I went on a slump with the posts because I was attempting to find something that’d work well for my MMO needs. In short, this is what happened: I quit wow; I picked up Champions Online; Champions Online was great fun; Champions Online decided to start doing nightly maintenance and told me they hope I can play during different hours, since I gamed during their downtime; I quit Champions Online; I picked up Fallen Earth, going against everything I had said; Fallen Earth was great fun and I’m still playing.  That little string took a long time and well… more money than it should have.

Besides Fallen Earth I have picked up Brutal Legends and must say this is a grand game that is affectingly fun. It blends a lot of different game styles into it and at times, that really sucks. I generally don’t like the RTS style game moments the game has, even though it still handles very much like the action game it generally is during these moments, which makes it just that much harder to truly be strategic during these moments of the game. Most of my RTS fights have consisted of gathering up a few resource areas, building a bunch of grunts, and then just zerging towards the bad guys. This tactic seems to work more than it should too. All in all though, Brutal Legends is a fun game that I plan on completing. Not a lot of games have what it takes to truly grab onto my ADD like brain and keep it going, but then again, not a lot of games let me kill people with the power of metal either.

Borderlands, which I am going to get for PC, lands next week and boy howdy am I excited. I’ve always loved the desolate post apocalyptic stuff and that’s what Borderlands is, with a handful of Diablo style game play. I say Diablo because if I said something like Titan Quest, some would get it but many would snarl because I would be ignoring “the original” or something. But yes, Borderlands, it has a lot of what I want, about the only thing I could ask for is custom characters. I’m a sucker for character creation in games, and not just a little bit. Any game that has that ability in it instantly gets my attention. Oddly enough, my excitement for Dragon Age: Origins has gone downhill in a hurry here lately, even though they apparently have some magical machine in which you create characters.

We also ended up getting a new microphone for group recording here as well, so don’t expect anymore of staticy group crap we posted last time. I actually felt sort of bad posting that, seriously.

Have fun kids!

I am currently playing Champions Online. A game I bought and honestly figured wouldn’t be as good as it currently is, which shows how much I look at where my money goes. I expected it to fall under the same spell as City of Heroes and get old very fast, but it didn’t, which is amazing. I’m really really enjoying myself. If you want to know my name shoot me an e-mail and I will let you know. Here is a hint, so far I have never seen another 1) Rat person 2) tunneling travel power user.

There is another MMO on the horizon, not even a week out from launch, that has my eye as well. It doesn’t just have my eye, it’s petting it and whispering sweet nothings into its ear. This one is Fallen Earth, a game where you can’t ride a mount forever and have to worry about how much gas is in your car. I know that doesn’t sound exciting, but come on, that’s fucking awesome. From the last video I saw they said that almost everything you can find in the game as far as weapons and armor goes is craftable, and honestly, it’s about time for that as well. This game has a lot of promise I think, and I’m tempted to get it too and try out the pre-launch stuff, but… I really shouldn’t, well… because…

DDO is now free… sort of… unless you want to truly play the game as it was meant to be played. Thinks like Warforged, Drow, and the Monk are kept from you unless you want to drop some money on them or pay for a monthly fee. Bah I say! I am currently installing it as I type this out to give it another go, but honestly I don’t expect anything truly grand out of it. Unless they flipped it upside down and made a whole new game out of it, like they did with Star Wars Galaxies, except that destroyed SWG, so we’d want the opposite of that. Granted, I’ll admit, that I only played during the beta, but it felt terribly broken and… shitty.  I was terribly sad to see D&D get such a bad MMO, it tore me up inside.

One game that isn’t an MMO that I will most definately be picking up Tuesday is Scribblenauts for the DS.  I don’t know what it is about this game that seems so appealing, maybe because I want my brain to explode from not being able to figure out a puzzle because I suck at spelling. I have seen a lot of the Vs. style videos this game has produced, and I think they are great. My favorite so far is the devil vs. a priest in a tank, which was a draw due to the fact the devil couldn’t hurt the tank and the priest didn’t want to bother with the devil, odd.

Tuesday I don’t plan on doing a lot besides spending money, having a few drinks with my Father, and recording for you people. Look at that, I’m filling my Father’s day with joy and going out of my way to give you my beautiful voice. Be grateful!

Have fun kids.

After finishing the first few Harry Dresden books by Jim Butcher I realized one thing, I can no longer read books like I use to. I realized I was reading sub-par books and that things far far better were out there for me to read and enjoy. I began to stray away from what I now call, cookiee cutter fantasy, and read things that have no orcs and are generally set in the modern world. I fell in love with first person writing and well, let me tell you, first person modern world fantasy is a very slim market. I then trudged back into the third person world and read some Simon Green, specifially The Man with the Golden Torc, and enjoyed it. Following the idea that the widely accepted third person format was once again alright to read I picked up some books on a whim. By whim I mean they were on an endcap at the bookstore and I had looked at their art adoringly before and decided to just snag them.

