1

It took some searching before I could find someone who will sell it to me for five dollars.  Some places wanted five dollars just to ship it and i couldn’t justify that.

I bought it as I’m going to use it as Dogmeat from Fallout 4, and I’m crazy into German Shepards, because of Dogmeat.  I was at Walmart and couldn’t find any sets that even had dogs so I had to look online.  People highly recommend BrickLink and I totally see why now.  Such a handy website!

I originally got the idea after reading this subreddit

My MOC of the Sole Survivor and Dogmeat from Fallout 4 from lego

I’ve come to adore the lego subreddit.  Dark_Movie-Director even posted links to all of the pieces to make his Sole Survivor which is super helpful.

Cosmic Star Heroine, Platinum # 16

Posted by John Klein III on April 10, 2019
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Journey's Journey, Podcasts, Songs. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I beat Cosmic Star Heroine, thus earning my 16th Platinum!

Such a fun game!  Turns out, I was playing on Agent difficulty, which is Normal.  I was just minding my own business, I beat Prime Evil to complete Psybe’s side quest and I marked off the trophy on my list and realized I never earned the trophy.  I looked it up and turns out, some trophies are glitched, and most of them are the boss battles.  So I panicked as just three hours earlier, I had earned the Recruit 20 Crew Members gold trophy, which took some time.  So I was debating about regathering those folks or not when I realized the PS4 had backed up my save file when I turned it prior to eating dinner.  So all I had to do was refight the arcade boss for Dave’s side quest and get back to Prime Evil.  I was tempted not to redo the arcade but that’s how we got Dave’s best weapon and that guy is a beast once he gets that weapon.

While reading about the glitches and the advice to hard save before each boss fight, I also received the advice to lower the difficulty to Tourism, the Easy mode.  What this does is knock off a quarter of the health of the opponents as well as weakens them so they don’t hit the team for too much damage.  So I still played the same, the fights were just faster, which was nice and I had made up that hour of playtime in 20 minutes.

I really really enjoying my team of Alyssa, Lauren, Psybe, and Dave – such a great combination of characters and abilities.  I’ll put Chahn in the upper tier as well but we can only have four person teams.  I’ll probably rank Sue even higher than Chahn.

Lita the Vampire of the Mines’ trophy also didn’t pop for me, but I was prepared for that one.  All of the other trophies popped without a problem.

I still wished we could have beaten the main game boss and then had the post-game option to take on the optional bosses and quests, instead of being forced to do it all beforehand.  I get the decision though and it makes sense with where all of the characters end up after the story is over but it would have still been nice to have.

If you have an itch for a Chrono Trigger / Old School SNES RPG game, this should satisfy that scratch.

I did like how the game forces us to play with all of the characters at least once.  With 11 playable characters, there is bound to be a clear division of characters.

I’ll rank them as

Alyssa
Lauren
Psybe
Dave
Sue, his counter attack is amazing!
Chahn
Z’xorv
Arete
Orson
Finn
Clarke

Clarke is just the absolute worst but he’s a fun dancer so he’s lighthearted.  Z’xorv/Arete/Orson, I would just say are fine as is Finn, maybe there is just a clear worst character and a slew of also rans.

.  .  .

I’ve decided to get back to Spider-Man PS4 as my next game.  I’m going to complete my Ultimate New Game Plus and be completely done with that game.  I’m so close, I got drugged by Scorpion and had Miles run away from Rhino, and my next mission is Heavy Hitter.  Tuns out, I only have four missions left before the end of the game.  Heavy Hitter / Step into My Parlor (the Mary Jane level) / Heart of the Matter / Pax in Bello / Epilogue, which doesn’t really count as it is the ending cutscene, as bitter sweet as it is.

The Electro / Vulture fight was as hard as I remembered, as I just get lost in the night and I can’t track Vulture or his weapon he’s throwing around.  So I’m really not looking forward to the Rhino and Scorpion tag team nor the final boss fight.  Second to last boss fight, I don’t recall being as hard as the others.  I’m not dreading Mary Jane’s level but I do want to just burn through it as quickly as possible.

I figure after that, I’ll finish Batman : The Enemy Within as that’ll be a nice plat to have and I just have to enjoy and play the game, there isn’t any side quests or hidden trophies to worry about.

After that, I’ll complete my first playthrough of Beyond : Two Souls and I’m not sure if I’ll actually beat Knack but I feel like that’s the only other game that I made a load of progress in and stopped.  Oh, and SOMA, which I might just do what I did with RiME and just have a YouTube video at the ready to get me pass any obstacles.

There might be a few Uncharted 3 trophies I can clean up just to try to get to Rank 15, my only real video game related goal for 2019.  I’m currently at Rank 14 with 70% but it took me so long to go from 13 to 14.  From there, I’ll have to look at my games again and see which one I really want to invest in.  Mostly just the Kill 30 enemies with the Dragon Sniper, RPG-7, Mag 5, and PAK-80, which is four more trophies and most likely pretty easy to obtain.

I really want to get the Lego Marvel Collection too, as Walker Dennis is way into Spider-Man and Legos and I keep wanting to play those myself too.  Which reminds me, we still have the first Lego Movie to complete too but he has been way into playing with his actual Legos than wanting to play that game, I might have to secretly play it on my own.  By the time we or I complete it, Lego Marvel Collection will have to be cheaper than full price $60.  Even buying it for $55 would be a win.

I’m very much influence by the Trophies subreddit, with what game I want to play.  Uncharted 4 keeps showing up, so that might be the next game I tackle.  I probably should mentally plan on playing at least another playthrough of Heavy Rain and Beyond : Two Souls so I can get it Detroit Become Human but I’ll probably just jump straight to Detroit and do one playthrough of that and maybe make a fun game of having one playthrough and then marathoning a second playthrough of all three games in rabid succession.

Beating Beyond : Two Souls opens up Detroit and beating Uncharted 4 opens up Lost Legacy.  Then I still have the two Life is Strange games to play.  I keep being tempted to buy Ms. Pac-Man for four dollars and to get the Season Pass of Batman : Arkham Knight but I have plenty of games to play before buying new games or content.

Hellblade : Senua’s Sacrifice also showed up once or twice and I want to get to that game too, so there easily could be my next three games.

.  .  .

http://turtlesoupshow.com/episode-196-cocaine-and-crystal-death/

Turtle Soup played Walker and mine voicemail around the 50 minute mark, which felt pretty good.  I hadn’t realized my pauses were so long, maybe it only feels that way to me but it is hard to record a voicemail with a five year old but it turned out pretty well.

Thanks to YouTuber 420 Romantic for hosting the video!

Brian McKnight’s Back at One is such a great song!

 

 

Playing The Surge and Conan Exiles

Posted by John Klein III on April 4, 2019
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

The April Free PS Plus Games are The Surge and Conan Exiles.  Both games are heavily focused on killing you to teach a lesson.

I’ve been enjoying The Surge, pretty much from the start.  I like how it auto saves, which would have been nice if Bloodborne did that.  I get the comparison that this is a futuristic Bloodborne, but I’m a tad better at The Surge than I am with Bloodborne.  I’m sure that will balance out as it gets more difficult.  So far, I’m still at the beginning and I’m having a hard time telling which body parts are armored and which parts are okay to attack.  Then I came across a guy who was all armored and I realized that some fights are going to be harder than others.  I did like how within the first hour, I got four trophies, that feels pretty rewarding.  The game looks great and thus far, the mechanics have been working for me.

