Posted by Kevin Carruth on 2012-01-03 @ 10:41:32
So 2012 is here! What's happened since my last post?
October:
Annual Halloween Party was a success. I finally assembled a Kingpin costume, which came out pretty well. The biggest surprise of the night was Shane & Forrest coming as Punisher & Daredevil to match me (they surprised me with this).
Battlefield 3 was released, and has consumed most of my game-playing time since. I am loving it. We've got a good solid squad going most nights, consisting of myself, Wade, Thomas or Kyle. Forrest played a little until Skyrim came out, and Dustin played a bit as well, but I think Star Wars: The Old Republic may be taking up his time now.
November:
Assassin's Creed Revelations was released. I quite enjoyed it. Set in Constantinople, it's supposedly the third and final chapter for the Ezio character, but they kinda left his story hanging and then made an animated short film depicting the conclusion to his story, which is available in the collector's edition of the game (which I didn't get), or on the Playstation Store for a few bucks (which I haven't bought). Other than that small disappointment, the game was great.
December:
Star Wars: The Old Republic was released. I tried the open beta for two weekends, and didn't hate it, so I preordered it. Played through the early access period with Dustin and some other 2dPers, but became bored with it all too quickly and returned the unopened discs when the early access ran out. With all the hubbub about it being super-expensive to produce and whatnot, I was really hoping for a genre-altering game but what I got was a fully voice-acted WoW clone. I'm just not an MMO player anymore; until someone moves away from the ability hotbar and behind-the-scenes randomized combat determinations, I'm not going to bother. Also, the link to Star Wars is tenuous at best; they've set the game many years before the existing films (makes sense, in order to have a blank slate in which to work), and as a result you (the player) will never see any characters or events from the films.
My Playstation 3 died on me last month as well. I went to turn it on and got a yellow light, followed by a blinking red light. I quickly discovered this is what the internet has dubbed (with typical dramatic flair) the "Yellow Light of Death", and that it has been quite frequently affecting many of the original breed of PS3s (which mine is). Essentially the CPU or GPU becomes disconnected from the motherboard due to solder overheating and subsequent degradation. Sony can replace the unit with a refurb, but it only has a three-month warranty and you lose all your data. So I instead opted to try a do-it-yourself method of heating the board in order to 'reflow' the solder. This succeeded at resurrecting my PS3 long enough to back up the data; however, in the middle of my subsequent console-to-console transfer to a new PS3, it died again, corrupting both hard drives. So it's now kaput. Only real problem there is that no DLC gets restored from backups of a different console, so I had to download all 300 something Rock Band songs. Not fun, given Sony's poor download UI, but I did it and am back up and running.
So that's about it for the end of the year. I turned 30 over the holiday, whoopee. Had a pretty good haul this Christmas; got several blu-rays, a couple of board games, a bunch of books, and Uncharted 3, which I haven't started yet but will likely do soon.
Posted by Kevin Carruth on 2011-10-25 @ 15:29:37 , edited on 2011-10-26 @ 16:04:57
Last week, I got my copy of Batman: Arkham City, and I've been playing it all week. Awesome game. Its predecessor, Batman: Arkham Asylum was one of my favorite games of all time, and one of my most played (I think I've played through the story about 7 times), so I was quite excited about this sequel. And it didn't disappoint. The quasi-open-world of the cityscape was a bit daunting at first, but soon became very fun to play in (lots more flying and grappling). The gadget count has been nearly doubled, and the combat has several more special moves that are very handy.
I do have a complaint or two, though. Mainly, the skins / preorder bonus system. I think the game is bugged about the alternate Batman skins I unlocked after beating the game, because I cannot find any way to access them in any game mode, and my Google searching shows that others have the same problem. So I'll wait for a patch to fix that, but it's disappointing nonetheless. My main gripe, though, is the preorder bonus bullshit that's becoming all the more frequent and this game did. They developed six alternate outfits for Batman, one of which is the classic '70s blue-and-grey (which I grew up on), but its only available if you preorder from Toys R Us. Of course, I only learned about this after I had my copy of the game, but that's my own fault for being uninformed. But it annoys the crap out of me when they do stuff like that; sure they'll offer it as DLC, but they always wait so long I'm usually done with the game by the time it comes out. Luckily, with this game, I'll easily want to play it again and I'll just wait till December when they release the costumes and play it again then.
And now, today, Battlefield 3 is being released. The Battlefield series has been a favorite of mine since its inception, and the only ones I've skipped were Battlefield: Bad Company (console-only release), Battlefield: Heroes (free-to-play micro-transaction driven game with TF2-style graphics), and Battlefield 1943 (which just seemed like a half-assed effort). My brother and I have played the crap out of every major PC-released Battlefield game since Battlefield 2, and we played Battlefield 1942 on LANs quite a bit previous to that.
So, needless to say, I'm pumped about this one. UPS hadn't come to the house by the time I had to leave for work, so now I have to sit here through my meeting in anticipation. 5:00 can't come soon enough. First thing I'm going to do: go prone.
[UPDATE] So while amazon shipped it Monday night (the usual for release-day shipping), UPS appears to have put it on the wrong truck or something. It shipped from Breinigsville, PA, but instead of coming south to anywhere in VA, it ventured west to Indianapolis, and then back east again to Columbus, OH, and hopefully it's now on its way here. Tracking estimates it'll get here tomorrow.
Posted by Kevin Carruth on 2011-10-11 @ 10:00:03 , edited on 2011-10-11 @ 10:02:59
So last week I mentioned a vibration my car picked up after a good whack going over a speed bump too fast (because I didn't see it). I took it to the shop, where they fitted a new 'harmonizing belt' and fixed the vibration. However, upon getting it back, a new noise was noticeable without the vibration; a sort of wailing or whining sound that rose in pitch as I increased my speed. So, I took the car back to the shop, and they isolated the sound to the rear differential, but they aren't sure what's causing it. They checked the fluid levels and topped them off, but the sound is still there.
So, they gave me some options:
1. Drive the car until it fails
2. Replace the rear diff with a used part ($2500+)
3. Replace the rear diff with a refurb part ($4000+)
Well, I'm not looking to spend that kind of money on this car, since I've been wanting to get a new one for a while now, so I guess I'm going to opt for option #1. I'm just gonna have to forgo long trips and such and try and make it to tax season to get my refund to put towards a replacement.