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May 2019 Free PS Plus Games

Posted by John Klein III on May 3, 2019
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Podcasts, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

The free games for May 2019 are : What Remains of Edith Finch and Overcooked!

I’ve been wanting Edith Finch for so long so I’m thrilled to finally get to play it!  I’ve seen PlayStation Access play Overcooked and it looks like a lot of fun too!

Edith Finch is one of the best walking sims out there and Overcooked is a four player coop game where players try to get meals out and not set the kitchen on fire.

PlayStation Access :

PlayStationGrenade :

Platinum Chasers :

I like how Adam and Ben are still commenting on the lack of games as we used to get six games and now we only get two.  I’m part of the camp that wishes they added a VR game as a third title.

I’ll be pretty happy if they just found a few more crossbuy titles that used to work with the PS3 or the Vita and give those to us on the PS4.

.  .  .

Most of the discussions on the two subreddit pages I follow for this type of news are going on about the lack of quantity of games and the two games are being praised but they are both older games and relatively cheap on their own.

What Remains of Edith Finch is $19.99 and Overcooked is $16.99 but has a Gourmet edition for $19.99 that I imagine comes with The Lost Morsel, an add-on for $4.99.  THere is a free The Festive Seasoning level that I’ve now downloaded.

So a overall value of $37, when sometimes it can be over $60.

PS4 Subreddit’s reaction :

PS+ May 2019: Overcooked and What Remains of Edith Finch from PS4

PlayStation Plus subreddit’s reaction :

PlayStation Plus – Free Games Lineup May 2019 | PS4 from PlayStationPlus

The games are going to be available to download on Tuesday, May 7, and I can’t wait!

.  .  .

As Ben states in his video, neither game as a platinum trophy, which seems unfortunate to pair the games together.  I think that is one of the other annoyances people have, is that both games are indie titles so one game being offered in May and the other in June, would have been nice for some people.  Some speculation is being written about how, even though Sony is skipping E3, we might get some stellar games for June.  Time will tell.

Since neither game has a platinum, I think neither of them gets a proper playstationtrophies.org page but on the forum, both are represented.

Overcooked’s Guide

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/overcooked/309926-overcooked-trophy-guide-roadmap.html

Of the 11 trophies, I’m going to commit to three of them, for sure.  Play a versus mode game, extinguish a burning kitchen, and complete the tutorial.  It’ll be nice to get the other ones, which the bulk seems to be, get one star in at least one kitchen per five hub worlds.

I’m going to see if my beautiful wife and Walker Dennis will want to play with me, if not, I’m going to have to solo the game but I should be able to at least do those three trophies on my own.  I’m going to be attempting this game first.

What Remains of Edith Finch’s Guide

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/what-remains-of-edith-finch/312999-what-remains-edith-finch-trophy-guide-roadmap.html

This is the game I’m going to 100%, for sure.  There are seven missable trophies but reading the descriptions, it seems like just knowing which story you are in, check the guide real fast, and make sure you accomplish the goal.  It doesn’t seem like any of the trophies’ descriptions spoil the plot.  At least, I don’t feel like I have any proper context but time will tell.

Apparently, during a second playthrough, most of the trophies can be obtained except for finding the first peephole which is to the left of the garage on the fence as we approach the house for the first time.  We don’t ever get a second opportunity to do that, so if you are trying to get all nine peepholes and 1 telescope.  Which, stuff like that, is the reason why I look at trophy guides.  Never too closely, as I’m mostly just looking for the word “missable.”

.  .  .

Walker Dennis and I earned our 18th Platinum!

The first Lego Movie is so good and so many mechanics were used in Lego Dimensions so it just felt comfortable.

I went out the very next day and bought the Lego Marvel Collection!  At first, I was going to be an old fuddy duddy and only let Walker Dennis and myself play one game at a time.  Then I warmed up to the idea of just completing the story and then allowing us to move on to the second game.  Then Walker Dennis’ big brown eyes and hearing myself say it for a fifth time, I agreed to playing the games until we got Spider-Man unlocked.  Which it took a long long time before we could access the open world in Lego Avengers.  With the game, the Spider-Man DLC is free, but we didn’t have access to the blue terminals that have the option to switch characters, until after the fifth mission, Helicarrier Havoc.  We’re four percent done with that game.  Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 is pretty quick and it only took two missions and we had Spider-Man, who is freely given.

Going to the individual games’ PlayStation Store pages, we still had the option to buy the DLC, which made me suspect we didn’t get a code for the season passes but once we could open the character page, all of the DLC characters were on the bottom but I checked all three times.  It would have been nice, since once you load the disc, we had to individually download each game, so it would have been nice that the prices on the store page changed from the dollar value to the download option.  That would have given me some peace of mind.

So I’m cool with whatever game Walker Dennis wants to play, he can play but at night, I’ve been doing one mission of Lego Marvel Superheros 1 and I’m currently just passed the X-Men mission and the Fantastic Four one is next.  Which I’m excited about as that means I can defeat 100 enemies using the Thing, as that’s one of the trophies.  I’m not sure if I’m going to platinum any of these games as they are massive!  I’ll definitely strive to do so but ooof, there are a lot of characters and gold bricks floating about.  Plus, those races are pretty hard!  I can’t seem to get a feel for webslinging either.

I’m so happy we got Scarlet Spider in Lego Avengers and I know there is a race to unlock him in Lego Marvel Superheroes 2 that once I can, I’ll commit time to unlocking him.  Spider-Ham is also an option in 2 so I’ll have to get him there too.

1 has Emma Frost and I made a point to do two missions from Professor X to unlock her, and then I did a third mission to unlock him as well.  I sought out Archangel so I now have all of the original X-Men.  I’m having a blast!

Playing Lego Avengers makes me want to rewatch the first two Avengers movies.  We sold our copy of the first one to upgrade to a digital copy but we haven’t done that so I might have to pull the trigger as that movie was fun to replay.  We have Age of Ultron on BluRay but I’m tempted to buy that through VUDU as well.  I’m just ready to stop buying physical movies and buy everything through VUDU but then VUDU still doesn’t get all of the special features so here I am buying the combo packs just for the digital copy and a few extra materials.

.  .  .

My plan is to play one level of Lego Marvel Superheroes 1 and then play Batman The Enemy Within until 11:30pm, and then play until I get to another save point.  Which I’ve been able to do for the most part.  Last night, I finished the X-Men level, so I went around gathering all of the X-Men I could and unlocking Carnage as I’ve been waiting to get Iceman to unlock Carnage.  Walker Dennis turned on the game, and I wanted him to buy Carnage, Superior Spider-Man and a Symbiote Hazmat fellow.  Which he did but we went from 1.5 million studs to less than 150,000 studs in a matter of seconds as he started unlocking everybody.

On my list of characters I want in the first game are:

Agent Coulson, for the trophy
The Lizard, Walker got the first Amazing Spider-Man movie for Easter – and Hop – so he’s in a real Lizard mode, he calls him Dr. Connors, which I love)
Howard the Duck, also for the trophy, it is the last one listed and I’m obsessed!
Magneto, he’s needed for so many items in Free Play

Scarlet Spider isn’t an option.  I would have held off for Colossus until the very end but he was needed for the Fastball Special trophy so I bought him.  I wish they would make a Lego X-Men game, it would be awesome and super cute!

Anyway, this section was supposed to be about Batman : The Enemy Within!  I’m in Episode Three and Catwoman showed up!  So I want to romance her like crazy as Bruce is going through some stuff.  Harley wants to flirt with Bruce but Joker’s man crush on Wayne makes me try to flirt with Harley but keep pushing Joker to keep him happy.  I read a great article in GameInformer on how Episode Five is essentially a compilation of our choices so it really depends on everything we’ve done during the four other episodes.

Thanks to finishing the second episode, I’ve finally reached my Gaming Goal of 2019 by reaching Player Level 15, I’m 6% into it, and I have 18 Platinums, 102 Gold Trophies, 355 Silver Trophies, and 1163 Bronze Trophies, for a total of 1638.