.  .  .

It took a good 30 minutes or so before I finally got the hang of Conan Exiles.  This was my first survival game and I don’t think I’m really a fan of the genre.  Conan Exiles doesn’t really have a tutorial system, nor any hints at what to do next, besides instructing me that I’m hungry and thirsty.  I did find a nice grassy area next to a river, there are creatures there as well as a tribe that doesn’t care for me.  It took a while for me to figure out I could make twine myself using leaves.  I thought I had to come across it.  I keep dying like crazy due to the villagers or like the final time, I had finally made my bedroll, just outside of the grassy area, and a sandstorm came and killed me immediately.  So I’ll give the game another night, now that I know how to cloth myself.

The game would be more enjoyable if I died and I could find the spot I died at and pick up my resources again.  The Surge lets me do that with dropped tech pieces but I can see why Conan Exiles doesn’t permit that.  At least I get respawned near the grassy area now.  I was just about to build walls but it takes a long time to gather all of the necessary stones.

I’ll probably give each game one more night to play but I’m getting the itch to go back to Cosmic Star Heroine.  The last time I played, I recruited new character, Lauren, who is a singer and a great one at that!

Thanks to YouTuber TheHeroofLight for hosting the video!

We lost Sue but I’m sure he’ll come back.

https://psprices.com/wish-list/kv4kaZEy

I also added The Vanishing of Ethan Carter to my wishlist over at psprices.com as it sounds pretty interesting.

I saw they offer a link to my wishlist for sharing purposes and I was like “who will use that?” but since they offer it and I have a pretty decent blog, I will share it.  Thanks psprices!

This week, the only discount I’m seeing is Kingdom Come : Deliverance is $40 down from $60.  I still don’t understand the icons on the website below the games.  What does a trophy, a target, and a number mean?  I can’t seem to figure it out from searching the website either.  Clicking the game title doesn’t state it either.  In fact, those icons are nowhere to be seen on the game’s page.

.  .  .

In anticipation to The Surge, I did redownload Bloodborne.  Such a fun game and it finally clicked with me.  I was enjoying myself, even with all of the times I died.  I understood the point of the game is to be hard and that with each kill, we are becoming better Hunters.  But it was so annoying losing all of that progress with each new sequence.  It would be a little different if I was earning experience points with each kill, which we sort of do with the Blood Echos we earn from kills.  But we can’t use those until we finally meet up with the Celtic Beast.  Which, believe me, I looked up but from what I saw, we had to beat him first before we could level up.

By this point, I had started save scumming and getting pass a spot, and then quitting the game, uploading my file and bouncing back to the game.  Luckily, From Software, made the loading screens immediate and not even a minute later, I was back in the game.  I felt lousy for doing that, especially with how often I did it, but I couldn’t redo some of those sections again as it was becoming tedious.

On my way to the Celtic Beast, I did mess up and uploaded when I wanted to download, it was right after my initial death to the Celtic Beast and I thought all was lost.  Instead, it turns out I earned Insight and was able to talk to the Doll in Hunter’s Dream and gained the ability to level up!  So I went through most of the human fools and so many dogs and went from Level 10 to Level 13, I upgraded my axe after speaking to Gehrman.  I also made sure I had 10 Molotov cocktails as I noticed Celtic Beast was weak to them.  Only five of them seemed to hurt him but it was enough of an advantage that I was able to finally kill him on my sixth attempt.  There was a lot of dodging but I finally earned my first trophy in Bloodborne!  Which was my main goal with this run, was to earn at least one trophy and then move back to my other active games.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/1/18290666/for-honor-rabbids-rainbow-six-siege-april-fools-day

Before I could get back to the backlog, for April Fools’ Day, Ubisoft allowed Rabbids to invade For Honor!

Which I hadn’t played For Honor’s Multiplayer, after committing to never doing it but it was actually a lot of fun!  I relooked at its trophy guide:

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/for-honor/guide

and committed to myself to try to get some of the easier trophies, which now I have eight trophies and that feels pretty good.

I was doing Player vs AI Dominion battles, enough times to get my Lawbringer Knight to level 8 and being frustrated I couldn’t get the Principled Warrior trophy to pop.  Then rereading the guide, I had to play on Player vs. Player Dominion, which I was trying to avoid but I did earn that trophy. Such a fun game and I might try to earn Reputation 1 with my Lawbringer but I’ll put that plan on hold for the time being.  But that gimmick totally got me to come back to the game and I was having a blast.

.  .  .

https://brickset.com/article/42769/spider-man-far-from-home-set-images

There are a series of YouTube videos of lucky folks who got the Lego Avengers Endgame and Lego Spider-Man Far From Home sets early.

Walker Dennis really wants the Hydro Man set as it comes with a Peter Parker that has a hair piece as well as a Spider-Man beanie, which looks super fun.  This set is $40 and there is a Moltan Man set for $30 (that I could be convinced to pick up for him) and a jet set for $70.

Lego must have jet pieces to spare as Captain Marvel has a set that involves a jet as does Avengers Endgame, and they are all in the $70 range, so the jets must be pretty big but we don’t need a jet so we will probably pass on those.

At least they are all different types of jets.  I do like how Captain Marvel got only one set, as a potential Lego collector, I like the idea of buying one and being done with it.  Spider-Man Far From Home only having three is also ideal.  Avengers Endgame having five makes sense as it is the bigger movie, has more characters, and more set pieces.

I also like how Captain Marvel’s is only $30 too, so that’s nice on my wallet.

I do like how the Avengers’ sets have them all in a team uniform, something the Avengers haven’t had since the late 90s when everyone had jackets.

I also like how Mysterio is in all three of the Spider-Man sets, as I would hate to buy one and not get the main villain from the film.  Though having two of them will be a tad irritating but at least one can be a decoy one or a robot, or possibly a decoy robot.  Now that we have four Spider-Mans and five Emmets, I don’t care about doubling up on characters anymore, I lost that battle.

I might as well post the image of the third Spider-Man set as I’ve referred to it enough and posted the other two.  He’s a bit of a spoiler but the set looks amazing!

Plus that gray Spider-Man suit that is hinted at in the trailer.  I really wished instead of a generic fireman, it was a legit character from the movie.  But we also don’t have a Lego Fireman so that’ll be nice to get one.

I’m really hoping we can see Captain Marvel prior to Endgame but I’m not even sure we’ll be able to watch Endgame either.  Which is a real bummer but we’ll definitely be watching Spider-Man in the theater.  There is just so many movies coming out!

 

April 2019 Free PS Plus Games

Posted by John Klein III on March 29, 2019
Posted in: Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

The two free comics for PS Plus Subscribers for April 2019 are :

Conan Exiles
The Surge

Two games I had not heard of!

Reddit was down at the time I originally checked so I had to rely on Polygon for the news.

https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/27/18283962/playstation-plus-free-games-april-2019-ps4

According to them, Conan Exiles is an open world game staring everyone’s second favorite Conan, and The Surge is an action role playing game in the style of Dark Souls (or Bloodborne as that’s the only one in the genre I’ve played).