These were the Night Angel books, and I must say I regret not getting them earlier. The Night Angel series was something beautiful to watch unfold, or read rather. It handled a trilogy release in a way that I felt was correct and rarely saw. The main character throughout the books is constantly developing, shifting how they act and feel based on what happens to them and those that are around them. I can list the amount of books that show this adeptness on one hand, and still have enough fingers to hold and drink from a can of soda-pop.

Rather than shoving a world down your throat from the first chapter and making you understand it or drown under the constant torrent of geographical references, you are allowed to ease into the world. There aren’t 800 cities you’ll have to know, and you won’t be getting exact distances between places. What this means is that you’ll become very familiar and comfortable with the world insanely quickly, won’t be breaking out the graph paper to make your very own map versus the one in the book and seeing if they match up, and by the end you will come to see some of the regions of the world in a warm loving light that one rarely gets in books.

Many of the characters in the books are fleshed out in such a way that you’ll think you know everything about them even when very little has been revealed about their past. This is due to their social interactions mostly, but yes, they will reveal a lot of themselves over time. This is contraty to a lot of books where you get something like this: “Meet Harvey. Harvey is skilled with swords, was born 27 years ago before the onset of a harsh winter, has 7 brothers and 264 sisters who all are named Jennifer, loves tacos, and has a dark secret… psst, his secret is about him having to murde 232 of his sisters… and a box of puppies that he was deeply attatched to”.

Another thing I felt that this series did very well was slowly introduding the readers into that worlds version of magic and how it works. For a long time there wasn’t any, and I rejoiced in this, and when some was finally revealed I felt an exhileration, since it was apparently such a rare thing to see. What it really turned out to be was with how things were handled with the characters, they just never ran into any. It wasn’t a dodge on the authors part, it was just very viable for there  not to be any for a large part of the first book. The slow introduction to magic works much the same way as the slow introduction to the world and characters, it lets you soak it all in and understand it fully. By the end of the third book there is magic being tossed around like candy, but that is very much due to a few specific characters too.

You may feel a twinge of fear due to the fact I have said “slow introduction” to each one of the topics, and are afraid that these books are poorly paced. WRONG! Wrong I say. While these things are presented to you just as fast in other books, that make your brain twitch, their slow leak of information with each reference or mentioning makes it seem far more natural and pleasant. The overall pacing in these books was wonderfuly done and I am eagerly awaiting the next piece of work Mr. Weeks puts together.

What I am trying to say is if you are looking for a new series to read, want it to be fantasy but not contain orcs, have interesting and deep characters, then go pick up these books. This is a series I can and plan on revisiting many times, which in the end will destroy the physical bindings on the book itself. Seriously people, read these. If you can’t buy, then go bug your local library, but you should buy them. That way he can buy cereal to eat.

See what overthinking something does? Stop it!

I have been playing some Fable 2 lately and I finally got around to beating it. Hooray! I am now buying my very first download content, which is the Knothole Island add-on. I feel accomplished in doing so, since I have never done said buying before. I also ended the game with my buy being hugely obese since it seems the only way to lose weight is to eat celery. I guess running all over the contenent and swinging a sword like a crazy person just doesn’t do as muc as a good vegetable. Which is what I’m off to do right now, go run around and eat celery till my guy isn’t a tub of lard anymore. ugh.

Have fun kids!

I personally haven’t been up to much, besides the lame movie for my birthday I had the spark plugs and wires in my car replaced, joy! The auto shop also decided to leave it outside, unlocked, with the keys in it. Thanks guys, I will be talking to you in the morning, I’m looking forward to it. Actually, make that afternoon. I work nights for the most part so I sleep into the day, meaning that when their day is winding down and their in a bad mood already I’ll show up just starting mine in a very good mood. I prefer that one, otherwise rolls are reversed.

I have taken notice of a little site out there that Matt introduced to me, it’s called Uncrate, and it’s magnificent. It shows a lot of cool stuff, and really, it’s about time Star Wars went this route. Sadly though, this means they are running out of ideas and things are going to close up soon. Sometimes they have cool books, other times awesome machines, and well… sometimes things that are just weird, but in a manly way. I also found an article about machines that will break your brain.