.  .  .

Apparently there is a really great deal going on right now on the PlayStation Store. I  saw something about villains spotlight but nothing jumped out at me but PSPrices makes the deal look very worth checking out!

Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma is $7.99 for PS+ subscribers, down from $40, and I might actually buy that as that’s my Vita white whale!
Witcher 3 Complete Edition is $14.99, down from $50 (though I rarely ever see it at full price now)
Lego City Undercover is $8.99, down from $30
Batman : Return to Arkham is $7.99, down from $20, if I wasn’t knee deep into three games and a Batman game, I would it now, but I probably would once it is eight dollars again.
Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition is $20 at GameStop, and I love how PSPrices tells us retail sales as well!
Lego DC Super-Villains Deluxe Edition is $44.99, down from $74.99, I wonder if that includes the latest batch of characters like the Phastasm and the Shazam characters?
Kingdom Come : Deliverance is $13.53 on Amazon!  Is that right?  Looks like it is sold out right now.  In fact, there is a Royal Edition coming out on June 11 for $40, so I need to change my version on PSPrices once they have a link for it.
Injustice 2 Legendary Edition is also $30 at Gamestop, down from $60, but this is another game that is usually on sale too.
Batman : Arkham Knight Season Pass continues to be solid at $20, one day it’ll dip to eight dollars, then I shall strike!

I got to add Lego Marvel Collection to my . . . collection so that’s one less game!  I’ll be taking off What Remains of Edith Finch in a week, so that’s exciting too!

I’m looking at Zero Escape : Zero Time Dilemma and it is stating it is a cross-buy title?!  Was that always the case?!  How did I miss it then?!  So many questions!  I had the Vita version hearted through the store but I’m going to take a chance on buying the PS4 copy and I hope I end up with both!  Alright, that means I now only have 49 games on my wishlist!

Shoot, it only registers as the PS4 version and the Vita version is still available to buy, that stinks but at least I can think that I own it too.  I wonder if I should reach out to customer support and get the Vita version?

I’m chatting with Joseph of Customer Support right now.  He couldn’t make the came crossbuy and now it sort of killed my enthusiasm for ever getting that game or any of the other Vita games I missed out on.  Plus, I was never going to get a Vita.  Once if that day ever came, I’ll reignite my desire for them.  At least I got a refund out of it.

.  .  .

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

Comixology has a rare free non-Marvel title!

Runners Volume 1 : Free Preview

https://www.comixology.com/Runners-Volume-1-FREE-PREVIEW/digital-comic/769939

It is the first two chapters of the volume.  Sean Wang is the writer and artist.

.  .  .

TRIGGER WARNING!!!

AVENGERS ENDGAME DESCRIPTIONS AHEAD!!!

I actually got to watch Avengers Endgame!  I don’t want to spoil anything as I was able to avoid all spoilers so I don’t want to spoil someone else’s good time but I think I can make some comments without giving away any real plot points but I have some thoughts I need to get out of my head.

So if you don’t want any spoilers or hints of spoilers, this is the final section so there isn’t anything else read, so come back once you have seen the film!

First of all, this movie is amazing!  My wife complained almost immediately as we got outside, that she thought he movie was too long, like like 20 minutes, so that killed some of my buzz to talk more about the film.  So we talked about how all of the third act needed to stay, but there were parts in the beginning that probably could have been trimmed or even during the quest portion of the second act that could have been parred down.  I thought it was amazing, like, every minute of it, so I wouldn’t have wanted to shorten anything but it was a fun thought exercise.

We took Walker as he did pretty well watching Infinity War on Netflix.  He ate too much popcorn and had too much of a Coke Icee so I had to leave two times in the beginning of the film so he can attempt to throw up but nothing came of it.  I knew his belly would settle if he stopped eating, and after the second attempt, he sat in his seat and enjoyed the film.

He waited so patiently until Spider-Man showed up, which I don’t think anyone expected for him not to show up, or any of the vanished heroes, so I don’t think that’s a real spoiler (in case someone is trying to read these paragraphs until a real big spoiler shows up – I’ve done it that in the past as reader).

I like how, once the portal opens, there is a good beat of time before Spider-Man swings out, and then Walker would not stop talking about Peter Parker.  He also started commenting on wanting to buy the movie, which I told him I really want it too.  But he was so excited.  Then there were non-Spider-Man moments that he just wanted Spider-Man to come back, so that wasn’t great but once he’s on the screen, he’s in the film and the center of focus.

I loved how, with how epic that final battle was, there is always time for a hug and what a great hug at that!

This entire movie was a celebration of 22 films and ten years of Marvel movie magic!  Well, Endgame is the 22nd film so a celebration of 21 films!

As soon as Sam said, “On your left” I don’t think I stopped smiling for the next ten minutes.

Then the ladies all had a moment, that I’m sure someone is going to make posters of and screenshots of, once the film has been out for a month.  I appropriated so much how the marketing campaign was so nice to avoid spoilers.  Heck, even the Lego sets didn’t spoil anything.  Captain America never got on a motorcycle and Iron Man never went to a room that housed all of his suits.

The Avengers Compound shows up, and that would be the one I’ll be tempted to buy if it wasn’t a hundred dollars.  War Machine never gets a giant Hulkbuster sized suit.  Rocket’s ship is shown but never does anyone ever get into a giant white plane, so of the five sets, only one is in the film.  Not for long though, once Thanos shows up, but still, it is there.

The fact that all of Infinity War mattered as amazing!  I thought for sure, the last five minutes wouldn’t matter but nope, everything happened and everyone has to deal with that.

Okay, now I have to spoil somethings to talk about some things.  So final final warning!

I think most people know there is a time cut, and there is.  Five years have passed since Infinity War.  Earth has not really moved on.  There are monuments with names like the Vietnam War memorial in San Francisco that I can only imagine are represented in every major city, if not every city probably did the same.  I wonder if those come down post-movie as it would be haunting to see one’s name on a wall for all time.  Plus, ever the first anniversary, they served their purpose and are taking up valuable real estate.

Also, high school reunions have be crazy right?  Teenagers are back, half of their friends graduated and then you have to be replaced in your grade and now graduating with half the people you don’t even know.  Also, half of your friends are five years older than you too.  Except it seems all of Peter Parker’s supporting crew are in Spider-Man : Far From Home, so that whole class of recognizable characters vanished.  Which is handy for film purposes.  I wonder how much of that film is going to handle the ramifications of the world, probably just a few lines of dialogue.

I missed the line about Tony losing oxygen and we got a fun interactions with him and Nebula.  For the life of me, I can’t remember what happened in the two minutes we missed the second time.  It was during Black Widow’s debriefing scene.

Thanks to the time travel aspects, we got to revisit some favorite scenes.  Which was so amazing to see again from a different angle!  Also, so fun all of the movie titles being said and how they all got it wrong.  The movie sort of handles it like how Marvel comics handles time travel.  What happened happen, and if you change something, it just creates a new timeline so the present will always be the present.

I had to look it up and that is Ty Simpkins’ character, Harley Keener, from Iron Man 3, at the end.  So nice how they paid homage to the first Iron Man film as this film closes an entire saga.  It helps that Jon Favreau is a director and an actor, and super willing to be in these films.  It probably also helps that he’s directing Lion King so Disney has his phone number.

I wonder what phase four will bring and what the overall plot focus will be.  Perhaps an epic Doctor Doom plot or just Galactus coming?  We have to be working towards Fantastic Four and the X-Men being folded in, right?

Heck, this movie gave us a Hail Hydra!  So amazing!  And America’s Ass!  Captain America can do this all day!  I must have been grinning so hard during long sections of the film.

We got two amazing parent scenes, with one’s mother and another’s father.  Having a child really does put one’s own parents in a different perspective.  Might be worst or better but an understanding does occur.  There’s a nice balance, as all things should be.

This movie even went as far as to try to make Thor : Dark World matter!  Which I would say is by far the worst Marvel movie, even the Earth portions were not great.

