XCom Enemy Unknown

tl;dr  THIS GAME IS AMAZING GO BUY IT


...


So I've started playing XCom, if you didn't already guess that.

I was a bit skeptical at first, in fact, I played through the tutorial when I first installed it a few weeks ago and then just stopped. Mainly because I started playing a lot of League of Legends because a bunch of my friends started playing it, but I cannot justify putting this game down for so long.

Ok, so, it starts out. And you're pretty much just thrown into battle after a short cutscene. That's when I learned this game was a turn-based strategy game. See I had never played the original XCom so I had no idea what I was getting into. ARCH3R told me it looked like an amazing game, and he's usually right about stuff like that, so I got it.

So after a few tutorial-esque introductory bullshit you get complete control of your base, and your soldiers, and your research projects.

Man. I was expecting some sort of futuristic Fire Emblem after the first battle, but this game is much more in depth than that. One thing I know a lot of people love about this game is the character creation, but I'll get to that in a sec.

First of all, I would like to say, I hate games that try to let you micro-manage too hard. Have you ever played Age of Empires 3? You know that "Home City" bullshit? Yeah that was fun for like 2 minutes. If I wanted to skill build I'd play a goddamn RPG for fucks sake.

But XCom... Oh god.. it's just not comparable to anything I've played.

Honestly, I know the game mechanics are nothing revolutionary, but just the game feel and everything is so well done. This is the first game where I've cared about my characters, whether or not I succeeded at missions, how my base looked. All this bullshit that doesn't even really make a difference to the actual gameplay. I was confused and aroused. It was magical

Ok, so I've got my base, I'm researching only weapons (because everything else is pointless amirite) and killing aliens. That's a pretty sweet combination if you ask me. It's like Civ5 meets Fire Emblem meets Gears of War. And they had a long discussion about starting a business together and what key business elements they could each bring to the business table.

Business.

Ok, character creation.

By far the best part of the game in my opinion. Not just because you can customize each individual member of you squad, and change their loadouts, and armour colour, and race (yeah you can actually change their race, it's hilarious), but because it makes you care about what happens to your team after you've created them. You've given them all defining features and names, and nicknames! You don't want to make these motherfuckers die! Then you'd have to make more!

So naturally, when I got a hold of this I created the dream team:

Biggie Smalls, Bubba Sparxxx, Daft Punk, and Michele Obama.

What could possibly go wrong?

I'll fucking tell you what, Bubba Sparxxx got ambushed and took a plasma shot to the face. And Dumbass Michele Obama missed a shot at pointblank range and got poisoned by a slenderman.

Slenderman is legit in this game, look at this shit.

Look at that lanky-ass motherfucker.

They refer to him in the game as "Thin Men". Are you kidding me? You could at least try to conceal the fact you're ripping the character off.

They actually freak the shit out of me though so well done.

So like I said, it's hard losing squadmates. I was actually upset when members of my main team died. I mean, I expected it, and I was careless, but still. There's even a little memorial page in the barracks of your base with the names of all the dead soldiers from your campaign. It's beautiful. I'm not very far in the game, but I can imagine they'll be a cutscene at the end where it'll show all those names. That would be hilarious.

I do have to say though, as enjoyable as it is, creating new soldiers is pretty tedious. I'll usually have like 2-3 custom ones on my team and then just fill up with randoms because I want to get back to playing the game.

Also I would like to say how the mission system is kind of bullshit. Once the story progresses the missions get harder and harder, makes sense right? But if a large chunk of your team dies, which has happened to me several times, it makes it near impossible to get through the missions with low level casuals named "Feng Seng". Seriously, who created the naming database for this shit?

Good game overall though, 2 thumbs up, probably like an 8.5/10 just because of the mission system and there were quite a few graphical flaws. Speaking of which, the graphics are nothing spectacular. I mean they're nice but I honestly expected a little better.

In other news. I hit summoner level 21 in League the other day. Almost ranked! Yay!

Also WarZ is getting better everyday, like they're actually patching it daily it's awesome. And it makes it easy to laugh at the people on reddit who said it was a scam.

Peace, internet

-T

Everything went According to plan

Well.

Nope.

Not quite.