No other game, I was hoping after the State of Play that came out, we would get a free VR game to continue the VR hype machine but they are really sticking to the only two free games a month status.

From what I can see from the official PlayStation store :

Conan Exiles is a $50 game with four additional DLC packs all for $10 each, and The Surge has an Augmented Edition (that I’m sure the free game is just the base game).  The Augmented Edition is $59.99 and includes the five DLC packs and an expansion (not sure why that isn’t also considered DLC?).  The base game is also $50, so for only ten more dollars, you can get all of the DLC.  Neither game has a theme, so that’s pretty disappointing, or any avatars.  The Surge has three DLC that costs money, one for $10, another for $15, and yet another for $3.  The Cutting Edge Pack, the Fire & Ice Weapon Pack, the Cobalt Control Rod, and the CREO PS04 Limited Rig DLC are all free and I’m currently in the process of downloading those!  I do like free DLC and will download it for any game that I might remotely be interested in.

As I’m in a research sort of mood, here is some more information I’ve found.

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

Conan Exiles came out just last year on May 8, 2018, so that’s a fast turn around!  Conan is a survival game which I haven’t really played one of those, I rather not worry about feeding my character.  I attempted a Fallout 4 playthrough on Survival to get ready for Fallout 76 but then I decided I will play the long game wait with Fallout 76 and never really got that far into that playthrough of Fallout 4.  Like, I barely got two hours in and wasn’t really loving it.

It reads like we don’t play as Conan which is an interesting idea.  We can pick our gender and I usually like to play as a lady, as who doesn’t enjoy a strong female lead?  I know I sure do!  Plus, maybe my wife would be interested in watching me play but I doubt she’ll take the time.

Hopefully there is a gauge for how much of a survival game I’ll have to deal with or the mechanic for drinking and eating is basic enough to not get in my way of enjoying the game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Surge_(video_game)

I’ve been meaning to get back into Bloodborne, as I just got killed by the wolf and then picked a main weapon and hadn’t left that initial location yet.

I hadn’t heard of Lords of the Fallen, Deck13 Interactive’s first game, either.

Apparently a sequel is supposed to come out this year, so that’s pretty smart to make this one free.  The Surge originally came out on May 16, 2017.  Found out we’re getting two May games from two different years.

.  .  . 

Here are the videos from my usual peeps :

PlayStation Access –

Nathan brings us his quick review of the games.  I like the entire team so much that I started following everybody on Twitter and nearly everybody through the PlayStation Friends app, I couldn’t find Rosie or Dan, so if you know their gamer tags, please let me know so I can follow them.  I couldn’t follow Hollie due to her settings which I completely understand.

The games do look great, I’m not sure how much I’ll commit to either of them.  Conan has a settlement building mechanic that I’m not sure I’ll be too into as I didn’t quite love it in Fallout 4.  I built what I needed and then moved on.  There is PVP which also doesn’t interest me but I’ll attempt the single player campaign.

PlayStation Grenade –

Adam provides the review this time and he informs us that there is some free Fortnite and H1Z1 exclusives available now.  I didn’t see the H1Z1 item but there are several other exclusives including two themes that I scooped up.  H1Z1 might come out on Tuesday.

Platinum Chasers –

Ben gives us his great trophy hunter perspective on the games.  He briefly mentions how Conan Exiles’ trophies can be completed within an hour or it can be done upwards of 50 plus hours.  The game has 1 Platinum, 7 Gold, 6 Silver, and 12 Bronze trophies.  Conan Exiles is a 7 out of 10 difficulty.

Sounds like he’s more interested in The Surge, with its 6 out of 10 difficulty and also 50 hours to complete.  It has 1 Platinum, 1 Gold, 13 Silver, and 32 Bronze trophies.  Which seems like a more rewarding experience, literally.  We shouldn’t expect any videos from him regarding the game in the short term, regarding this game.

.  .  .

Here is Turbostrider27’s thread from Reddit discussing the games :

[Video] PlayStation Plus – Free Games Lineup April 2019 from PS4

Some are saying Surge is a short game, with some problems but overall, a decent game.

Conan is an okay game.

I can see me making more of an attempt at playing Bloodborne during the month of April.  Maybe I should reinstall it this week and give myself some proper experience before Surge is available to download.

If you played Ark, you might have a better grasp of Conan, but I’ve never played Ark.  I guess Fallout 76 will be the closet I ever get to playing it.  Well, until I play Conan, I suppose.

“Average” is being thrown around to describe both games, with some saying the one game is better than the other.

Conan has a multiplayer aspect I’ll never know.  Apparently the PC version allows you to go full nude and strangely, Sony didn’t allow that for their version.  Strange indeed.

Here is the PlayStationPlus subreddit discussion for the games :

April 2018 – The Surge and Conan Exiles are your free games this month from PlayStationPlus

They seem less than impress, and usually they are a more positive bunch over the PS4 subreddit crew.  Sony would go a long way with just adding a third game to the list.  I keep hoping one day The Impatient would get added then I’ll have both Until Dawn spinoffs available to me once I eventually get VR, which is still a year or two away.  I imagine that might happen whenever Man of Medan is available or the month prior.

Once Walker Dennis is of an age where he can safely play VR, I’ll get one, as I’m not going to play with something in front of him that he can’t also play with.  That’s just cruel, plus I don’t need VR right now.

But I also get Sony’s idea that sometime next year, they are going to start giving away free PS5 games so it will make up for it but ooof, PS5 is still a future concept that we don’t know when it will eventually get dropped.  But for $40 subscription to PS Plus (if you buy during a Black Friday deal), it pays for itself as soon as you get two games you really want.  For April, we are getting a $100 value in two games, which I’m fine with it.  Plus, I paid $40 back in November, I no longer even think about that purchase.  Well, my wife bought it for me, so even better!

I do miss getting the crossbuy Vita games, I wish we were still getting those as I was really enjoying the indie games more times than not.

.  .  .

Amazingly, playstationtrophies.org doesn’t have a trophy guide for Conan Exiles.

So I’ll be using PSN Profiles’ trophy guide for Conan Exiles.

https://psnprofiles.com/guide/7501-conan-exiles-trophy-guide

Which is nice that at least someone made a guide.  Apparently there is an Admin Panel tool that makes the game’s platinum something you can achieve in an hour, which I’m not sure how I feel about that.  Seems like one isn’t really playing the game the way the developers wanted, but then again, they made it possible to do so.  I doubt I’ll use it but that is out there.  It might be a 50 – 100 hour platinum the proper way.

Luckily, there is a playstationtrophies.org guide for The Surge:

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/the-surge/guide/.

I just prefer the way the site has an official template that everyone uses.  Though lately, I’ve been having a real pain copying and pasting from their site into a Word document but that might just be for me.

This game has some missable trophies which is always disappointing.

.  .  .

The XBox free games for April are : Technomancer and Outcast, which I’ve heard of Outcast, so maybe PlayStation Plus will get those games sometime soon (that seems to be the route some games take).  Actually, I checked PlayStation Access and they did a Let’s Play of Outlast, so I have not heard of Outcast.

Expect a post from me, around mid-April, of my initial opinions of the two games.  I’ll probably keep to playing my least interested to more interested schedule and start with The Surge and end with Conan Exiles.

These two games will be available for free starting on Tuesday, April 2.