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

Looking at the top list :

1“The Infinity Saga”

Thor : Dark World will be on the top of my ranking of the films.  By a lot!  But gosh, look at all of those films, all of them are pretty rewatchable!  Which is super impressive and the cast of actors we get in this films are astonishing!

I love that if an actor had a free day to film, they got to be in the movie.

We still haven’t seen Captain Marvel but I’m hoping to sneak it in before it leaves theaters.

I was able to text old friend to the blog, and my oldest friend, Greg, some of my thoughts so that was nice to talk to someone about the movie who also loved the film.

He made a comment about the homeless problem probably skyrocketed but I wrote back how with half the population gone, they probably became homefull.

I was on a track about identity fraud and how my chances of being accounted for, even though I vanished, I would still come back five years later to all of my debt still intact, knowing my luck.  It would be like 911 times a hundred.

Does Manifest actually get into the minute details of being gone for five years and definitely being declared dead?

Thor was amazing in the film!

They found a way to keep Loki alive that is super clever and the plot to find Gamora is probably going to be the basis of Guardians 3.  I love that they got a new team member, the reuniting of Groot and Rocket was super nice too.

Cap back in the 70s, so great!  Cap in the finale, was so heartbreaking and beautiful.  I love how Agent Carter : Agent of SHIELD mattered with original Jarvis being shown.  No hard references to Agents of SHIELD or the Netflix shows, from what I could tell.

There are all of these news reports to a Black Widow movie and I want that to happen too but I’m not sure how.  I knew it was going to be her to take the soul stone.

When Thanos’ missiles were firing into the sky, I had forgotten about Captain Marvel and I thought we were about to get a crazy entrance but it was great to see her.  Peter Parker introducing himself to her was amazing, as Walker always refers to him as “Peter Parker” so having the name said by both characters made him so happy.

Greg was wondering if the line about earthquakes was a hint to Namor which would have been cool.  Otherwise, it was just a line of dialogue for dialogue’s sake.

I imagine besides lines of dialogue, the time jump and real world ramifications are not going to be reference again.  Maybe that would be the plot or the backbone to the Disney+ shows.

We knew Hulk was going to be an Avenger as we saw the Pop Vinyl character.

Okay okay, now we’re getting into major major spoilers territory!

oh my!  We finally got “Avengers Assemble!” and it was everything I ever wanted!  Then we got Captain America holding Mjolnir!  I was so happy!

Fun how we got two more Community alums added to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Yvette Nicole Brown (who looks like she lost a lot of weight!) and Ken Jeong.

When they were in the 70s, there is this great song by “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” by Harry James and his Orchestra that I just loved the old timiness of it.  Apparently, it is their cover to a 1945 song.

Nice to see Hiroyuki Sanada in the film, he was Shingen Yashida in The Wolverine and Akihiko in the film.

The film has a great balance of comedy and drama, and so many people and characters got a moment to shine.  They definitely got their moneys worth from Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans.  Both get such wonderful sendoffs.

We even got Gwyneth Paltrow in the Rescue armor!  So many things paid off from previous films.

I know it won’t take any awards besides MTV and Teen Awards and a few technical awards but it really does deserve to be acknowledged next year.  Not like it matters but it’ll be nice for the box art.

We really need A Time to Die Hard now!

Just overall, I loved the movie and I want to see it again but I won’t until I own it.

Next stop will be Spider-Man : Far From Home but I can’t imagine we’ll watch it July 5 opening weekend.

For two great podcast reviews:

Comic Book Queers Legacy :

https://www.universehead.com/comicbookqueers/2019/4/29/episode-82-avengers-endgame

Living Between Wednesdays :

http://www.livingbetweenwednesdays.com/blog/1-4

 

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Dennis Lee Brannman

Posted by John Klein III on April 25, 2019
Posted in: Free Comics, Fun With YouTube, Games, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

This world no longer has Dennis Lee Brannman to kick around!

My father-in-law passed away on April 20, 2019, and I just can’t stop thinking about him.  He had Alzheimer’s Disease so he wasn’t himself for the past six or so years.  Those first years, were not bad, as it seemed like he was a tad slow on the uptake.

The very first time I ever spoke with him, I was standing in Yuma, Arizona, and he was on the phone in Helena, Montana.  My late sister-in-law and her then husband had eloped so I had this big plan to make sure we got married and I was going to ask his permission to marry his youngest daughter.  Of course, it was a bigger moment in my head and I had it originally planned completely different.

That summer, it must have been 2007, my future wife was going to spend the summer in Helena and I was originally planned to come up with her and drive back with her. I used Greyhound to come back and to go up there by myself.  Secretly, I also had the plan to propose to her on her birthday.  Dennis was supposed to be Helena at that time, and I was going to meet him and tell him my intentions.  Instead, he had to work longer in Miles City so he didn’t come home until the week after I left.

But I had already planned this silly speech in my head and I also needed to make sure her mother was okay with me staying there during that week.  I was still calling her Mrs. Brannman at this stage, which I would continue to do so until like a year ago.  Now I just don’t address her by name or I call her Leslie and I feel awkward about it.  Anyway, that’s my own dumb hangup about the formality of titles.

I knew he was home but I wasn’t prepared to have that chat with him that day so I waited another day while I knew Kristie was going to be working at Power Townsend so I knew she wouldn’t answer the house line.  I called and Dennis answered and I had to super awkwardly introduce himself and quickly spurted out that I would like to marry his daughter and I was getting his permission to do so.

He was nice enough to say that he wasn’t sure how she felt and it would be up to her but if I wanted to, I could ask her.  Which made me think that maybe asking for one’s daughter’s hand was only a thing in old movies or television series but with that encouragement, I booked tickets to fly to Helena.

We never got a chance to talk about that exchange nor have I really ever heard anyone talk about it so maybe he just hung up the phone and went on with his day and I briefly told the story to Kristie but that was that.

We eventually met and I’m a pretty different guy than he was.  Him being a good ol’ Montana man, served in the Navy, was still working on boilers, he hunted and was super Catholic.  I was slowly becoming Catholic and only ever really worked in office environments besides a few summer gigs painting houses.  I fractured my right elbow in high school so military service was not an option, though I would have liked to have served at least one tour in the Army, to follow in my mother’s boots.

Dennis and I got along pretty well, I mostly let him talk and try to tell some jokes.  It was a polite relationship and I’m sure he was thrilled with both son-in-laws that he was given and neither of us were much like him.

.  .  .

The other memory I cherish was the first time we really hung out on our own.  He had some errands to run and invited me to tag along.  I dove at the opportunity to try to impress him with my wit.  I’m sure the invite was supposed to be a kind gesture that I was supposed to turn down but that’s what happens when you a take a chance on inviting someone.  At this time, he was resorting to writing down notes for himself, which was clearly the Alzheimer’s slowly coming on so that taints the memory in hindsight.  But I was there, he told me the plan, and then we went out to run the errands.  So he’ll say something like “well, that’s that, let’s go home” and then I would have to remind him we had two more stops to make, he’ll thank me, and then we headed to the next place.  Then we’ll repeat that conversation and I’ll tell him we had one more stop.  Good times and he would retell the story and I was pretty useful that day.

.  .  .

He was a staunch Republican, and got me to join the Knights of Columbus.  Kristie was still pregnant at the time and I only really attended two meetings.  Then Walker Dennis came along and I just got busy and never really went back to the Knights.  We gave Walker her father’s first name as his middle name.  As soon as she told me that’s what she wanted, I was all for it.

On that morning of his death, Walker Dennis woke up at 2:30am and asked to sleep with Kristie.  We were there to bury her grandmother, and there was a chance Dennis wasn’t going to hold out for our return.  We sincerely hoped he would make it a few more days but with Alzheimer’s, one never knows and it is such a horrible disease that the person is like a shell of who they used to be.  So at least he’s in heaven as a complete person again.  So Walker woke up, we switched beds.  and then thirty minutes later, Kristie’s sister Dawn called.  If Walker hadn’t woken up, Kristie probably would have either missed the call or would have been still waking up to hear the news.  Instead, she was pretty alert and prepared.  We like to think that was Dennis’ way of saying goodbye to his namesake.