The WarZ alpha launch was pretty interesting, I found out that streaming/recording anything from the alpha breaks the NDA for the game. So I didn't do any of those things, even though no one would have seen it. Once beta is up though you better believe we'll be posting some content.. I promise..

-T

MAYBE

Hai

Let's start off with my absence from this blog. I haven't really been feeling in a blogging mood for quite some time, but I figured why not, I have things to complain about to the internet!

While I never thought that something like the state of my internet could make me legitimately sad sometimes, it actually does. I think it's because basically my whole life I haven't really had a good stable fast internet connection, and when I was going to college last year I did, and it made me feel really good and then POOF moved to make money in a shitty place that uses satellite internet. 

Okay I'm done. 

Maybe I'll post later.

Maybe.

-A

Zombies and Live stream!

Oh hey there internet.

So, haven't posted anything real.. I guess ever, this blog has just been bullshit since the beginning. However, something is actually happening now!

So this new game is coming out (well in alpha stage) on Monday October 15th called The WarZ

It's basically DayZ, but it's a standalone game, not a mod. And it's supposedly been in the works since before DayZ was a thing. I actually have no idea but that's what I was told. Go check out the forums there's a bunch of cool shit on there.

But anyway, A and I (huh, A and I.. AI.. that's kinda neat) both preordered this game with legend status. That means we get to play right when the alpha becomes live. So on Monday night, we will be streaming.

I've already set up a twitch account: twitch.tv/tikatee, and we tested it out a few days ago and it appeared to be working fine.

So be sure to tune in, let's say around 8PM Atlantic time for some zombie killing fun.

Of course no one reads this so I won't expect m(any) viewers.

Peace.
-T

Campooter

And here I am!

As promised I'm making a little posty-post as a little bit better of an update.

Here are a couple pics of my parts and build, pre and post-op:

Other than a few minor hiccoughs, the build went pretty smoothly and is running great! I still can't get over how fast shit loads from my SSD!

In terms of gaming, like I said before playing a lot of different games just because I can, and spending too much money for games online...

Started playing League of Legends like I said, and I really want to get good at this game. I'm still very low level so not even close to getting ranked or anything like that. Hell I haven't even done any meta-gaming so I pretty much have no idea what I'm doing. I've mainly been playing Mid Twisted Fate which is hilariously fun because most of the people I play with/against have no idea what he can do. I've got a couple friends who are higher up who have been giving me League tips so hopefully once my school schedule calms down a bit I'll be able to get decent.

I should be playing more SC2, actually I haven't played it once on this computer yet. Maybe I've just got heavy ladder anxiety or something, I dunno. I guess we'll see how that goes.

My main priority currently is school unfortunately so I can't commit as much time to gaming as I'd like, but what can you do?

I can't remember if I mentioned this on here yet but I'm currently in my 2nd year of a Computer Science degree. So that's what I do... Maybe I'll start blogging about coding or shit that I do in that aspect...

Speaking of school I better get back to my assignments.

Signing off

-T

Fuck

Okay so yeah, It's been like five-ever since I toasted so I thought I send out an update.

I'm tired as fuck right now and just remembered about this blog so I'm not actually doing a real post now, just a quick update.

My gaming computer is built (I named it Azazel <3) and I've been gaming like a motherfucker ever since, and spending more money than I actually have. I should not own a credit card.

But yeah, just finished my first play through of Borderlands 2. A ordered it but he's a nigger and is still up in Iqaluit so he hasn't gotten it yet, once he gets it I think we're gonna start playing together, I might even record it. Ain't that some shit.

Other than that... Playin some Diblow tree, Canter Stroke GO, I don't fuckin know, bought the latest humble bundle a few cool games in there. Started playing League of Legends and am starting to get decent with a few characters, probably gonna start playing SC2 again soon now that I can take a break from Bjordernalds.

But yeah, that's about it.

I'll post more later, like later in the week probably.

Fuck it (and you)

Yeah so, I'm still in Iqaluit, and I said I wasn't going to post until actual things started happening, but you know what? You fucking know what internet? Fuck you. I'm blogging anyway. Deal.

The main reason I wanted to write is because it's beginning to look like it's going to take a bit longer than I imagined to get my gaming rig set up. Mainly because of online stores being retarded.