I have been openly bugging Robert Bohl on twitter about hurrying up on misspent youth the game, and it has helped apparently. His author edition/tester edition is done. If you can get in a game with feedback to him in the next month, you should get in touch with him. You can do that through his site or stalk him on twitter. Okay, I don’t expect anyone to read this who isn’t already bugging him but meh, it’s worth a shot. Don’t say I never did anything for you now Rob! …. just in case you try to say that, but I don’t see him trying to say I never did anything for him.

Alright, I’m out! If you want to try and get in on a game, let me know and we’ll see what we can set up.

Have fun kids!

In other news, I have become an avid watcher of woot, and got myself of all things, a zune. Do you know what this means? I’m going to start listening to more podcasts! Seriously, as a podcaster I really should listen to more. Before I got my zune and started using its associated software, I listened to maybe one a month. Now on the other hand I have six different podcasts lined up on my zune for listening. At the gym, podcasts are great.

On an odd note, this is one reason I don’t like spiders…. they can get huge.

Also, I picked up Watchmen and Overlord 2, PC edition, today. I will say a few things about Watchmen. Firstly, it looks great on blu-ray, mmmm… friggin glorious. When I was walking around Best Buy I noticed that they had some creepy asseditions of Watchmen out. The normal editions were almost out when I walked into the store and there were piles of those, gee, I wonder why. Overlord 2 on the other hand, is fun as crap. I never did play the first one so this is my first trip into its little world. It’s a fun and comical game really, and I suggest you go find a demo for it and give it a try. If you do have a pc that can handle it, get that one…. and the fact the PC version is $20 cheaper than the console version helps a lot. That $20 might even cover the cost of say… your Watchmen movie?

Have fun kids!

P.S. The Eberron Campaign Guide came out yesterday, go pick your copy up! If you’re me… your nearby stores are all sold out and you now hate them.

In light of things I have begun reading Engadget much much more and well, I’ve come across a lot of cool things. Most notebably would be a certain story that made me laugh… hard. The idea that Apple called and asked Microsoft to stop playing it’s laptop hunters commercials is hilarious, I don’t care who you are. I’ve always felt that apple’s computers were horribly over priced myself, so I find this story extra great. I also make sure to never ever buy an apple product, mainly because even though they say that ipods play nice with windows, I refuse to attempt it myself. It’d be like someone telling me that Pepsi with a splash of Coca Cola is delicous. I trust not those people.

Also, Engadget shows things occasionally that make me drool and pass out due to excitement. I’d link it but I don’t feel like searching for it but they talked about a netbook that had both XP and Android on it. Sweet.

I’ve always been a reader of Kotaku, and I feel like I need to read more of their sister sites now…. but that’d require more time and reading… do I really want to do this? hmmm.

I might have mentioned getting the chance to play a game of Blazing Rose by Edward “Sabe” Jones and absolutely loving it, so I suggest you all go and at least pick up the ashcan pdf of the game. At first I know all of our audience will shy away from it, but I garauntee you that this is one heck of a fun game once you get into the mood and swing of things. Last I knew, his full version should be done soon, and I will let you all know when it comes out.

If any of our listeners… well… readers really, are from Iowa and or plan on being at Anime Iowa this August let me know, I am going to be there myself and am more than willing to let any and all of you buy me a drink(s).

Have fun kids!

And as usual, twitter and e-mail stuff would go here, but you know that by now.

 Honestly, I find their new format for the classes 100% annoying as shit. Before you would get a pdf that looked very much like a class entry in any of the standard D&D books (except for it’s page size). Now instead of getting power names and descriptions, you only get the names of the powers and are forced to go to the online compendium to actual read the powers. I can understand why they increased the costs of Dragon honestly, but to then go and put that sort of crap into the articles is unacceptable. I get why they did it, it prevents people from having an account, downloading it, then spreading it out to the world since they’ll need login info to look at the powers and so forth. If they continue to do this, I will without a doubt cancel my subscription.

In lighter news Push came out on dvd, and I loved it. I have heard a lot of good things about it and it came through. I’ll admit that I am a junkie for that sort of thing though. People who can throw lightning, fly, ride in big robots, etc is all fine, but you show me a bunch of people than can move stuff with their mind and I generally scream and wet myself in joy. If anyone has any suggestions of other movies, books, etc that I should look into for my addiction, let me know!

Construction on Matt’s basement continues and thus we don’t have a solid place to record. I am going to attempt to see if he’ll let me help him on Saturday a bit, but I’m sure him and the county will have something to say about allowing me to use sharp objects and hammers.

The 4th of July came and went, and I also forgot to send out messages to all my friends on the following day that it was the 5th and that they should stay safe while they have fun. It’s hard to tell, but I’m one of those people that is on the recieving end of a long line of texts every holiday, stating that it is the holiday. I have decided to start sending out messages on random days about it being that day as well, but I doubt they’ll get the point.

