Humble Bundle - Through April 28th, 2015 - EA

   So the newest Humble Bundle is sponsored by EA and their Origin game client. The newest bundle comes with some great newer games and some great oldies that are classic fun. For only the price of about $5.00, you get these all these games:

• Peggle
• Bejeweled 3
• SimCity 2000
• Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger
• Wing Commander 4: The Price of Freedom
• Ultima XII: The Complete Edition
• Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault - War Chest
• Command & Conquer: Generals + Zero Hour exp
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Dragon Age II
• Dead Space 2
• Mass Effect 2
• Plants vs. Zombie: Garden Warfare

   It comes with a couple of smaller simpler games "Peggle" and "Bejeweled 3," a couple of great games for passing the time in between queues for LoL or CS:GO, they don't take up too much time and are simple fun. Then come the oldies, some great classics: "SIMCITY 2000, Wing Commanders 3 and 4, and Ultima 7." Not much to say about them, I recommend trying them for yourself ^_^. The next couple of games are Medal of Honor: The Allied Assault, the war chest no less, comes with the main game plus two expansions for it, which in those days, were real expansions, not a small little pack of like 4 multiplayer maps. *Cough Cough* Call of Duty... *Cough* When the expansions actually gave you more campaign missions and story to go off of. Anyhow... The next is also a fan favorite, I actually haven't gotten to play it yet but I'm hoping to get a little review on here before long because it's such a favorite. "Command and Conquer: Generals" has a few of my friends hooked so I can't way to give it a try. Some bigger name games that have a large following are the Dragon Age games, in this case, "Dragon Age: Origins" and "Dragon Age 2." These games originally advertised something that made it seem like it was a different kind of game, (Open World) and I didn't play very far before I got pissed off and sold it due to being upset that it was wrongfully advertised, however now that I own them for cheap and I know what to expect, hopefully I will be able to play through them without assuming open world, meant what the literal meaning is. Without that stigma, I've so far had a very good time playing through Origins and will probably write a review of sorts when I get well enough into the story. Next is Dead Space 2, a fantastic suspense filled adventure where you play as a man, Isaac, who is going to save the galaxy, as well as himself from his own demons tormenting him over the death of his girlfriend. Will definitely be getting to a review with that one. Mass Effect 2, unfortunately I haven't gotten the opportunity to play before, though I've heard so many good things about it, so soon I will definitely be picking up the controller for this one after all the positive feedback I've had. Finally, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. I actually picked this one up for PS4 a while back and couldn't regret it. The comical and cartoony graphics really made this game for me, a long time fan f the PvZ tower defense series on mobile platforms and of course PC's. I'll definitely be hitting up a review for this one after a while as a much more, at least for me, fun version of Team Fortress.

Console Wars - An Absolute Waste of Time

   Short post today...

   I've recently had a lot of time to think about the console wars and how they are going. I would like to flip an argument that I've made in the past. The reality is that consoles: Wii U, Xbox One, and Playstation 4 are all awesome consoles and should be treated as such, they are a huge leap into the future and are very likely to continue to do very well. I've really grown tired of the war between the consoles on which one is best. Each system is great in it's own way and should be respected as equally as the next. Each one has something it's better at than the other, but they all do it very well.
   The main reason I write this article is to make the point that we need to stop arguing over which one is better, and just love our preferred console as much as we want, or even better yet, LOVE THEM ALL! I want everyone to stop wasting time arguing over chat's and forum posts and spend those few extra minutes playing on your console, and LOVE IT! Stop wasting time and enjoy that console.