 

Comixology Free Comics 3-27-2019

Posted by John Klein III on March 27, 2019
Posted in: Websites. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

https://www.comixology.com/free-comics

Comixology has four new comics to download for free!

X-Men : Battle of the Atom # 1 (of 2)
X-Men Prime (2017) # 1
X-Men Gold (2017 – 2018) # 1
X-Men Blue (2017 – ) # 1

Not a bad line up of books!

I reviewed Battle of the Atom’s first issue here –

https://shadowandflamewithmagik.com/2013/09/09/x-men-battle-of-the-atom-1/

and my quick review of the Uncanny X-Men 141 variant cover here –

https://shadowandflamewithmagik.com/2013/09/10/x-men-battle-of-the-atom-1-variant/

The crossover, like many modern crossovers, had some issues but I really enjoyed it.

I thought I owned a copy of X-Men Gold 1 but I only own issues 13 and 30, due to Lockheed’s appearances.  Looks like the first issue has a nice recap on Kitty Pryde’s origins and has some excellent Paul Smith panels and Lockheed is in a few of those so I should try to get a physical copy of it for my collection.  Maybe when we go to Kelly’s Komix in Great Falls for Free Comic Book Day on May 4.

Go get those free comics!  A savings of $7.96!

 

Funny how Blue doesn’t have an end date as I thought it was ending when Gold ended but maybe they haven’t updated that information just yet in their database.

 

Lego Movie 2 The Game – Platinum 15

Posted by John Klein III on March 26, 2019
Posted in: Games, Podcasts, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Walker Dennis and I earned the Platinum for Lego Movie 2 : The Game on Sunday!  This makes my 15th Platinum and our second that we earned together after Lego Dimensions.

That character on the left, Walker has started calling, Peter Parker, as Peter Parker is one of the words that he’ll say every six or seventh word, it seems like.  He’s a tad obsess at the time.

We had a great time while we played the game.  The camera was still a little wonky when we were inside buildings and we seemed to start having rooms not fully load for us when we were playing together but if I dropped out of the game, the room fully loaded at that time.  So hopefully by the time the DLC drops in April, they would patch the game to fix on some of those.

We were super happy with our Syspocalypsestar came out!  We were able to squeeze all of the buildings onto that tiny map, some of them like the Batcave, take up so much space!  I was building most of the purple master brick buildings so I could keep track of which ones we made.  So I have Walker play on my PSN account and I play on his non-PSN-connected account.  A guest account is what it officially is called.  We have one for my beautiful wife but she hasn’t played on her account in quite some time.  Walker D got his mother to play Lego Movie 2 for a little bit, she found a few purple master bricks and he was so happy.

Anyway, so I unlocked the City Planner trophy – Build 20 Buildings in Syspocalypsestar.  Which the Lego games have been kind enough that if I unlock one on his account, it usually gets reflected on my proper account.  Or vice versa, we will complete a level, and both of us will get the trophy, which is really nice.  I did notice a few times that it didn’t seem to happen but then it would happen later.  So we switched controllers, I made six or eight smaller buildings (he had been building various buildings as well) and I got the trophy and the platinum.

I was getting a tad concern about empty land masses and we still have six buildings left to go but then I discovered we could build on top of the river and the lake so we have a floating zoo and a few other buildings, built right on top of the water.  That was pretty fun.

Now we are just waiting for the new DLC, and I’m hoping the three new worlds come with at least two additional trophies each.  Simply complete the main quest of the planet and then obtain all master bricks in said planet.  If not, we will still have a great time exploring the planets.

.  .  .

So I kept thinking about the great Indoor Sale that is on the PSN.  I didn’t quite have the $60 to buy the Lego Marvel Collection, I held it in my hands at GameStop, but I did not treat myself to it.  Walker really wanted to play the first Lego Movie game, and I knew it was $7.99 but it gets as well as $4.99 but since we got the plat in the second game, we were essentially done with that game and I wouldn’t mind just having an active Lego game so we can spend that quality gaming time together.  Turns out, there is an Old West DLC pack that comes with four characters and four additional pants, for $2.99 so all together, it was a $10.98 game, which is still cheaper than the $19.99 GameStop wants the game for the game.  They said they could easily order it for me but I sort of like the idea of finding it in the store.  They currently have their 4 Games for $20 deal but I can never find four games all under $9.99.  That would be two free games.  I can find one, and maybe a second one and at that point, I’ll buy two random games – and that thought I guess is what makes it a thought I can’t shake, but one day, we’ll take advantage of a deal.

Instead, I bought two $10 PSN and finished off my gift card that my wife got me for my birthday.  Which had $50 on it and I essentially spent it all on what Walker wanted.  We got TellTale’s Back to the Future game, a Spider-Man Funko character from the PS4 game, and two PSN cards.  Which I still have $12 from, that I will eventually spend on myself.  I’m just trying to keep $20 in the wallet for the day I finally treat myself to the Arkham Knight Season Pass, which is well worth it for $20 but it can go as low as $7.99 and for $8, it is super worth it.  Especially as I won’t really do all of the combat challenges.  What I should do is just buy the Season of Infamy like I want but I do want those other Batsuits and Batmobile designs.  I’m a patient gamer so I can wait.  I just have the all consuming thoughts I have to fight back.

So I bought the two cards, the nice guy at GameStop gave Walker another Emmet and Star collection.  Walker kept wanting me to tell the nice clerk why we were buying two PSN cards, even though he could clearly hear us talk about what our intentions were but Walker is still a tad hard to understand (especially when he’s excited) so I told him, he told us a nice story about how he was watching a Chris Pratt interview and the interview ended and the screen notified him that if he stuck around, he can watch the first Lego Movie and he totally did!  That movie still holds up!  The second one is in stores on May 7th, so we have it added to our Amazon cart.

https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Movie-Second-Part-Blu-ray/dp/B07MHQ5FDY/ref=tmm_blu_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1553529860&sr=1-2

But this link doesn’t mention Digital Copy, so I won’t be adding that one to our cart just yet but I’m hoping the digital copy gets added to the link or as an option.  What we should do is just buy it directly from Vudu but I’m not sure if we are there yet.

So now Walker has five Emmets and now a happy star face item and a sad star face item.  And two spares of each in our spare container.

I spent the weekend assembling furniture (a cabinet, a shoe rack and a bookshelf) so our place is coming along nicely but I didn’t get a chance to buy the first Lego Movie game.  From what I see in our trophy list, Walker was able to beat the Prologue and the first three levels, so that’s great.  I see there is a glitchy trophy so hopefully he didn’t break the bench outside of Emmet’s house as we’re supposed to wait until we have Batman do all that but worst case, I create a second file and do it there.  I had to help him do a few of the sections but then I gave it right back and went downstairs to continue unpacking and assembling.  We finally got everything out of boxes, so that feels great.  We just need another cabinet for our board games (we have so many!) and to hang pictures, and I think we might be done for the most part, outside of other decorative goals.

I have to rewatch the second movie again but I might have to say I enjoyed the second one more but it might just be because it has more than two memorable songs.

I’m really hoping we can watch the Captain Marvel movie, especially before Endgame but there hasn’t been any talk of doing that.