The real reason for me bringing up the 4th was to point out while everyone else was out blowing stuff up and cuddling under the stars, I was stuck at a wedding. Granted this wedding had free beer and many old friends, so it was a good time. A total 3 of us decided we needed to make a pyramid from out beer glasses, so we did. A 3d one, so it was very large. The cleanup crew actually laughed when they got to our table, and called out their friends.

Have fun kids!

P.S. Don’t forget you can follow us on Twitter and send us any show suggestions, comments, etc to our e-mails.

We will be seeing it with mostly our gaming group, two of which you have heard before. Guest Host Andrew will be there and the faint voice in the background called “Mike” is going to be there too. Before that though, as men, we will go get food. Since I am not driving I plan on consuming some adult beverages and hitting on the waitresses heavily.

In other news, I have read Mouse Guard and loved it, the art is what truly got my attention though. The idea of mice with swords is also awesome. A certain set of podcasting friends have recently done some actual play podcasts on the Mouse Guard RPG, which is awesome. Awesome because you can hear it before you buy it but also because there is a friggin RPG for Mouse Guard.

Remember, you can e-mail either of us or follow us on twitter. I’d list that info here but peh, we have a contacts page and twitter feeds/links right on the site and it’d take effort to link that stuff up. Much less effort than typing all this out, but well… I’m complicated like that.

Have fun kids.

The books I went looking for aren’t widly known and didn’t sell out, they just never arrived. It’s taking over a week for books to hit the shelves now? Last book I wanted I was able to go in and buy on its release date rather than over a week later. If it wasn’t for the fact that they are horribly overpriced I’d just get a kindle and avoid all this shipping bullcrap in regards to my novels. And in all honesty, no, I wouldn’t even then, a book just isn’t a book unless it is on 100% real paper. Paper as in the kind we murder trees for.

My escapades weren’t a total wash out though, I did end up buying 25 pounds of rice and the 20 pound bag I bought is perfect rice for making onigiri. Now all I have to do is go get some stuff to fill them with. I do believe I have some tuna somewhere. And  yes, I already have the nori needed to make them complete. Although honestly I prefer them without the nori. Meh, to each their own. I already know I’ll be getting strange looks for eating them at work.

Besides that I spent a good portion of my day tearing through Infamous like a starving animal does food. I could have easily put the controller down at one or two points, but I really wanted to know the ending, and the ending was spectacular. The twist at the end is only hinted at a mere 4 seconds prior to it unraveling, and you have to have a quick mind to pick it up, and one that think up super weird twists quickly.  I most definately will be doing this game over again to see how it plays as an evil person, then choosing the good ending.

At the end, you get the ultimate decision of good and evil and even though I read the good one, and meant to hit the button for the good one, I sorta… instinctively hit th evil one. whoops. The bad thing about that though is that since you power up your abilities purely on the good or evil side, if you do the switch at the end, you are fighting the end boss with your powers at their lowest, unless you have some extra points to spend.

This isn’t a problem though, they foresaw this and made it very pausible to beat the boss as a guy with tons of powers at their lowest.

Infamous was far longer than I expected too, which was good. If you have a ps3, go get this game. It lets you throw lightning, nuff said.

-Jason-

I’m pretty sure once I get my oil changed and I pick this game up I’ll make the drive back to my house to play for a few hours rather than getting some much needed sleep before my evening plans kick in.

I’m looking forward to my oil change purely because it’ll give me time to read my book since whenever I go to play a “single game” of Team Fortress 2 it turns into… well… not even “a single hour”, usually it’s confined to “a single couple of hours”. I got my first two item drops last night though, ignore the fact I think they’re both worthless. Give me medic drops! It’s rewarding to be a medic since no one else is, people tend to love you for it.

I’m out for now, gotta get dressed and ready for the day. Have fun kids.

-Jason-

For anyone out there who still enjoys one of the most well known animes out there, you have the final releases of it’s remasted set coming out today as well. I personally plan on picking them up. Honestly I haven’t watched through all of them yet, but I plan on it now that most of the shows I watch have had or will have their season finales soon. What that means is I might have to go back and revisit some favorites.

Next on my table to watch is Taken, a great little movie that I watched back when it first came out and loved it, but then again I am a sucker for revenge movies. Seriously, if you have any revenge movie suggestions, let me know.

I started reading the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks here about a week ago and even though I’m only a few chapters into it I love it. I don’t know why, I have been spoiled by first person novels a bit and started to sneer at the standard third person narative, but this stuff gets my approval. Based on what I’ve read on his site, this is the only thing he’s written. Huh.