Grand Theft Auto V - The Problem with Online Heists

So I'm sure all of you have heard of the Grand Theft Auto series. It's been a cornerstone of sandbox style video games for a long time and particularly started gaining a huge following with GTA 4 and it's side games, Stories from Liberty City, etc. Anyhow, not what I'm talking about, maybe another day. GTAV is out now (on PC), and it's been hugely popular with 3 successful launches. For those that might not know, the game has actually been out for 2 years already. It was first released on Sept 17th, in 2013. The game originally was only released on PS3 and Xbox 360 exclusively, with an enormous anger storm ensuing from the PC gaming crowd. The game then re-released a little over a year later (Nov 18th, 2014) for only PS4 and Xbox One, as you can already guess, this pissed off the PC gaming crowd even more, prompting several more (As there had already been ones created) petitions to put it on PC. The game finally released on PC about a week ago, on April 14th, 2015. The PC crowd couldn't be happier with the result. Many were still angry that it took so long to release on the platform, but hey, with higher tech possibilities, you need more time to develop it, especially because they had been in the process of developing an expansion to online play options called "Heists." Heists have become hugely popular as a different option to the typical "missions" that are available for online play with other people typically. The mission outcome was a couple-a few thousand dollars to complete a mediocre task that was typically pretty simple to finish, but it was a huge grind to be able to repeatedly do these missions over and over without any background really as to why it had to be done (story wise). Heists are online missions where (Small spoiler) you have 5 you do in order, then you can redo them in any order you want. The first one is a short 2 man heist that just gets you into it and is actually Very simple as long as you don't go in guns blazing without moving from cover to cover. Simple to complete for a decent reward (about $115k total payout; this cut can be split between the 2 members up to, 30% minimum for one of the members). A nice little payout for about 20-30 mins of time to spend on it. Maybe shorter if you can move quickly. And the other 4 heists require 4 members to complete and have Several setup missions that you must complete before the "Finale" of the heist can be completed. I really love heists, they're a lot of fun and you get a lot of backstory on the campaign, its pretty great. However, there is one big problem with heists. The requirement of party members to perform certain tasks makes it very difficult to complete it efficiently without any mess-ups. The heists are Not easy, and the setup missions are almost as difficult as the finales. They're not something you can jump into a random group, not say a word to each other, then knock out on the first try, if you can, you got a group of skilled people that you are Very lucky to have ended up with randomly, so congrats. A typical problem that you run into is that you Have to be able to communicate effectively, so you really need a mic. That's probably the easiest way to complete these mission fast without any mess-ups from random members. Being able to talk to your team to explain what needs to be done and what the plan is to do this right, is the only way to win with random people. My advice is that you wait until you have some friends otherwise, being able to communicate a plan and trust these people to carry it out properly is the best way to handle heists!

I'm Back....! And I've got a dream...

Been a while since I published anything so I figured it was about time to get back on track. Today's topic is focusing on a dream I have. This has to do with League of Legends and ranked, specifically solo/duo queue's.

I've been thinking a lot about it lately and just recently got back into ranked/LoL in general. Took a small hiatus where I avoided league quite a bit but just recently got back into it very heavily. A dream I have as I am currently watching a Voyboy stream on Twitch.tv is that I will reach Challenger rank this season. Yeah Yeah Yeah Sean, that's every LoL player's dream, cause it's a shortcut to the pros and being famous, etc etc.... Well see, that's not the reason why I'm fighting for challenger ranked, my reason is because I want to get into the loading lobby with all the other Challengers and sometimes Diamond players or master tier, etc etc, and them look over and see... "WTF? This guy was Gold last season, and now he's Challenger? What an improvement!" I long for that sort of recognition, sure it'd be great to get famous and all of a sudden be making a decent living off of streaming and YouTube videos an such, or being recognized at Conventions, sure, that'd be an amazing experience. But really I just want the recognition that I've improved that quickly and that much, more specifically within my close friend crowds and such. Anyhow, here's a shout out to all the people with a similar dream and a little motivational push to keep following that dream. I wanna see you when we get up there to the peak. Good luck dude, see you there. (Special shout out to the girls who want this too, we need more women in professional eSports, and I want to see you there too!

That's it for me today, short post just to ease back into this. Check back tomorrow for little bit of coverage on the GTAV release on PC recently! Game on bros!

