Amazing Race

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June 2019 Free PS Plus Games

Posted by John Klein III on May 29, 2019
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

The two free games we are getting for June 2019 through PS+ is : Sonic Mania and Borderlands : The Handsome Collection.  Which is actually the Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2, along with all of their DLC.

I’m all for a throw back Sonic game and Borderlands looks fun but it is one of those games I would never have bought for myself.

People on both the PS4 and the PlayStationPlus subreddits are super excited about the games.  Plus, with E3 coming up, June 11 through 13, and Sony sitting it out, this gives people something positive to talk about Sony.  Though Sony has a lot of good will going on right now with rumors of trailers or information regarding The Last of Us 2 and Death Stranding floating around.

PS June 2019: Sonic Mania & Borderlands : Handsome Collection from PS4

Sonic Mania and Borderlands: The Handsome Collection are your PS Plus games for June from PlayStationPlus

Which is nice for a change!

Sonic Mania on the PlayStation Store is $19.99 and it has a $4.99 Encore DLC with extra levels and two additional characters.

Borderlands : The Handsome Collection is $60, so that’s super impressive that we are getting this game for free.  There is a theme for $1.99 and a free texture pack meant for the PS4 Pro but I downloaded the texture pack.  I might be willing to buy the theme if I like the game in the slightest.  Apparently the game does go on sale quite often.

Sonic Mania originally came out on August 15, 2017.  Originally release to celebrate Sonic turning 25!

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

I thought it was supposed to be a tie-in to the film but that isn’t coming out until February 14, 2020 – what everyone wants to do on Valentine’s Day is go see a Sonic film.  James Marsden being in it helps.  Getting classic Jim Carrey also isn’t a bad deal too.  I like how he and Will Smith are able to still call forth their 90s charisma almost 20 years later.

Borderlands : The Handsome Collection originally came out on March 24, 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands:_The_Handsome_Collection

Pretty impressive that it still sells at $60, but Borderlands 3 coming out on September 13, 2019 has probably helped with sales in the past few months.

.  .  .

Here are my peeps talking about the games as well :

Nathan of PlayStation Access :

Adam of PlayStation Grenade :

Ben of Platinum Chasers :

I just started following Adam through PlayStation and that guy has so many platinums!  He also states there will be some free exclusives to check out in the store too.  Ben also has a slew of platinums now that I’m following him through the PSN as well.

Ben states Sonic Mania has 3 silver trophies and 15 bronze trophies.  Borderlands has 2 platinums, 8 gold, 28 silver, and 96 bronze trophies.

.  .  .

Referring to platinums, here are the trophy guides to both games :

Sonic Mania :

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/sonic-mania/315504-sonic-mania-roadmap-trophy-guide.html

The game doesn’t have a platinum but like Ms. Pac-Man, I’ll probably just play it for the sheer love of playing and not worry too much about the trophies.  Except Ms. Pac-Man does have a platinum but I’m nowhere near good enough to go for it.

Borderlands : The Handsome Collection

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/borderlands-2-the-handsome-collection/guide/

.  .  .

I’ll definitely be playing Sonic Mania first and see if Walker Dennis wants to be my buddy at all.  Then I’m going to dive into Borderlands and see what all of the fun is about.

Like most people, I adore Girlfriend Reviews and I’m reminded of their video they made for this collection.  I’m going to have to rewatch it again to get a better feel for the game.

.  .  .

I’m still making my way through Lego Avengers, having a great time. I’m just making my way down the trophy list to feel productive and to give myself a direction to go in.  Tonight’s plan is to replay Ready, A.I.M., Fire to unlock Aldrich Killian and then try to kill him for the trophy. Then I’m going to get all of the English characters (Captain Britain, Mandarin (Trevor Slattery), Spitfire (who I remember from Facebook’s Avengers Alliance game), and Union Jack.  I already have Agent Cater.  Then I’ll get the Defenders and some specific red bricks (x4, Stan Lee in Peril, and Quest Detector), then the x6 and x8 multipliers.  Finally, just free play all of the other levels that I still would need and then I’m off to the DLC!  So I bet I have another two weeks with this game and then I’m off to Lego Marvel Superheroes 2.

I should try to at least complete Episode Three of Batman : The Enemy Within.  Walker Dennis wanted to play Fallout 4 as I made a reference to Dogmeat but then it took 30 minutes for the game to reinstall.  By the time it was done, he wanted to play Batman : Arkham Knight which now I want to get the Season Pass again for $20.  We were doing the math and with $20, we would be getting like $15 worth of bonus content, which I do like a value.  I was able to finally download the Scarecrow pack, so that was nice.

I was also doing the math for getting Fallout 4’s Far Harbor and Nuka World DLC and combined, it is like $45 and its Season Pass is $50, so I might as well just spend the extra five dollars and get the other three DLC as well.  But I’m probably never going to treat myself to that DLC but I could be gifted it maybe.

.  .  .

I completed What Remains of Edith Finch, such a good game!  During my first playthrough, I completely missed Gus’ story but on the replay screen, we are able to replay ones we missed so that was nice.  I didn’t want to replay the entirety of the game just to get to one of the final stories.  People talk about how sad Lewis’ story is, and it is but the one that devastated me was Gregory’s story.  Being the primary bath giver to Walker, it was always one of my grave parental fears something bad happening to him while in the bath and seeing it play out just crushed me.  But I knew the game was coming to a close so I kept at it and 30 minutes later, had completed my first playthrough.  Gus’ story is right after Gregory’s so I probably just walked right pass it not giving it a second thought.

During my first attempt at Ms. Pac-Man, I got to the Pretzel portion and that was about it for me.  I should go back and practice and get gud at it but it wasn’t bad for a quick gaming session.

I also bought Dear Ester and Walker D. and I took turns playing.  He wanted to keep walking way pass the story segments but he got better about pausing and listening to the story.  I missed every urn and I attempted the Director Commentary of the first chapter but I’ll go back to it.  I do like how for the Director Commentary, they put up orange squares so we know where they are and they turn white if you listened to them, that was pretty handy.  Jessica Curry did an amazing job composing the score and she does have a Pandora channel.  Every one of her songs was from Everybody’s Has Gone to the Rapture, so I want to play that game at some point.  I’ll eventually go back and do that second playthrough.  I’ve already committed to the idea that I’m probably not going to be able to find them all as I didn’t come across all of the story segments either but it was enjoyable from what I can only imagine was the bulk of the story.  In terms of walking simulators, I’ll probably rank them as :

What Remains of Edith Finch
Drowning
Dear Esther

Drowning is a shorter game but I felt I got more out of it than I did Dear Esther.

.  .  .

TOKYO – JUNE 11: Pictured L-R: Janelle Pierzina and Britney Haynes on THE AMAZING RACE Wednesday, April 17 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. (Photo by Monty Brinton/CBS via Getty Images)

Last week, poor Britney Haynes and Janelle left Amazing Race.  I knew they were not going to make it as they kept coming in sixth or seventh, and once there is only seven teams, they were going to fall short of their goal.  They were great together and I’m going to miss them on the show.

I never did find a good Amazing Race photo websites but I found those three pictures above.  Britney looked great in that grey jacket.

Classic Britney gif!

I just stumbled across a great Amazing Race Britney gif machine of a page!

https://tenor.com/search/britney-haynes-gifs

They even have their title sequence!

We always find what we need in the most unusual of places.

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.