 I was going to put something up about a web comic or two here but honestly, I’m really tired. I had no idea how long writing and linking a post could take if you wanted to toss in a lot of links. Either way though, I’m going to bed so I can get up and get the firmware on my phone updated… crap, I need to back up that stuff first.

Bah!

-Jason-

Anyway, you can follow my adventures on my twitter page. Hopefully this’ll be worth the sudden crazy I’ll be going through.

Also, if you follow me on twitter and your twitter is that of a an artist of some sort or company, let me know and I’ll gladly follow you back. I’ve had a few seemingly random followers along those lines so far.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-

Even though Seth on the easiest setting can be beaten without too much trouble, i decided to try something out. I found a 100% sure fire way to get Akuma and Gouken in just 3 short arcade runs once you unlock the rest of the characters.

Firstly, do exactly as the blog from capcom told you to do, just add in something I like to call “the safety switch”. What do I mean by this? What I mean is have a 2nd controller hooked up, connected, whatever, to your console. What this allows you to do is interrupt and basically restart a fight if things aren’t going your way by pressing start on the 2nd controller, then you can quickly beat the uncontrolled player and get back to things at hand.

When you hit start on the 2nd controller, win, and go back, it’s as if you just started that fight for the first time. Didn’t get the first attack you needed that fight? Hit start. Looks like you’re going to lose? Hit start. It’s that easy.

By abusing the system properly you won’t have to go through arcade over and over again to get Akuma or Gouken. Now I know this isn’t fun and is horribly cheap, but it allows you to fill up your roster quickly, in case you have friends coming over or what not.

There you go my little children, the “safety switch”.

-Jason-

P.S. Yes I did end up unlocking Akuma and Gouken this way when I was testing them but have since gone though arcade again, fought them both, and beat them both, as a regular person would. Now to try it on a harder difficulty setting.

I’ve gone through the game with a few people to see what they’re like and when I found out one of my favorites went more or less untouched I hoped online with him to find out that well… I suck. There was the occasional fight where I put up a struggle and almost won, but generally I found people who were all sorts of crazy good at Street Fighting who put me in the corner where I apparently belonged. The thing about these people is their little signs would be the ones that say “go easy on me” or “in training”. Only one of the people who stomped me into the ground had an appropriate sign, which said “don’t hold back”, and I can see why.

One of my friends is a big Akuma fan, and I can see why, Akuma has always felt horribly unbalanced compared to a lot of the other characters in my opinion. Which means when he comes over here soon to play he’ll expect me to have Akuma unlocked for him, I’m thinking I might not go about that. Not like I use him, besides, he’s a pain to unlock.

What I am saying though is if you have Street Fighter 4 for the PS3 and want to get a match in, hit me up. I’d love to get a game of Street Fighter in with you guys or most any other game really. My PSN is sarantis and Xbox Live is sarantis118. Feel free to add me, just make sure you let me know you found me here.

I look forward to being pwned by you all.

-Jason-

Season 4.0 is out now, and it is available at many fine establishments. If you are dieing to get into the series then there is an amazon specific bundle that contains seasons 1 through 3 ine a nice little package. You can snag it at amazon or target only apparently.

Don’t forget, that in less than two weeks the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica will air on the Sci Fi channel. It retuns on the 16th of January to be exact, that’s a Friday by the way. In the meantime you can watch their 10 part webisode series, which isn’t bad at all. 

If you need to catch up on the last few episodes of season 4.0 before you watch 4.5 (aka The Final Episodes) then you can hit up Hulu if you don’t feel like buying season 4.0. Besides, Hulu rocks. Seriously, they’ve become better than I remember. Keep on truckin’ Hulu.

Well, that’s all the news for now. Have fun kids.

-Jason-

P.S. If everything goes right, you may have a new podcast come Monday.

In the meantime a new article has come out from Wizards regarding the next new class from the players hanbook 2. If you read carefully, you might have noticed this class listed in the minotaur article. That is now 3 out of 4 roles with the primal power source. In case you’ve forgotten you have the druid for controlling, barbarian for striking, and now this class for defending. There weren’t a lot of nature based classes before, back in the 3.5 ed days, and I really wonder exactly what they’ll use for the leader class role. Hmm… speculation time!

We talk a lot about TV shows and just in case you might have forgotten, a lot of them are finally in swing again after the holidays. Namely: House M.D., Dexter, Sanctuary, and the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Now these are really only the shows I watch heavily and almost religiously for some.

I’d talk about exactly what I’ve come to love and hate about the Clone Wars series, but I’ve been talking too long already.

Have fun kids.

-Jason-