Why is the Next Generation Not Backwards Compatible?

   Some of you may have wondered this, even been extremely angry about this (like I was) when you found out that the next generation was not backwards compatible. Well, after I took some time to think about it, I started to understand. So let's start at the beginning of the understanding that I began to have. Why do you think the consoles aren't backwards compatible? Lets thing back to all the series you've ever played, for example, since it's one of the easiest to show for, is the Call of Duty series. When you bought Call of Duty: Ghosts, your goal has become to enjoy that game as much as possible, right? It makes sense, you want to get every bit of enjoyment out of it as you can since you spent a ridiculous amount of money on it yeah? Alright, well consider this. What if you hadn't been able to purchase it? You would still be playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 right now wouldn't you? Or would you really? The thing is, a while back whenever I was playing Black Ops 2 after it had come out, I wanted to go back and play the original Call of Duty: Zombies maps from World at War. Then I wanted to play online since that was the only CoD that I hadn't ever prestiged on because it was so difficult on that game for some reason, plus I LOVED the guns and maps from that one. But the thing is, when I tried to play online, I spent 30 minutes just trying to find a match with at least 4 people in it. The problem was that everyone had moved on to the new games, and not anyone wanted to play the old ones anymore. So let's put this into current perspective. Sony and Microsoft both want their consoles to finish out their 10 year life cycles. (For those that don't know, they've only fully completed about 8-9 years of their life cycles) They say they'll keep releasing content, and good content at that, for a while until finally dropping them to focus fully on the "Next Generation Consoles." Consider the fact that everyone decided to go pick up the next generation consoles, but those few thousand people that can't due to monetary issues. They would go pick up the next Call of Duty, and not be able to play with anyone online, completely ruining their console experience, and possibly making developers decide that it's not worth making the games for that generation anymore. So the PS3 and Xbox 360 would pretty much end their life cycles 1-2 years early, and lose a lot of fans due to their lack of caring for that generation. Now, the consideration that I have with this extends a little farther. There is a possibility that the consoles indeed ARE backwards compatible, though that feature is not yet, what we can call "Unlocked." There is a possibility that a small update later on will be able to allow the consoles to play previous generation disks, especially because both generations used Blu-Ray technology to play back titles. Given this is just a speculation and probably won't happen anyway, there's no reason to fret. Sony has already announced and talked a lot about their Gaikai streaming service that will be launching not to far in the distant future that will allow your PS4 console to play previous generation content including PSOne, PS2, and even PS3 games. This is something I can't wait to see what they do with it and hope that it won't be a huge fee added on to your already subscribed PSPlus.
   Back to what I was originally talking about to just wrap this up. If they allowed the consoles to be backwards compatible, then the games like CoD: Ghosts would lose all the people playing on that console and everyone would be unable to find lobbies to play in and enjoy their old consoles.

   Thanks again for reading, and please continue to feel free to let me know about topics you want to know more about and giving me stuff to argue over or even just talk about with everyone. Furthermore, I may start doing YouTube Vlogs over this topics as well that may go deeper into it, or just provide a faster way to get the information. Let me know what you think about this idea in messages or comments. Thanks and hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving/Black Friday, and find some great deals on Cyber Monday!

Console War News

   Alright, so right out of the gate let's talk about the recent controversy between the Xbox One and the Playstation 4's versions of CoD: Ghosts to run at different resolutions; Xbox One running on Native 720p, upscaled to 1080p while the PS4 runs natively at 1080p. The easiest way to explain this is by talking about the system specs. Unfortunately for Microsoft, their console lacks in power what Sony's does not. Call of Duty: Ghosts was made to run, engine and software, at a certain minimal amount of power. The Xbox One did not have the power to run the incredible cutscenes, or engine, or whatever it is that they couldn't leave out. Due to this, they reduced the native resolution to 720p and upscaled it to 1080p just so that it could compare to the PS4's native 1080p resolution.
   Next I want to compare the launches of the consoles and their numbers.
PS4
-Units Sold in First 24 Hours: 1 Million
-Countries Released in: United States, Canada
-Percentage of Consoles Affected by Hardware Problems: Less than 1%
Xbox One
-Units Sold in First 24 Hours: 1 Million
-Countries Released in: United States, Canada, Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Spain, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
-Percentage of Consoles Affected by Hardware Problems: Low Percentage