I haven’t played any more of Cosmic Star Heroine besides maybe an extra hour, maybe?  I unlocked Sue and we’re still on the original planet, we are still in the process of escaping the AFI.  We were so close with Lego Movie 2, I just committed to that and then I was tired after watching our shows and went straight to sleep.  With The Voice, we are crazy behind on our shows, and the moving, but we are getting Walker back onto a proper sleeping schedule with the move so we actually have like two hours to be adults which is nice.

We are caught up with Supergirl, Arrow, and Flash.  We might have three episodes of Riverdale but we are caught up with all of our Hulu shows too.  I haven’t heard much about Riverdale so it was my fourth wanted show.  I want to keep up Supergirl as Jon Cryer is Lex Luthor and I thought he did a great job in his first of three episodes.

https://insideofyoupodcast.com/episodes/jon-cryer

He did a great episode with Michael Rosenbaum that I was tempted to relisten to (I might still do it) but what I didn’t fight the temptation was to watch Hiding Out, such a great movie!  I always forget Annabeth Gish is the love interest in the film.  She was great on the West Wing and I hadn’t realized John Spencer was an FBI agent in the film too!  It is all connected!  A real shame Cryer was never on the West Wing.  She’s also great in Pursuit of Happiness and her episodes of Sons of Anarchy in season seven.

I wanted to watch Arrow, even though the future stuff is not grabbing me (like at all!).  I get that Amell doesn’t want to be in every scene but I don’t miss the flashbacks at all so seeing flashforwards doesn’t interest me, PLUS! Another future timeline while Flash is also having future timelines, it really is too much.  Plus, Flash’s daughter has yet to wow me.  Flash got Sarah Carter from Smallville she hasn’t had a chance to smile yet and she has one of the best smiles I’ve seen from an actress!  I’m forgetting what made Arrow rank higher than Flash in my interests but it did.  Shame the show is ending after next season (8) but I also get it.  I’m surprised they don’t just end everything but I imagine contracts keep them from doing that.  I’m not a fan of the idea of replacing Supergirl with Superman, it just doesn’t feel right but I would love to get a CS Superman show with Tyler Hoechlin, superbaby and all.

Blue Bloods has been really bringing it.  Modern Family feels like wheels turning but the latest episode wasn’t that bad with Phil and the boyz but Mitchell making a fool of himself at Cam’s western theme bar wasn’t great.  It was just so hard to watch and so sitcom-y, like he should have just excused himself and went home and not caused four additional problems.  Like, he shouldn’t have allowed him to be the first one to chug the beer, he was doing dance moves in the line that no one else was doing, it just felt awkward and not funny awkward.  “Stand By Your Man” is the episode title.

Black-ish wasn’t bad either, at least Junior is finally being given a storyline but I’m also just waiting for both shows to just end, they feel like they ran their course, a season ago.  But we don’t have that many sitcoms left for us to watch either.  I’m liking Goldbergs and Schooled – Goldbergs can get a tad hit or miss, I’m hoping they just send Barry to college and he matures there, the character could use it and the show really doesn’t need two Ericas.  Though I’m all about Geoff (expect for that spelling) and Erica’s relationship.  I did like her on Schooled though and I think Schooled just has more energy and focus.

.  .  .

Since it is Spring Break, my wife is home with Walker and he really wanted her to play the first Lego Movie game.  She countered with wanting to play LittleBigPlanet 3.  They had this conversation before bed so I had time to redownload the game.  Turns out, we only completed four levels of the Prologue and didn’t earn a single trophy so I stayed up longer than I should have (like until midnight!) and got all of the create trophies and the simple trophies like turn into the three new character, OddSock, Swoop, and Toggle.

Talking to my wife, I was sharing how I regret not getting the Marvel costume kits, as I would have wanted all of them and doing that would be crazy expensive.

Since we live in the modern world, I checked eBay and was disappointed there were no codes for the characters since the Marvel license has lapsed.

Then I found this link!

https://www.gamestop.com/ps3/add-ons/littlebigplanet-marvel-costume-pack-2/88864

I took the chance (and the $5.99) to buy the Marvel Costume Pack 2.

So now we have Spider-Man!  Which is amazing that the one character we wanted was the one we can find!  They are so cute!

If anyone knows where I can buy at least the Venom costume, please let me know!  I’ll gladly pay another $5.99 for that pack.

Before I found the Marvel Costume kit, I bought the Ghostbusters kit –

Walker is still big on Ghostbusters and I was just trying to make selling him on playing the game easier.

I also bought Batman, and he’s super cute too!  Essentially, I just bought all of the characters I wanted.  I still regret not just spending the money on the Marvel characters.  I’m once again reminded why Thou Shalt Not Hesitate is the greatest of the commandments!

I then woke up the next day and decided I’ll buy the TMNT pack as they are super cute too!

I need to buy another $10 PSN card to stay above $20.

If Walker really takes to the game, I’ll be tempted to get the 12th Doctor set.  If only all of these sets were not $5.99 each and I’ve been wondering if when Dreams comes out, if there will be crazy sales for LBP but I’m pretty much at my end point of characters I would be tempted to buy.  Now I really have to start working on the trophies for this game, as I’ve spent a lot of money on the game.  At least there isn’t any Spent 24 Hours in Create Mode but I was willing to do it this time, just spend an hour a night on it.

It was nice though, in an hour and a half, I had spent $14 and had earned 30% of the trophies from LBP 3 which is 15 trophies.  Which I’m reminded of my 2018 PlayStation Life stats and I’m sure 2019 is going to be crazy more productive and I’ll be very curious to see what those numbers look like.  I’m already three months into the year and I feel like I’ve gotten so many trophies and have played so many games thus far!

.  .  .

I’m getting excited for the April 2019 Free PS Plus games!

https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/1104378/PS-Plus-April-2019-free-PS4-games-news-PlayStation-predictions-reveal-date-Sony-stream

I found a website that took some guesses at the games.  Reddit’s PlayStationPlus subreddit has a Predictions page too.  I imagine one day the Nathan Drake Uncharted Collection will be a free game and that will be a bummer as I love those games but I also already own those games.  That day is going to happen eventually.  I came close with God of War III as I had borrowed a copy for the PS3 but having the remaster edition in my Library is pretty nice.

I would love to play What Remains of Edith Finch or The Order: 1886, and Walker would love Gran Turismo Sport.  I’m not much of a fighting game guy but Tekken 7 or Mortal Kombat X could be fun.  At least those are quality games unlike Kung Fu Panda Showdown.

April 2019 Playstation Plus Prediction Thread from PlayStationPlus

I took a guess at Lego Movie 1 and Cosmic Star Heroine as those are the games I bought.  I was pleased to see others took the same approach and wrote which games they bought in March.

I would love to play Horizon Zero Dawn and I imagine it will be free one of these days.  Firewatch would be a treat too.

I got Hellblade : Senua‘s Sacrifice for Christmas, so I’m hoping that isn’t a free game anytime soon.  Then again, the sooner it is a free game, the sooner it is no longer an option.  Shadow of Colossus and Oxenfree would be nice too.

Apparently there is a trend to make one of the games a game that features multiplayer, which makes sense as one has to have PS Plus to play multiplayer (except for free games and a few other exceptions) and one other game (usually a smaller title), so that’s good to think about going forward.

Cosmic Star Heroine

Posted by John Klein III on March 22, 2019
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Thanks to PlayStation for hosting the trailer for this game!