Walker and him got along pretty well.  Even those last months, Dennis would instinctively call him Curtis, so he at least remembered his middle grandson, which was always nice to hear him make a connection.

You will be missed Dennis!  Thank you for continuing to be a great example of being a loving father and supportive husband.  I can only hope to continue in your footsteps.

Dennis L. Brannman, age 72, of Helena

https://helenair.com/news/local/obituaries/notices/anderson-stevenson-wilke-funeral-home-notices-for-wednesday-april/article_ecac6c17-9449-5851-b17d-e91d81dae73b.html

https://www.alz.org/montana

.  .  .

Just to lighten the mood, here is some bonus content.

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

Marvel is offering three free comics this week :

Ms. Marvel (2015 – 2019) # 1
Shang-Chi : Master of Kung Fu (2009) # 1
Marvel 1602 # 1

I’m not sure what these three have in common at all but I’ve at least read 1602.  As I type this, I supposed I could actually read these comics and then give a quick sentence review but maybe next time.  1602 was pretty fun, it probably shouldn’t have been promoted as heavily as it was for what the story turned out to be but it is a fun re-imagining of the original Marvel characters worked into the Elizabethan era.

.  .  .

I have also earned my 17th Platinum with Polygonal Wolf’s Drowning.

The PlayStation Store was having an Easter sale and I had the thought to myself that whenever there is a sale, and I have the funds, I should just treat myself to the cheapest game and that’s how I came across Drowning.  I gave it a lot of thought.

I checked the trophy guide :

https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/drowning/333161-drowning-trophy-guide-road-map.html

It seemed more confusing than straightforward but the game sounded interesting.

I saw WarisacryGameClips’ review :

 and I realized I’m doing a lot of work to decide if I was willing to spend two dollars on a relatively short game.

So purchased it and looked forward to playing it once we were back from Hawthorne, Nevada.

Once I got home, I checked rus199410’s platinum run of the game :

Thanks to both of those YouTubers for hosting such great videos.

I couldn’t believe it was that easy of a platinum and it made the guide make sense too.  I had a pretty fun time with the game. I understood what “low-poly environment” meant only after experiencing the game.  It looks much better on the PS4 than in videos.

The game has some fun collectibles (like five of them) and some silly trophy things like attempting to walk off a bridge a several times.  Once I saw in the second video that there was a trophy for merely starting a new game, I was both excited but also wondering if this would be a shameful platinum or even game on my game list but I really had a good time with the game.

The game is about depression, just to finally come out to say it, and now that I’m writing this, realizing I’m not ending on the high fun note I thought I was going to.  The story seems very personal but at the same time, pretty vague.  There is an alternate ending with people around a campfire that I’m pretty sure I understand but I wouldn’t have minded getting more information about.

The game looks great, tells an interesting story, and you’ll be completely done with it in an hour.  Which felt good to play and beat a game, not in just one sitting, but to successfully complete a game.  That was a reward all to itself.

Drowning is typically $2.99 so I only saved a dollar.  There is also an avatar for only a dollar, but I didn’t purchase it.

This was also my first “walking simulator” game and I enjoyed it so I should look into other walking sims to play.

https://www.slant.co/topics/12314/~walking-simulator-games-on-ps4

Slant’s list includes SOMA and Witness, which I’ve played, and Life is Strange and its prequel, which I own.  I should move that game up my list and I should finish SOMA.  Witness, I really should commit more than 30 minutes to playing.  Detroit : Become Human doesn’t seem like that would fit but I’ll give that a playthrough once I finish Beyond : Two Souls.  Heavy Rain is also featured on the list.  Those games seem more like TellTale story games along with Until Dawn, and I wouldn’t consider those games strictly walking sims like how I believe the next list of games are mostly like.

Firewatch, Journey, Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Abzu, What Remains of Edith Finch, Dear Esther,  are all on my wishlist already with Ethan Carter being the most recent addition.

I hadn’t heard of Night in the Woods before, nor Layers of Fear, The Observer, Ether One, or Perception.  It makes sense that walking sims and horror games would work together.

.  .  .

The Bridge was also on sale and I didn’t even remember it being a free PS Plus game back in October 2018.  It was a pretty interesting game.  I’m only on the third chapter but after needing three YouTube videos for three of the puzzles, I was concern I was just going to watch the videos and burn through the game and that felt cheap so I’m putting the game on the backburner for now.

Thanks to EliteMonkeyGaming for hosting the videos, the short run time made me realized how silly it was to watch a video but I was legit stuck on them.

II – IV, The Pillars

II – V, The Mausoleum

II – V, The Memorial

Watching this videos, reminded me that I also needed help with I – VI, The Nook.

So I ended up needing help with four puzzles which didn’t bode well for me for Chapters 3 and 4 and what I can tell from the trophy list, the Mirror versions of those four chapters.

I’ll come back to this one of these days, probably during the next sale and I see that I have the option to redownload it again.

.  .  .

I’m currently making my way through Lego Movie’s first game.  I just have four of the five manuals in Broadcast News and three of the five in Bricksburg Under Attack, and then I’ll have all of the golden manuals!  From there, I’ll let Walker Dennis build the Golden Instruction Builds, he’s already made three of the 15, then once he’s done, we will earn both the Midas Touch trophy, the Everything is Awesome 100% completion trophy, and finally, The Piece of Resistance, the platinum trophy!  Feels good to be at least days away from earning it, or whenever he wants to complete it, I suppose.  I can patiently wait and it gives him something to do in the game.

https://www.amazon.com/Lego-Marvel-Collection-PlayStation-4/dp/B07NDVYF25/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ps4+lego+marvel+collection&qid=1556226791&s=gateway&sr=8-1

What I really want is to buy the Lego Marvel Collection now on Amazon for $40, down from $60!  I wished I knew how long this sale is going to last.  I imagine it is on sale because of Avengers : Endgame but I know the game is $40 so I can wait until it is at least $40 again.

I haven’t seen the above Lego Spider-Man Far From Home set, which is what I’ve been holding onto my $40 for but it has been burning in my pocket for a few days now.  I can’t seem to find a reliable source that states when it is on sale.  The game is out July 5th and Amazon says it will be available on April 30, which is a Tuesday and I can see that being accurate.  Before, I’ve seen April 26, Friday, as an option, which I can see that being a possibility too, but I can wait a few more days to see what happens on the 30th.

Which reminds me, I still need to get a ten dollar PlayStation card so I can get back up over $20.

After I get myself set up for the Lego Movie plat, I’m fully committing to Batman : The Enemy Within and from there, I have some deciding to do.

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!

 

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!

 

Playing the March 2019 Free PS Plus Games

Posted by John Klein III on March 11, 2019
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I’ve given Call of Duty : Modern Warfare Remastered and The Witness a try.  I enjoyed MWR more than I did The Witness but I may not have given The Witness its fair due.  I got three puzzles in (and did the Easter egg was connecting the Sun and the gate) but then I was lost on what direction to follow.  Which I’m glad I never paid for The Witness, but if I had paid for it, I probably be attempting to finish it still and get my monies worth.

What I liked about the first three missions of MWR was how I didn’t need to be the star of the squad, others could do the harder work and the grand standing and I was super happy with being support.  Until someone told me to do something, then I was more than happy to do my part.  I wanted to redownload Black Ops III and see if I can take a back seat to the action in that game.  I can’t remember if I had a squad or not in that game.

I got to the Charlie Don’t Surf mission, and got inside the big office building and just got bombarded by enemy fire.  I tried several different strategies but done of them work.  I was hiding in back rooms for cover and then I tried to rush the waypoint to trigger the checkpoint, and I tried several times to take it slow but I’m clearly not meant for First Person Shooters.  I might still try Black Ops III again, it won’t hurt to download it again.  I didn’t get that far my first time around.  It was still clearly the first mission and a giant corridor of sorts but I was trying to rush it and shooting away but I need to slow down and see if I can get into a supporting role for the squad.