Ok.

I'm going to tell you a story.

Here we go:

So, on Monday August 20th, 2012 I ordered my computer parts. I did this via 4 different sites for better pricing options, free shipping, etc. These sites were:

Amazon,
DirectCanada,
Newegg, and
NCIX

Now, since I'm living in Iqaluit, and I only actually got my credit card a few months ago (while in Iqaluit), I neglected to change my billing address on my credit card to my address down south. Unfortunately I submitted my downsouth address when ordering the parts because I wasn't thinking about it. I got a couple notifications about payment failure and realized my error, so I called up my bank and got my billing address changed. Then the fun begins.

Here's what happened with each site:

Amazon:

I don't know why, but for some reason Amazon accepted my incorrect billing information... This might be because I have successfully made purchases from Amazon using my credit card but it still seems a bit off to me.
Also, when I was ordering the part (I only ordered my processor via Amazon) it said something along the lines of "Ships within 1-3 business days" or something similar. When I checked my order status after putting it through though, it said, "Shipping soon, expected shipping date September 17th, expected arrival date September 20th".
The shit Amazon?
I'd say that's a bit longer than 1-4 business days.
Now, I love Amazon, and I'm pretty sure it's going to ship earlier than posted, it's just a bit annoying I guess. But if it does take until the end of September to get here I'm going to be a little pissed, even though there  really isn't much I can do.

DirectCanada & Newegg:

I love Newegg, and I've never ordered from DirectCanada before, but my experience with them as of my current order is so far positive. I'm really bad at forming sentences, that just sounds retarded when I read it back to myself Jesus..

But yeah, after changing all my banking information I basically just resubmitted my orders and they went through fine, I'm expecting delivery from both of these sites early next week.

NCIX:

Fuck.

Ok so, same deal with DC and Newegg, they didn't accept my credit information, which is totally my fault and I can't be upset about. What I am upset about is how long it took to deal with this. Here's how it went:

• I didn't have time to call them, and there is no way to manually resubmit your order so I put in a ticket with them with a little message basically saying, Hey I fucked up can you try it again now?
• I got a reply the next day (because I sent in the request at night) saying they would try to revalidate my order
• I got an oh so familiar email from them saying my credit information was incorrect.
• Now, at this point I know for sure that my billing address was changed because I had already made successful transactions from 2 other sites. So I submitted another message in my ticket telling them this and to please try it again.
• They tried again and failed (it's about 4 days after my other orders have gone through) and they told me "When we contact your bank they tell us the information is incorrect".
• I called up my bank again and verified my billing address is exactly what I told them, and of course it is, with the exception of the rural route number (which is can be found from someone's street address, you don't even need this when you're mailing something to someone, and I never told my bank my rural route number, they found out what it was based on my street because you can fucking do that).
• I asked my banking rep if the rural route number would affect an information verification and he said no (no shit). He asked who was trying to verify information with them, I said NCIX, and he said that they have no record of NCIX attempting to retreive my credit info...
• A little pissed, I message back to NCIX telling them the rural route number, and they resubmitted my order.
• The next day, it finally went through! My billing information was verified! Must have been the rural route number or some shit.
• That night I received an email saying I required "Order verification". What does that even mean?
• Basically they wanted to call my house and give me a PIN (they wrote it as pin number which almost killed me) which could be put into their site for verification. Only problem is I put my Mom's home phone number, down in Nova Scotia, because that's where I thought I would be if any problems came up.
• So I emailed my Mom and ended up having her write down the PIN and email it to me, which I then submitted, and then the next day it was verified! (Still hasn't shipped yet)

As big of a hassle that this was, NCIX has pretty great customer service (online, I kept going in circles with the robot on the phone), the guy I submitted my ticket to also answered me same day unless I sent a message outside of business hours.

Other than that, not a very interesting post. I leave tomorrow and will be travelling for like a day and a bit so that will be fun.

I found this cool site: www.snesbox.com. It's a web based SNES emulated that runs on flash. You can create save states that you save to an account on their site so you can continue anywhere you find a browser. Also you can save and share walkthroughs which is pretty neat.

That's all for now.
-T