I’m obsessed with adding all the games I’ve ever wanted onto my wishlist on psprices.com.  The other day I was trying to remember two other games I really wanted to play on the PS4 and one of them was modern takes on Chrono Trigger.  That game turned out to be I Am Setsuna, which is still roughly a $40 game.  As I was looking for that title, I kept seeing people recommend Cosmic Star Heroine.  Setsuna gets the emotional weight of Chrono Trigger but Cosmic Star Heroine picks up the game mechanics and such from Chrono Trigger and Phantasy Star.  Which I’ve heard of Phantasy Star but never played it but I was tempted by the Chrono Trigger inspiration.

So I am Setsuna was still an expensive game but when I looked up Cosmic Star Heroine, it was only three dollars!  Down from $15.  Which I’m in a real, buy any three dollar game I come across.

Which I did end up buying Atomic Ninjas for the Vita, as it was also $2.99, it will be a game I can never play but at least I have that peace of mind that I’m getting those six games I foolishly missed out on, so that’s nice.

Cosmic Star Heroine was only three dollars, but I still didn’t want to buy a game I would later regret purchasing.  I read several subreddit threads regarding the game and those who loved it, love it (naturally), and those who didn’t like it, didn’t stick with it or liked Chrono Trigger so much that this game was a pale imitation of the older game.  So I wasn’t sure so I kept reading more reviews.

I kept reading about how complicated the battle mechanic is.  There are moves you can only use once, and once those moves are all used, you have to take a rest action and that restores those moves.  Each character gets at least one move which they can keep using, but it is a weaker move.

I read how fun the game can be.  So I reached out to someone who I know loves JRPGs, and that was Rob of PlayStation Access.

I was not expecting Robert Boyd to respond to my tweet!  Cosmic Star Heroine is created by Zeboyd Games, a two man game creating team.  The other man is Bill Stiernberg and they made Cthulhu Saves the World and two Penny Arcade games.

So he reach out, which I feel bad I didn’t hashtag his game like I hashtagged Chrono Trigger.  I have to live with that.

I bought it, couldn’t play it for a night and then was able to get to the two hour mark.  I did the opening sequence, got to our spaceship, went to the first planet, Rhomu, and now have returned to the spaceship.  I have the main character, Alyssa, her buddy, Chahn, and our tech guy, Dave.

I also did a search of the game’s trophies and found this great guide from PlayStationTrophies.org:

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/cosmic-star-heroine-ps4/guide

They really have the best guides.

So all of those missable trophies bum me out as I’m trying to make sure I don’t look at it too much but I also don’t want to miss a trophy either.  Reading the guide’s introduction, I found out there isn’t any post game stuff, so that’s pretty disappointing too.  So everything has to be done before the final battle as there is no free roam.  At least the game tells you to make a backup file so that’s nice.  The game’s hints are very funny and really adds to the overall impression.

The game is roughly 15 hours and that seems to be at the game’s longest.  I’m also not playing on the hardest mode but the second one, which seems to be Normal (Heroine) and I’m liking it.   Hard mode is Super Spy and then there is the hardest mode.

There is a trophy for doing the first fight on the highest difficulty but the game is nice enough to make it so you can change that setting at any time so I went from the highest of four to the second one, which feels like Normal.  There are not any other trophies that involve beating the game on any particular difficulty.

Overall, I’ve been enjoying my short time with the game, I do feel the itch to get back to my other games those games are not going anywhere at the moment.

.  .  .

I feel pretty satisfied with my time with Peggle 2, I got all of the trophies I figure I was going to get.  I attempted some more additional trials but those trophies are an all or nothing situation.  I was hoping to get the trophy of beating a level with more than 12 balls but it is complicated to even get that to work much less at the very beginning of the level.  I can do it in a trial but the game doesn’t count trails or multiplayer.

I have the game so I can go back and play it whenever I would like.  Which I might just make it a game I chill with after a session.  I like how it doesn’t take long at all to load before I can start playing.  Unlike Lego Movie 2 that has a ridiculous (a word I can never spell on my own), that has a two minute loading sequence, you have to press X to continue the game, press X to accept the notification to not turn off the game when you see Unikitty’s face, and all of that lead another two minute loading sequence as we see Emmet falling into whatever level you want.  So before you turn off the game, make sure you are in the world you want to be.  A couple times, we will land and realized we were done and had to jump to another planet and another two minute sequence.  It just adds up and it kills my buzz when I think about starting the game after playing another one.  There is a total of four X presses but I can’t think of what the other two are.  X to continue, maybe another X to confirm the save file (of which is there is only one), Unikitty’s face and not to turn off the system, and maybe just another X to confirm we’ve read the message?

Which, we are on our final planet, the Classic Bricksburg from Movie 1, we just started it.  We got Movie 1 Lucy so we officially have all of the characters.  We just have to get the 25 purple bricks of the world, some are behind quests and others are just floating about.  From there, we have to finish the Syspocalypsestar planet, which should be fun to build 20 buildings and do all of those quests.  I’m curious to see what it all looks like as we’ll be putting the buildings down ourselves so everyone’s Syspoclypsestar should look different.

We’ve just been so busy that we haven’t had a chance to play in a couple nights.

.  .  .

I’m excited to find out what the free games in April 2019 are going to be through the PS Plus!  We’re getting close to the end of the month!

 

Turtle Soup Show Episode 194

Posted by John Klein III on March 19, 2019
Posted in: Journey's Journey, Podcasts, Websites. Tagged: . Leave a comment

http://turtlesoupshow.com/episode-194-josh-gropin-and-the-black-hole-boys/

Episode 194 of Turtle Soup is immediately one of my favorite episodes of the show!  Not like the previous number of episodes were subpar, but this was just raised to the top so quickly for me!  I’m pretty sure my enjoyment of the episode all comes from Eric and Ryan reviewing proper issues of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures (47 and 48) which it has been a minute since they reviewed issue 45 and 46 back on April 3, 2017!

http://turtlesoupshow.com/episode-149-ninjara-and-dem-demon-ass-darlins/

Took some searching but I found the episode!  Well, that explains that!  Almost two years ago!  They reviewed several specials and miniseries but not the proper series.  Episode 150 is the episode they review Movie III.

I’m such a huge fan of Chris Allan and Stephen Murphy’s (Dean Clarrian) run of Adventures, from issues 23 through 70.  My second favorite run would have to be Gary Carlson and Frank Fosco’s run of Image Comics Ninja Turtles, 1 through 23.  I’m so happy that IDW is reprinting the Image run and going to give the series a proper conclusion.  I want to get those trades once they come out!  The first one is out in August!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1684050197?pf_rd_p=1cac67ce-697a-47be-b2f5-9ae91aab54f2&pf_rd_r=9V5MAT9SN549H3HTCBF4

I might have to put $30 aside for it!  It comes with the first 13 issues, which I love the concept of that, so the second volume will be the second half of the series and then it will follow up with a cheaper three issue volume (which ideally comes with all of other TMNT Image appearances) and then I can have the entire Image run on my shelf in three books.  I did add all of the TMNT Adventures to my wishlist but that is from Volume 7 to the latest and final Volume 16, so it is all out there now.  They don’t seem overly expensive with 16 being only $14.