So not bad for two free games, but I’m not smart enough (or not patient enough) for The Witness and I clearly am not good at FPS.  But I had fun, and that’s what matters.

.  .  .

Walker Dennis and I have become super addicted to Lego Movie 2 The Game.  We beat the main storyline, which didn’t take us too long.  We figured out how to open relics so he went on a real tear unlocking items, characters, and equipment.  He’s mostly after characters.  He had the Status of Liberty unlocked but then the game went wonky and I had to download the previous night’s game file and overrode his brief progress when he was in Harmony Town.  He had unlocked enough items to earn the trophy for unlocking 100 items and he had a slew of characters.  At first, he seemed like he was fine that the three missions he unlocked had to be redone and he seemed like he was fine that we had to unlock the characters again.  Until he noticed the Statue was missing.  I hadn’t seen it so I wasn’t sure which statue it could have been but then I bought him Emmet’s Thricycle Set.

He started pointing to the Statue of Liberty and that’s when I realized which statue he was talking about this entire time.  As a patriot, I feel pretty lousy that I lost him the Statue of Liberty and we still haven’t unlocked her a second time but that’s the only character he really wants.  Which I get wanting to reclaim lost progress but it is completely random.  At least when we unlock items, if it is a duplicate, we get a piece of gold and if you unlock five pieces, you get a super gold relic that guarantees a new item, character, and piece of equipment.

By buying that set, Walker Dennis now has four Emmets, three of whom are from Lego Movie 2 and one is from Lego Dimensions, essentially from the first movie.

Originally, I wanted to get him the Introduction Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi Lego set from the second movie as he at one point, really wanted the banana guy, Banarnar but Walker wanted a $15 set over the $20 set, so I was fine with that.  Maybe after payday, I’ll get him the second set.  One gets a lot of value out of the above, as you get Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi in her horse form and extra pieces for her block form, plus a Lucy and Sweet Mayhem and that misdirection princess character. 

We also have our eyes on the Ultrakatty & Warrior Lucy set, but that one is $30 (I had originally thought it was also $20) but that might be some time from now.  It comes with yet another Emmet so that kills my buzz but Walker loves creating Ultrakatty in the game as his preferred vechile and I think it’ll be nice for him to have it in real life.  If he got all of the sets, he would have three Lucys in total (one from the Lego Dimensions starter pack).  Which feels like too much.

At one point, we had our hands on a Spider-Man Scorpion set but the idea of him having three Spider-Mans killed my buzz too.  It was only $20 and Walker was being a tad naughty at Target, so that just added to reasons for not buying it.  I do like the idea of a Lego Scorpion though.  We had also just saw that episode of the 90s cartoon that introduced Scorpion to that series.

Thanks to YouTuber Hien Biggerstaff for hosting the series!  He’s missing episode nine we’ve been enjoying watching the series this way as part of our bedtime routine.  Episode nine is the third part of the Alien Costume trilogy but it seems to be scrubbed from YouTube, which I get, I suppose.

I got pretty used to hearing the voices in a higher pitch and with that weird border.  It didn’t take long.  We just finished Part One of Hobgoblin which Walker knows The Green Goblin so that has been weird for him to see an Orange Green Goblin (which I tried to get him to at least think of him as simply The Orange Goblin but he wasn’t having it).

Which reminded me of the time I called it the Twelve Person Sinister Six in Mark Millar and the Dodsons’ Marvel Knights Spider-Man storyline from 2003.

I’ve been trying not to play Lego Movie 2 without Walker but once we beat the game, I figure it was fine for me to go back to some of the planets to get all of the purple master pieces as those are trophy goals.  I have all of them in Apoclypseburg and Asteroid Field with Systarian Jungle being our next goal.  He helps when we go back but then I just finish it up as it does get a tad boring searching for floating purple bricks and doing the quests.  Well, the quests are boring but searching for the searching ones can be a bit of a grind.  So over the past two nights, we do the quests and then I go back to clean up the rest.  But if he doesn’t play initially then I don’t do it so I won’t attempt Jungle until he is able to play with him.  Which we rarely play on school nights so it might have to wait until the weekend again.

.  .  .

In the meantime, as it doesn’t take too long to get those bricks, I have finally started playing Batman : The Enemy Within!  Which I have been really enjoying.  Mostly, I play Lego Movie 2 and then if it isn’t 11pm yet, I’ll try to play TellTale’s second (and last) Batman game.  Once it gets to a save point, I check the time and keep playing until the next save point.  It isn’t easy being a responsible adult gamer.

I was initially going to try to ship Bruce with Lucius Fox’s daughter, Tiffany.  But I missed a chance to lie to the Wayne CEO lady after I wanted to make sure Bruce lied to everyone when it was an option, but then I missed that one and then missed a crucial one later with Tiffany that forever broke their relationship.  Then I ran into “John Doe” in the back of the room and I’m still not sure if I want to make John Doe an ally or set him up for his villainous future.  The game already took Lucius in a different path than I was expecting.

I do so love that it carried all of my decisions from the first game over, as there are several reminders of the routes I took already during the first season.  I really want more Riddler too!  I’m sure the game strikes a good balance between Riddler, John Doe, and whatever else the plot requires as I’m sure there will be subplots and more Bruce time as well as more Batman time.  We have four full episodes left to see how it all unfolds.

March 2019 Free PS Plus Games

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

With the free games only being PS4 games, it is going to be much easier to sample these games!

Thanks to redditor, Po_TatoThe3rd for making the official announcement on reddit

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered and The Witness are your PlayStation Plus games for March from PS4

We are getting Call of Duty : Modern Warfare Remastered and The Witness as the free games in March!

They gave us Call of Duty : Black Ops III for free back in June 2018.  I tried to play it, I’m not much of a First Person Shooter.  Whenever I tried, Walker Dennis really wanted to try as well.  We were equally as good but I just didn’t get a hang of it and haven’t gone back to try it.

I’ll definitely be trying these two games as I’m committed to the idea of downloading and playing them.

I’ve been sold on The Witness since PlayStation Access has gone on about it for so long, and I’m all for an open world puzzle game.

Typing of PlayStation Access, here is their breakdown of the free games :

They got Rob to host the video!

Seeing footage from Modern Warfare, reminds me that they have covered it in a few videos so I know at least a few things that happen in the game but that’s okay.  I’m way late on every PS Plus free game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_Remastered

The remastered was released on November 4, 2016 and the original was released on November 5, 2007 on PS3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witness_(2016_video_game)

The Witness was released on January 26, 2016.

Here is PlayStation Grenade’s video of the two games :

With only two games, it is probably easier and quicker to make these videos.

Here is Platinum Chasers’ video :

Call of Duty : Modern Warfare Remastered is a 5/10 Difficulty and takes around 15 – 20 hours, and no multiplayer trophies, so that’s great!  He mentions a veterans mode, which would be the highest difficulty so I’m mostly likely out of the platinum but I’ll be surprised if I can even get three trophies.

The Witness is a 6/10 Difficulty and takes 15+ hours.

Apparently going forward, new Call of Duty games are going to be multiplayer exclusive so I won’t be getting any of those, unless they are free.

.  .  .

I deleted For Honor as I could not get pass Gudmundr, the level’s boss in Knight Chapter Six.  I looked for tips and all of the tips were regarding the second and third stage of the fight and I barely hit him in the first stage.  I tried to skip to Vikings but the game wouldn’t let me.  So that’s that for the February games.  I was tempted to give Hitman Season One a proper chance but the month is over and I got way into Spider-Man again.

I just got to the beginning of Act Three.  Took a minute for the first mission to start but everybody has escaped the Raft and I’m heading towards the police station now.  Silver Sable’s crew have made me priority target number one.  Which was weird when I had to go through Central Park during Act Two and seeing where their base was prior to it becoming a base.  I have all of the bases to do, besides the one Kingpin base I had to do for the story.  So I have to look at the map and see how much fun that is.  I’ve been waiting for Act Three to see what it is like with all of the criminal element still being an option.