I only wish that there were more specific numbers for the Hardware issue affected consoles. Anyhow, as you can see from these results, the Playstation 4 sold just as many consoles as the Xbox One, however, it was only released in 2 countries while the Xbox One was released in 13. Both companies are handling their replacements/repairs of consumers consoles that have issues very well. Although according to a quote from Microsoft, they recommend sending the Xbox One back through Amazon if you ordered there for faster results, and because the console will be replaced instead of just repaired. Begs the question, why would a middleman be the person to talk to about replacing a broken console, and how many consoles did Amazon have left over that they would be able to do this? Previous understandings were that all of the pre-order limits were filled. Was this information falsified, and if so, why?

Microsoft: Carousel King

   When you were young, maybe even now, what was some of the first thoughts when you heard the word Carnival? Some may think roller coasters, ferris-wheels, and rigged carnival games. For me it was the a carousel. I remember all of the different things to do at the carnival, yet so many people were drawn to the carousel. I look back now and wonder why? All the carousel did was allow you to ride a magical unicorn in a circle, sometimes bouncing up and down to a pretty tune. The reason why this is a rather unconventional start to an article, is because I want you to understand the connection I'm making with Microsoft and their way of addressing the public.
   Alright, onto the point. In a recent announcement by Microsoft's director of product planning, Albert Penello claims, "I'm not dismissing raw performance. I'm stating--as I have stated from the beginning--that the performance delta between the two platforms is not as great as the raw numbers lead the average consumer to believe. There are things about our system architecture not fully understood, and there are things about theirs as well, that brings the two systems into balance." Well, thank you for that enlightening message Mr. Penello. Microsoft has, from this statement, told us nothing as to why their system is better, and why I should spend the extra $100 for theirs instead of my already pre-ordered Playstation 4.
   Let's take a step back so we can get a broader picture of what I'm talking about. First off, the "average consumer" as they call us, knows the raw system specs, the PS4 having much better specs when comparing the GDDR5 to DDR3, giving the PS4 a huge lead on the XBone. Now, Penello is claiming that even though the PS4 has higher specs, the systems will still even out in the long run. Now anyone that knows anything about RAM knows that GDDR5 is better than DDR3 because of the (lets call it Long Term Evolution for the time being) LTE of it's hardware, while DDR3 will stay strong and is more balanced generally. (I apologize for the quick, terrible explanation, just trying to condense this explanation for those that might not know the difference)
   Now, closer to the point, (really sorry for the sudden jumps all over the place, just trying to get a point across quick) Microsoft continues to "carousel" their customers with promises of a dream console, yet they can't/won't tell us why/how it is a better console. Albert Panello dismisses the difference in the technology in the systems, but I think that Howard Stark said it best when he said, "But I'm limited to the technology of my time." This quote just goes to show, no matter how brilliant you are, unless you have the technology to back up what you've invented/designed, you cannot move forward.
   Microsoft is leading everyone around in a circle, promising them that it's the console of their dreams, but not Why. When Microsoft can tell me why I should cancel my preorder for my Playstation 4 in lieu of their console, and it's legitimately better, then I will. Until then, I will continue my argument in lieu of Sony due to their complete explanations as to why their product is the better choice.

   Here's my challenge to you Microsoft. I hope someone will read this. When you can give me an argument that shows the XBone is better than the PS4, then I WILL cancel my PS4 preorder, and exchange it for your XBone, also taking back all the negative arguments I have made towards your company and your console, explaining, that I was wrong. I'm waiting.