So ten volumes, so that adds up pretty quickly!  Maybe next year.

.  .  .

Eric and Ryan cover a lot of topics over the course of the 2 hour and 15 minute episode (and 15 seconds!)

They stopped short their run of Mirage titles as these were the last proper issues of Archie in 1993 so the next few episodes are going to finish the Black Hole Trilogy and a couple other issues.  So I’m super excited!

I can’t stress enough how great being a Patreon supporter for the podcast.

https://www.patreon.com/turtlesoupshow

We just got our rewards too!

Eric really outdid himself this time!

Ryan’s face is a coaster and the other picture is a sweet arse magnet!

One day, I want to be on the ten dollar tier but we just moved into a house and bought a 2017 Suburu Forrester so fun expenses have to be cut back a tad.

They put a callout for all of their correspondents to reach out so I’m hoping typing this article gets me to record a voicemail as there is a story I really want to tell for the show.

The episode is just chock full of side content and quick moments of hilarious comments.

There are references to John Mayer’s Room for Squares and a fun story about how Mayer arranges his concerts which seems very smart for a guy who such a songbook like his.

There is a fun moment where Ryan’s microphone is causing him troubles as they have to pause the show.  I like when Ryan starts trying to explain to those who can’t see him and then he realizes no one besides his co-host gets to see him, which has happen on a few occasions.

Ryan tells this story about Josh Groban that gives the episode its title.  I’ve never tried to pretend to be someone else, even jokingly, to try to get some loving but neither has Ryan but maybe it might be a fun experience.  I kept thinking of how Bryan Johnson of Vulgar, Tell ‘Em Steve Dave, and Comic Book Men fame had a long standing and one sided feud with Josh Groban.  That’s really all I now of Groban.

Ryan makes a fun Spinal Tap reference and modifies it for Cyclops, who gets no sex or drugs, though Cyclops has rarely had trouble getting sex.

I like how Ryan was thinking of Juggernaut’s origin but got it confused with the Summers boys but Eric got that sorted out and even remembered Vulcan!

Great email question about appreciating the Turtles in a different light than when they started the show so many years ago.  That’s how I feel about my love for Leonardo as I always go for the leader types but the Image run really put Raphael in the front seat for me.  That run such a great ride!

Eric’s birthday was coming up (it has since passed) and besides milestone years, birthdays are just not the same thing once you are in your 30s.

Eric first brings up the topic of wet t-shirt contests but the episode ends on a killer discussion about it.  I’ve never attended one and it just seemed like a thing movies did but I want to say I barely remember it from any movies.  Like it was a concept that I heard about, got a mental picture of, and that’s been good enough.

Then they finally get to reviewing issue 47 and Ryan butchers inker John D’Agostino and he apologizes for being a dumb English speaker and then has to correct himself again as he’s a dumb American speaker.  The episode is just full of quick asides like that that really punch up the episode with comedy.

That quickly gets a brief mention how they are alright but not alt right that made me laugh harder than I was expecting.  By then, I was lock in on the show and was already thinking of relistening to it (which I rarely do with any podcast these days) and if I was going to relisten to it, I’ll write a long article about my adventures back into the episode.

There is a panel in 47 where it looks like cops are fighting straight at Sarnath’s butt.  Now that we have moved into a proper house, I have my comic book question within arm’s reach but the closet has boxes in front of it so for the time being, they are still denied to me.  I want to be able to start following along as I wasn’t able to really do that with Uncanny X-Cast but I can do that with the turtles.

There is a camera man name Squint in the issue that Ryan glosses as Squint-antino, which is almost as funny as Eric’s Don’t Peek-at-choo joke from earlier in the show’s run.

The color choice to make Sarnath so black that he’s blue like Clark Kent’s hair, which was a real thing back in the 90s!

I love whenever the guys can work in “Did you say Clang?”  It is up there with whenever they reference “that’s what they told me/her/us,” “Movie III,” and “that’s a little too Raph” which that final one gets played with a bit this episode too.

Master Splinter comes off a little high or relaxed this issue with how all he can muster to what he’s witnessing is an “interesting” and later, an “indeed.”  Which transitions into a story of Ryan seeing a possum that if he was high, would have freaked him out as it looked like a skull coming at him.  I should write that Ryan reviews 47 and Eric gets 48, so the first hour is heavy on Ryan’s point of view but Eric peppers the show with comments too that are equally funny.

They even reference the Oans from Green Lantern comics.

Fun exchange and tribute about how Murphy goes all the way back to issue one, which adapted the Eyes of Sarnath episode into the comic’s first three issues to tell this latest adventure.  Which is pretty great that he did that.  Adventures was really great at keeping track of its own continuity.  I like those first 22 issues of the series, but it didn’t get legendary status until Allan shows up for 23.

I like how they talk about how Sarnath has two missing eyes but has his third eye but he is still blind so stating he has one of his three eyes implies he has a third of his vision but he is still at zero vision.

A tad dark exchange occurs about fathers blinding children and at least those kids had a dad that shouldn’t have made me laugh but it did.

April tries to warn the Turtles about the cameras but Mikey keeps repeating that he’s a ninja.

Some fun discussion about how, without his bandana and elbow and knew pads, how naked and odd lucky Raphael looks.

What was Raphael going to ask Ninjara?  I don’t think he was going to propose marriage but maybe just to say his first “I love you” to her or to try to put a label on what they are doing.

At roughly the hour and twenty three minute mark, we start reviewing issue 48!

Ninjara looks foxy, all day!

The above is the page they discuss how it is more words than art, which reminds them of a Bendis layout.  Donatello really does know a lot about black holes.

Ryan explains what it means when we see oxygen masks in fighter jets, it means there is no life support systems.  Like in Star Wars, with Tie fighters and x-wings, those ships don’t have force fields either, so the pilot fights harder in battle.  They also can’t warp out of a fight either.

Some discussion about which side of the vehicle should the gas tank be on.  I like it when it is on the driver’s side, so I just get out and start pumping instead of having to walk around the vehicle.

The guys really brought the comic book references in this episode as Eric was describing what aliens look like, he mentions Jim Lee’s X-Men and Dark Horse’s Concrete, which I hadn’t thought about Concrete in years!

Eric and Ryan’s love for Stump and Stick and Cudley the Cowlick always comes through whenever those characters show up.

I’m not sure to address them as “Eric and Ryan” or “Ryan and Eric,” I’ve been trying to track how others do it in voicemails and emails but I think most people simply go with “guys” or “Turtle Soup Boys” or names like that.  It made sense with Rob and Brian of Uncanny X-Cast fame as it was the one syllable name followed by the two syllable name so I try to follow that with Eric and Ryan.  Either way sounds fine though.

Both issues have a Mutanimals back up, issue 48’s features a new brand of mercenaries.  One of them has the Punisher skull not on his shirt but on his dick.  The 90s were an interesting time.

The episode starts to wrap up around the 1:53 mark with twenty more minutes of bonus content left.

The guys discuss Kevin Eastman’s latest project, Drawing Blood and Ragdolls.

https://www.newsarama.com/44114-kevin-eastman-studios-may-2019-solicitations.html

One comic is an fictional autobiographical story of a guy who earned success with a giant juggernaut of a hit franchise in the 80s and decades later, trying to create a new passion project.  The other comic is about the actual giant juggernaut of a hit franchise, which is super meta.  Which I like the idea of how he must have came up with the parody of his life comic, started having to draw images from the fictional comic, then realized he might as well just completely draw the fictional comic as well.