I’ve also only completed one Research Lab and that’s all I’m planning on doing unless Walker Dennis wants to see me do another one, or he starts one that I have to finish.  He wants to see and play as Miles so those are good stopping breaks for me when I’m playing at night.  I haven’t come across one in a while.

I keep meaning to play Batman : Enemy Within but I got side tracked by Spider-Man but I really want to play it as I bought it.  It has been a full month and I didn’t even start it.  I want to finish a chapter whenever I play it and those are usually two hours but I should try to do at least an hour but I don’t want to rush through it either.

.  .  .

Someone on reddit posted a link to psprices.com and it took a while but I put all 47 games I want on there to see when is the best time to buy them.  Well, 46 games as come March 5, I’ll have The Witness.  I can’t believe that even some $40 games go as low as $14.99 so if I see a game under five, I should just buy it.

Currently, Burnout Paradise Remastered is $5.99 as is Brothers : A Tale of Two Sons, and that’s as cheap as those get.  But I know I won’t be getting to either of those games anytime soon so that gives me pause.  Ms. Pac-Man is $3.99 but it has gone down to $1.99 in the past so I’ll wait for that too.  I love the game but I do worry that I’ll be no good at it on the PS4, for whatever dumb reason my brain has made up to stop me from purchasing it.  Squares for the VITA is only $4.99 and I do want to get those VITA games I foolishly didn’t download one of these days but buying a game I can never play for five dollars, seems a bit much.  Plus, once I buy one of those, I really have to consider buying the rest.  These mind games of mine!

I also knew the new free games were going to be announce so I wasn’t really being tempted by anything at GameStop but now I know the March games, I can better prepare.  I want to buy games but I’m stopping myself at price points and recognizing I don’t have time but once day, I will have the time.  Anyone else have these problems?

Maybe if I treated myself to another $20 PlayStation Card, I’ll feel more comfortable making a decision.  I have $30 in my PlayStation wallet and $30 in a GameStop gift card but I can’t commit to buying something.  What I want to do is use the GameStop card to pay for half of the LEGO Marvel Collection (Avengers and Marvel Superheroes 1 & 2) which comes out mid-March, as that game is $60 but comes with all of the season passes, so there is high value there.  Especially as I was tempted by the $65 version of LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2 that game with all of the season pass content, so this is like getting two free games and all of their content for the price of one!

BUT!  We bought Walker Dennis the LEGO Movie 2 game and we don’t really need two active LEGO games.  Maybe once we complete that game, the Marvel Trilogy game would have gone down ten dollars and I can justify it then.

https://www.gamestop.com/collection/gamestop-sale

GameStop is doing their Tax Refund sale right now and I wanted to be tempted to buy two shirts (a matching large and small shirt for Walker and me) but I couldn’t get excited for the two PlayStation shirts they had at the moment.  But buy one and one half off is a good deal.  Buy one Pop Vinyl character and get one half off was also a good deal but we couldn’t find two (or one) that we wanted.  We are excited about the forthcoming Ghostbusters characters.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NSPLJPJ/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

Amazon states the Firehouse and Peter will be $30 and that seems pretty reasonable.  I just want to see how big it is.

 

February 2019 Free PlayStation Plus Games

Posted by John Klein III on February 19, 2019
Posted in: Fun With YouTube, Games, Songs. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

So of the four free games I could access on the PS4 for February 2019, I have to say the one I really gotten into is For Honor.

Gunhouse was fun, I’m not sure if I really got into the mechanics of it.  I’m sure if I kept updating the weapons, I’ll eventually get better at it.  The art style was pretty fun and the game was overall entertaining.  I just kept thinking of playing Rogue Aces.

So then I started playing Rogue Aces and the training modules were fun but then came the tutorial for bombing a city and I was doing decently with that.  The hardest part was getting back to my base to reload.  I was getting the hang of it but it was a bit more work than I was willing to do at that time.

I did all of the work to start Hitman First Season, I downloaded all of the episodes.  I went to the demo for Hitman 2 and made sure I had the legacy pack downloaded over there.  I went back to the Complete First Season and did the initial story segment (like three minutes) and then I saw the yacht.  It looked like more of a time committed than I was willing to give on that day.

Which brings me to For Honor.  I did all of the work to make sure I was a member of the Ubisoft Club, which thankfully was one of my six passwords so I didn’t need to click “forgot password” or anything like that.  I saw in the club that I could download something for free if I had Steep so then I downloaded that game and was confused by I still couldn’t download the item.  So I had to actually play the game and access the club through Steep.  I was only slightly disappointed that there wasn’t a free item in Steep for owning For Honor.  Steep was a free game in January that I never got around to attempting.

Walker Dennis was a pretty big fan of Steep, he mostly liked seeing the guy fall down.  But he also enjoyed snowboarding and hang gliding too but the falling down was pretty rewarding.  I need to go back and attempt some of the easier Steep runs.  I got Silver in a few and Bronze in a few more but then I went back to For Honor.

For Honor has been a lot of fun!  I’m glad the fighting mechanism wasn’t as crushing as people said it was.  Or they commented that once you got it, you got it but I’m not sure how anyone would not get it but then again, I didn’t get either Rogue Aces or Gunhouse.

I’ve been doing the Single Player Knight storyline, I have Chapter Six of Six left.  Then I’ll do Viking and Samurai after that.  I’ve been playing on Normal and having a fun time.  I’m not finding all of the Observations or the Breakables, but I do want to make a point and get all of the Observables, as I like learning the story.  I haven’t bought anything with silver, but I know one of the trophies is to buy all four heroes in a class, so I will do that.  I was tempted just to burn through it with the Knights but I figure I’ll see which of the three classes I like the best.

With real money, I did buy For Honor Dynamic Theme 1, for $2.99.  I was just looking forward to my next game session and that’s when I realized I was going to be committing to For Honor for a while and I’m now trying to match my themes with my main game.  There was two of them, but I didn’t like the second one that was portraying a giant battle of the three classes.  I preferred the simple image above with one from each class.

I turned it to Easy for Walker Dennis to try it as he wasn’t thrilled with Spider-Man’s theme being gone.  Either the game wasn’t as bloody as I remembered or they turn it way down.  That or he was only hitting them with the light attack and not the heavy attack but he was doing pretty well.  Then I got uncomfortable with him playing it and had him stop after two or three minutes.

We’re in the course of moving so I hadn’t had much time to play but For Honor has been a fun game and I’ll probably keep playing it until I’ve gotten through all of the story missions.  I think, if my skills carry over to Hard, I’ll attempt Hard but I haven’t really mastered parrying yet, it feels like I do parry but I also miss sometimes too but maybe by the time I have another six chapters in with Vikings, I’ll have it down to a sweet science.

.  .  .

This past weekend, we took Walker Dennis and his cousin to see Lego Movie 2 and we all had a pretty great time.  I keep having the Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi “Not Evil” song stuck in my head.

Thanks to YouTuber Chuyperron 25 for hosting the video.

My beautiful wife keeps getting the Everything’s Not Awesome song stuck in her head.

Thanks to YouTuber ToyBox 23 for hosting the video.

The third song that I really enjoyed was Gotham City Guys.

Thanks to YouTuber aranha verso for hosting the video.

Ironically, Catchy Song was not all that catchy for me.

During the film, there were times when I was thinking about the upcoming game and how would we even “play” the movie as there is a few action sequences but not that many.

We did buy the full game so I’m just waiting for Tuesday,February 26 to come out and then we have to wait for the Easter Bunny to give the game to Walker.  We did catch a playthrough of the first level and the game does look fun.

Thanks to Gamer’s Little Playground for hosting the video.

It is a more complicated game than Lego Dimensions but it also seems like instead of having characters with abilities, we’re just making items that do those abilities.

I keep thinking about how I don’t feel like I myself am ready to move onto a new Lego game as I feel like I still have Lego Dimensions goals.  So also for Easter, I want to get him the Fantastic Beasts story level, as that’s the last story pack he’s missing and I like the idea of owning all four of the portal variants.  Then I want to get him the Beetlejuice fun pack as I still regret not buying it at Walmart that time I could easily have bought it.