Ryan’s friend Jonathan posted on Facebook how he was inspired by Eastman’s project to create a side podcast where he reviews episodes of Turtle Soup.  Which I had that exact idea to create The Uncanny X-Cast Legacy podcast where I review each episode of Uncanny X-Cast, and I actually started some work on the first episode but then I realized how silly that would have been but I still think about it from time to time.

After the sweet new song, we get into more about wet t-shirt contests.  Growing up in hot Yuma, Arizona, I’m surprised wet t-shirt contests were not a thing but I can see why those were not a thing post-2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_T-shirt_contest

Above is the page that they were reading off from.

Which I completely get the notion of reading a Wikipedia page and rabbit holing down and across so many different pages.

One such rabbit hole I went down was for Cetacean Stranding :

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

Which is crazy how often it happens.  I thought it was more of a once a year thing but it seems to be happening all of the time and not just one rogue whale but entire pods of whales.

Which led me to the concept of Whale Fall :

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

As I had never really given much thought to what happens to dead whales.  They have so much oxygen in their lungs that by the time their carcass hits the ocean floor, entirely new ecosystems can be created!

Pretty much, I’m a big nerd for ocean life as our oceans are as unexplored as space!  We just can’t get to so many locales still and so we’re still discovering things about our own billions year old planet, which is both impressive and frightening.  What is out there!

I forget what reddit page I was on that introduced me to the concept of Danvers State Hospital :

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

Which is a real mental institute that inspired Batman’s Arkham Asylum.

Danvers State Hospital was build according to the Kirkbride Plan :

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

Which actually had batwing inspired style floor plans that sprawled outward from the center.  Which seems super smart as people associate bats with mental stability.  Which I’m sure was super fine until Batman came along.

There are still some of these institutions that are in used today.

So yeah, these were all of the thoughts I had based off of Episode 194 of Turtle Soup!

I did leave a voicemail so we’ll see if we make it to Episode 195, I’ll let you know if I do.

Peggle 2 : Magical Masters Edition

Posted by John Klein III on March 17, 2019
Posted in: Games. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

My phone notified me that psprices.com was trying to get my attention.  Which I’m glad it did!

Amongst the 46 games I had on my wishlist, Peggle 2 was on sale from $14.99 down to $2.99, and I had to buy it!  Especially as it was the Master Edition, that comes with two additional DLC sets.

My beautiful wife and I were addicted to Peggle 2 on our phones and I beat it completely and I was looking forward to one day owning it one day on the PS4.  I downloaded it and then lost two quick hours as I just kept playing the levels and doing the trials.  These are different Masters than I remembered from the phone app, so it feels like a brand new experience.

I’m obsess with aiming for purple pegs and then for orange pegs.  Purple are bonus point pegs and orange pegs are the ultimate goal in the game.  If you hit a green peg, then that makes it so you can use the Masters’ abilities.

Peggle 2 is one of those games where I just want to do “just one more” and then I end up having done six more.  A hard game to put down.

On the PS4, there are objectives that each puzzle offers, one is always to hit all of the pegs, one is usually score x amount, and the third is specific to that puzzle.  So I always aim to get rid of all of the pegs but I’ve read that you can replay puzzles to just get the objectives you miss on the way back, it isn’t like you have to do all three at once.

Thanks to YouTuber Orofin PlayStation for hosting the above video!

I’m currently on Luna, the Zombie’s group of puzzles.

I probably won’t get the platinum as some of those trials are pretty hard but I’ll definitely be playing the game for quite some time.  Sorry other games!

Peggle 2 is super relax but also super addicting.  I also have a hard time finding the purple pegs and have to move closer to the screen but after the first few times, I stopped doing that and just play the game.  I really should change my tactics so I aim for the green pegs to unlock the powers earlier in the level to get higher scores but I like using them to clean up the orange pegs instead.  That’s what my second lap through the levels would be.

Getting all of the pegs was one of those things I tried to do on my own through the phone app as I want to say the game puts a star or some other signifier that all the pegs were eliminated.  But it will be nice to keep track of that in the PS4 version of it.

I do like how the game has multiplayer but no multiplayer trophies, so that’s a relieve!

I need to get into a habit of checking psprices.com every Wednesday and seeing what is on sale but being mindful of waiting until the afternoon of the last Wednesday of the month so I don’t buy a game that is free for the next month.  Though most of my games are either brand new or were already free through PS Plus, and they haven’t made the same game free twice yet.  I also have to make sure I always have more than $20 in my PlayStation wallet as one day, I will buy the Arkham Knight Season Pass, I’m just not sure when that day will come.  Maybe after completing Spider-Man and Beyond : Two Souls?

.  .  .

I was also tempted just to grab Ms. Pac-Man as it always sits at $3.99, but it once went as low as $1.99 but maybe I’ll snatch it next week as I’m willing to buy any game that is under five dollars, even the Vita games that I will probably never play but I want that peace of mind.

Referring to peace of mind, I kept regretting not downloading all of the free games through the PlayStation Plus service and I finally shared that regret on reddit and a nice redditor, dre702, asked if I had kept my subscription service during those years.  Which, of course, I hadn’t, so I didn’t miss out on any of those games and I wouldn’t have kept paying $60 for a service I most likely never would have taken advantage of, but if I did, I would have had so many free games!  But at least I’m no longer haunted by that thought.  I also may never had a proper PS Plus membership until the PS4, but was given free games off and on like after the network went down those horrible 23 days in April and May of 2011.

.  .  .

In other gaming news, we finally got the Statue of Liberty unlocked again in Lego Movie 2!  We also cleared everything in the Sorting world and now we’re on the Ceremony world.  But I bought Peggle 2 and was a real jerk (not really) about not playing Lego Movie 2 that night.  Walker Dennis was sick and when we’re sick, no games for us.  Dems the rules.

After that, we tackle those bonus worlds, which have half of the number of quests and hidden purple bricks, so that shouldn’t take too long.  Then we have to take on the Syspocalypstar planet and build those 20 shops and then complete those 20 quests and that’ll probably be our final trophy unless something unexpected happens.

https://happythumbsgaming.com/2019/03/lego-movie-2-the-video-game-trophy-achievement-guide/

I was on a daily search for a Lego Movie 2 Trophy Guide and Happy Thumbs Gaming was the first to release it, as far as I could get.  The boss fights were all hidden trophies and there was one other hidden one involving gold that we got the night before I found a guide.

We’re eagerly anticipating the Lego Marvel Trilogy, I just have to find a spare $60, so we won’t get it when it is brand new but we’ll eventually get it.  I’ve been using it as an excuse not to buy expensive (like $20 and more) Lego sets, which Walker seems to be understanding well enough.

.  .  .

I keep thinking of the games I still have out there that I want to finish or complete more on such as Heavy Rain (I started a second playthrough), complete my first playthrough of Beyond : Two Souls, finish Ultimate New Game Plus on Spider-Man PS4, and complete Batman : The Enemy Within, I’m on the second episode of that.  I also redownloaded Black Ops III, so I want to at least give that game another twenty minutes to see if I can get pass the first level of the single player campaign.