So funny how Walker kept talking about Lego Dimensions during the film.  During the Gotham City Guys song, Beetlejuice showed up and Walker couldn’t help himself but comment on it.  He was just so excited during the film.  We are definitely buying that film when it comes out.  It will definitely benefit from a second viewing as there are so many references that it is hard to notice them all in one viewing.  Also, the story itself needs to be watched again knowing what we know at the end.

Walker’s favorite scene was the one when we learned Rex Dangervest’s proper backstory.  Massive Spoilers when you click the video.

Thanks to NATE 28 MeMz for hosting the above video.

But his favorite moment was seeing the Back to the Future DeLorean and the TARDIS.  He was so excited that I missed the Terminator reference and the Hot Tub Time Machine reference.  At least I got to see Bill and Ted’s Phone Booth.  I looked for the above video myself but then I noticed the sequence in another video Walker was watching and that boy knows how to find videos on YouTube.

There was no direct references to Dimensions, which I figured there wasn’t going to be but characters from the game show up in the movie like Gandalf.  They do quickly address the Lego Batman Movie in an exchange and we’re back to the film.

.  .  .

I also committed to not playing Spider-Man on the PS4 during our move.  Walker got into the spirit of things and agreed to pack up his Legos, including his Lego Dimensions figures and bases.  We kept the game out and the box is accessible but he seems committed at this point.

But Walker has really gotten into Spider-Man these past few weeks.  I did buy him that Carnage Lego Set so now he has a Lego Miles Morales.  I also bought him the Titans Heroes Miles.

Now I’ve been regretting not treating myself to the Titan Heroes Scarlet Spider but if I come across one, I’ll snatch it up now.

We’ve been wanting to rewatch Spider-Verse for a while now.  We’ve been getting by on watching Sunflower by Post Malone and Swae Lee.

Thanks to Post Malone hosting his own video.

Then we added “What’s Up Danger” by Blackway and Black Caviar, to our playlist too.

Thanks to Viral MEDIA for hosting the above video.

Now Walker goes around saying “Hello Danger” all of the time, no matter how many times I correct him about the actual song title.

So he wanted to play Spider-Man PS4 and I didn’t have a problem with that.  I had forgotten that we left Spider-Man in his underwear so we laughed about that and then Walker changed the suit to the Infinity War suit.

Sort of nice that we live in this age where I can did a search for “Spider-Man only scenes in Infinity War” and get a supercut of just that.

Thanks to YouTuber Something Something for hosting that video.

Walker was happy to not have to sit through a two hour movie for seven minutes of footage.

I can’t believe Lego Movie 2 was nearly a two hour film, but Walker had a great time and never got fussy.  Unlike Aquaman that had him either restless or bored during portions of it in the middle of the second act.  He’s excited for the next Spider-Man movie, as I told him we’re getting two this year, Avengers Endgame and Spider-Man : Far From Home.

Thanks to TomScott1703 for hosting a video of all of Spider-Man’s scenes from Civil War.  I wished I thought of that two weeks ago when Walker was bored through so much of Civil War just waiting for Spider-Man to show up.  But once he does, he’s in that movie for a fair bit.

He didn’t want seem to want to watch Homecoming but did watch Amazing Spider-Man 2 and was with it for most of the time.  I’m hoping to get the Toby Maguirefilms for Easter as Amazon has the trilogy on BluRay for $30, and it comes with digital codes!

https://www.amazon.com/Spider-Man-Trilogy-Limited-Collection-Blu-ray/dp/B06XZ588HB/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=spider-man+trilogy+bluray&qid=1550611914&s=gateway&sr=8-2

The first Garfield movie is also only ten dollars on Amazon, both BluRay and with digital code

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008QZ5PY2/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

So it’ll be nice to get both of those and be caught up on our Spider-Man collection.  If not, I’ll probably buy it some time later as after Easter, it is safe for me to buy myself inexpensive items until November.

I’ve been thinking of Easter a bunch lately.  My wife just wants the second Fantastic Beasts film on BluRay, Crimes of Grindelwald, as she missed out on watching it when it was in theaters.  Plus, she has the first one and I think it’ll be cute to get her that one while Walker gets Fantastic Beasts for Lego Dimensions.  It will be a theme Easter of Fantastic Beasts and Spider-Man and Legos.  I’m sure we can find eggs of all three of those.

.  .  .

Walker was just swinging around on my New Game Plus file and noticed backpacks on the map.

Thanks to Sick Critic for hosting the above image.

I’m not sure what made him want to find them all, maybe as he has his own backpack and can relate to Spider-Man on that level but he wanted to get catch them all.

He has a Hot Wheels backpack but I can see us buying him a Spider-Man one for Kindergarten.  It is odd that a poor high school and then college student could afford to buy 55 backpacks but we just have to go with that.

In 30 minutes, I had found 27 out of 55 of them, but I also had to find the satellite towers too to make it easier.  I wasn’t going to activate the satellites and leave the map as hazy as possible but here I am activating them and getting backpacks.

Walker is also taking my phone and taking pictures of the contents, even though the images are not going away anytime within the game.  So I’m going to have 55 images pretty soon on my phone.

The very first one we found was the Spider-Plushie one and from there, he wanted to see them all.  I had already found the menu from his first date with Mary Jane, as that was a story moment.

Here is Walker’s picture of the plushie.  I have 26 other images of various success rates.  The clock used to be on the wall until I took all of the nails out of the walls.  Now it just sits there.

One fun aspect of this is that Walker knows how far away 27 is from 55 and is appreciating the amount of work it is to get all of these.

One of these days, I have to fight Shocker and change the night mode to day mode, it would make finding the backpacks easier.  But instead of doing that, I played For Honor instead.  There is a game store a block up from FEAST that has a spider-plushie in it but it is closed at night so we couldn’t see it in the game.  Which is super fun to see stores keeping regular hours in the game.

Thanks to redditor TerraFlaeKSFL for taking the selfie and telling us where it is and the name of the store, Gamer’s Paradise in Chinatown.

Look what I found in Chinatown 🙂 from SpidermanPS4

Which I hadn’t really thought about but it makes total sense that FEAST would also be located in Chinatown with Martin Li owning it.

I did have the thought of just loading the finished file or any of the DLC files so Walker could see all of the contents of the bags but this way is more rewarding and fun.

Walker wanted to see Spider-Man hang upside down so we had to find an overhang to make that possible and then Walker wanted me to hold him upside down and take a picture of him looking at Spider-Man being upside down but I couldn’t both hold him and take the picture.  My wife tried her best but by the time she was in a decent position, I was losing my grip and the tv picture didn’t show up well in the photo either.  We just have too many boxes but we’ll try it again in our new place.  It was sure cute at the time though.  Of course, I had him in the position and then he had the thought to have a picture taken.  He’s a heavy 38 pounds right now and I’m not getting stronger as he gains weight, which I thought would be the case but I have to start lifting weights as I don’t want these days to be numbered.

Now I really regret not taking the extra 15 minutes just to do the Shocker fight.  It was pretty hard the first time around, I died several times, as it took me a while to figure out how to web sections of the wall and throw them back him.  The auto-saving was pretty generous but I’m not sure if that holds true for New Game Plus and Ultimate mode.  I did do so much better with the Kingpin fight, but Shocker is really the first boss you come across in the game.  Then the game takes a break for an hour before the next big showdown.  Maybe I’ll try it tonight if I can find those other backpacks.

When I was playing, my main priority was listening to J. Jonah Jameson’s podcasts and barely cared about collecting backpacks or landmarks (public or secret), I just did them for the costumes and moved on.  Oh, and I cared about getting the newspapers too.  Turns out, you store them so even if you don’t see all of them, they are in your collection, you just have to manually look at all of them to get the credit for all 53 newspapers.

January 2019 Free PSN Games

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

I’m going to try to do at least a heads up post about the free games, I meant to do this much earlier but you still have time to download the free games from the PlayStation Network.

Thanks to redditor, Bocarprowler, for providing the original links and creating a thread with the games.

[NA] January 2019 PS+ Games Available Now @checkout (individual links to games included) from PS4

PS4

STEEP

Portal Knights

Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion – PS4 Link, free game is for Vita but Crossbuy with PS4

Amplitude PS4 – It isn’t suppose to be a crossbuy, but for me at least, I can download it after claiming the PS3 version, YMMV

PS3

Zone of the Enders HD Collection

Amplitude

VITA

Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion – Vita link, game is Crossbuy with PS4 (doesn’t appear free yet, PS4 version is)

Super Mutant Alien Assault

. . .

I haven’t had a chance to play any of these but I’m glad people were able to figure out how to get Amplitude to be cross-buy.

Here are some helpful videos to better explain what the games are like:

Thanks to PlayStationGrenade for hosting their always excellent video summary of the game.

Thanks to Platinum Chasers for reviewing the games with a trophy hunter’s experiences.

. . .

Steep is a snowboarding game.

Portal Knights is a Minecraft inspired game with a storyline.

Amplitude is a Guitar Hero rhythm style game but with space ships instead of a guitar.

Fallen Legion : Flames of Rebellion looks like a fun RPG game.  Doesn’t seem like that much information is available about the trophies.

. . .

I’ll probably try Amplitude and Fallen Legion eventually.

We have officially one more month of PS3 and Vita games.  PlayStation is going to stop offering these games in March but we’re still not sure if that means March offers PS3/Vita games or if that is the first month that those systems will no longer offer those games.  I’m hoping for a stellar March to send those systems off with a proper farewell but I have no idea what games would even fall in that category.  If it is Uncharted : Golden Compass, I might have to buy me a Vita that month as I want to play that game so much!

I’ve seen people getting the plat for Steep in r/Trophies

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

But everyone says how hard it is.  I might play Steep just for the fun of it.  I was so excited about Spider-Man that I knew I wasn’t going to make time to play any of these free games.  Maybe in February I’ll start that goal.  I guess the best thing for me would to make this type of post to get the word out on it (not like PlayStation really needs my help with that) and then try to make an end of the month post where I provide my experiences with the games.  I supposed I still have time for that with the January games but it doesn’t look like that will ideally work out at this time.

. . .

One of the things that is getting in my way of games is my current obsession with PlayStation Access.

Here is their video for the January games:

Thanks to PlayStation Access for hosting their video.

I went through a spell of watching WatchMojo videos and I kept being shown videos for PlayStation Access but I ignored them until I finally decided to give it a chance.  My favorite is Rob as he’s the one that makes a Top Seven list as the Friday Feature.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=playstation+access+rob+pearson&sp=mAEB

There is a playlist of 199 videos, so he has been making them for at least three years and I’m slowly making my way through them.  There is just so much content and with only ten to fourteen minutes per one, one would think I could knock them out easily but it isn’t easy to navigate through the 199 video link as my phone isn’t keeping track of where I left off.  It does help that some weeks, I feel I could skip them or I just take the suggested next video but I’ve been enjoying my time with the backlog.

Rob makes me wish that I enjoyed Metal Gear IV more, as I just felt lost while playing the game.  I do want to pick up Ni No Kuni II one of these days, as that game looks like it will scratch my itch for a good RPG and Persona 5 seems a tad intense for me.

He’s also a huge Final Fantasy fan and back in the 90s, I chose Chrono Trigger (I have no regrets) but it made Final Fantasy the other title and I never got around to playing any of them besides a copy of the first game that I bought at a yard sale.  Even that game, I felt lost with but I was young and dumb.  I also tried Final Fantasy IV that came in the Final Fantasy Chronicles (that also included Chrono Trigger for the PSOne).  I told myself, once I was done with Chrono Trigger, I’ll commit time to play FFIV but I never did.  I started it but then I just wanted to play more Chrono Trigger.

Rob reminds me of myself, an older game (but he’s younger than me by at least three years), has a young child at home, a wife, and a full time job.  He’s usually committing on how he doesn’t have much time to commit to video games but he still plays open world games but he also has an appreciation for shorter more narrative driven games, so we share that in common too.

I like how I’ve gotten to know the other hosts as well through Rob’s videos.  I still haven’t learned their names but I like them when they show up.

They have an app you can download if you are in the UK but it isn’t available in North America, which is a lost opportunity, I think.

I was reminded they have a PlayStation theme that I downloaded forever ago as it was free and it had “PlayStation” in the title.

I found a helpful website:

https://yogscast.fandom.com/wiki/PlayStation_Access

That’s Hollie (who just left the show, being replaced by Rosie), Rob, Dave, and Nathan.  Dave seems to be the main supporting player in Rob’s videos.  I’ve named them as per the bottom image, odd how they flipped Dave and Nathan there.

I tried to add Rob as a friend through the PS4 but he’s not accepting friends but I can follow him and that’s good enough, I also follow him on Twitter too.

While trying to struggle to find the Access app and to befriend Rob, Walker Dennis thought Rob and I were friends already so when I commented to myself but aloud, about how the friendship was block, Walker was quick to say “Look, Daddy, best friend who block you.”  And whenever I am watching one of the videos, he still comments on it, so that’s been fun.

I don’t use the theme, of course, but it is nice that it is there if I want to use it.

. . .

I’m in the end game of Spider-Man, I’ve defeated Electro and Vulture and I’m moving onto Rhino and Scorpion next.

We got Walker Dennis the Lego Batman Story Pack for Lego Dimensions so we’ve been playing that too.  I also just bought him the Back to the Future level pack through eBay so I’m waiting for that to come in as well, should be next week.  I’m also bidding on a Green Arrow for $15 (currently) and I’m willing to go to $20 but $30 is asking too much.  Supergirl goes for $50 usually and that’s even way more than I’m willing to pay for a single character.

I’m thinking of buying one a pack a month but we’ll see if I stick with that or not.  We are so close to getting all of the DLC trophies and I really have my sights on Fantastic Beasts as it is the final story pack we don’t own so that one I’m committed too.

Walker really wants Beetlejuice too, as Powerpuff Girls’ red brick provides a big head mode and Bettlejuice offers a Tiny Head mode.  Plus, I still regret not just buying it when I had it in my hands at Wal-Mart.  So I refuse to buy it for more than ten dollars and I’ve seen it for that much on eBay so it is a matter of time now.  Maybe in March.  As long as he has the gold bricks to instantly upgrade the vehicles, I’m tempted to buy him a new pack.  He has 52 currently, so that’s five vehicles or items so we have time.  Plus, each pack essentially offers more gold brick opportunities so it all works out.  He had 104 gold bricks at one point but after Christmas, he had seven until we started actually playing the levels.  It is so satisfying getting all of the minikits from levels and rescuing characters.  Besides the trophies from level and story packs, it pretty much is only for bragging rights at this point.

We still need the following level packs:

Midway Arcade
Adventure Time
Sonic

We are at 86% completion rate though, which is cool.  But we’re so close but these last three are usually $40 each and that’s way too much but if I can bid on something low, that’ll be nicer on the wallet and my mind.

Walker really wants Emmett, who also goes for like $20 and we don’t really need him with how Chase McCain does everything Emmett does and so much more, but with Lego Movie 2 coming out, it makes sense that Emmett is in demand.

Walker is obsessed with Lego Batman right now, watching the movie on VUDU whenever he gets the chance, so he really wants the Joker and Harley Quinn back and Bane too.  He also wants Excalibur Batman, who isn’t even in that movie!, but he comes with the Sword ability that Finn also has, so that’s at least one benefit to Excalibur Batman.  Well, until we buy the Adventure Time pack.

Once I finish the Story Packs and get the three Level packs, I’ll concentrate on opening up on the worlds we don’t have access to such as

Jurassic World
Scooby Doo
Harry Potter
Gremlins
Teen Titans Go
Wizard of Oz
ET

So those are my Lego Dimensions goals.