Miscellaneous « Robot Claw

Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

2015 in Games

Tuesday, March 1st, 2016

Well it’s a bit late in coming (blame Australia and the blogtastrophe), but it’s time once again for my annual summary of game playing and purchasing!

The numbers were up this past year, with the game-playing drought of early 2014 a mere memory now. Also last year was our first year with the PS4, but as it turns out it wasn’t the system that captured most of my time. In total during 2015 I purchased (or obtained as gifts) 69 games for a total cost of $2006.27, or an average of just over $29 per game. The numbers were up on 2015 by about 50%, but the average cost of games actually decreased. In addition during the year I purchased two new 3DS systems (a ‘new 3DS XL’ for me, and a 3DS for KLS).

As a percentage of total purchases, here’s the chart:

And as percentage of total dollars spent:

That latter chart includes the cost of the two 3DS systems, which is why the 3DS portion is so large.

The most notable element of this data is the abundance of PS Vita, both in terms of games (32) and dollars (almost $800). This system, which was by many accounts DOA even when I purchased it last year, has become a bastion of imported Japanese RPGs, and while many of the games aren’t stellar quite a few of them are very good and I’ve been having a blast buying – and playing – all of them. Very quickly my Vita library has become quite large, and I’ve still got over a dozen unopened games on my shelf (and more arriving every month) that will give this system legs for a long time.

The other notable is the Wii U. Not much to say there, except that the system is not so much dying slowly as has never lived in the first place.

As usual, I’ll comment on my favourites in a moment. But first, four particular games warrant mention…

The first is Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer for 3DS. This is a charming ‘game’, with beautiful presentation and a massive – massive – amount of content which was tragically marred by some very poor design decisions. Essentially the game is about interior decoration, where you design and furnish houses for the other animals in the game. But the designers chose to omit such obvious things as budgets or rating systems or any sort of currency or systems that promoted gradual improvement. At best it became a toolbox where you just designed homes for the sake of it, and became stale very quickly. A very missed opportunity, and a great disappointment.

The second is Super Mario Maker for Wii U. It’s a wonderfully designed product, and I love making courses… but I don’t have anyone to play them and strangely I don’t particularly enjoy playing the (often terrible) courses designed by random strangers. That said Nintendo has done a wonderful job evolving the product since release, including adding content in the form of special downloadable courses, and I suspect I will periodically return to this one to see what’s new.

The third is Witcher III (PS4), a titanic game with mind-boggling graphics that looks insanely fun and would certainly have made the list below had I played it. But I didn’t, because it’s KLS’s game 🙂

The last (and you can sigh here) is the eternal Puzzle & Dragons (iOS). Yes I’m still playing it (spoiler alert: last Saturday was my 1000th consecutive login) and yes I still love it. The game has evolved so much over the years, and has become so generous that I haven’t actually spent any money on it for going on 18 months now. I’ll likely play until the servers close years from now 🙂

As for my favourites, well it was a year of great games, so I’m going to upgrade from three to five. Here they are in reverse order:

5) Terraria (PS4)

I got into this pixel-art 2D ‘build-em-up’ early in the year and love, love, loved it. The PS4 version cost me an absurd $4.98 in a sale and I must have easily gotten 100 hours out of it. I built a massive castly, dug a shaft all the way to hell and even had my own mushroom farm. I made so much amazing gear, killed every boss and did and saw everything in the game. Highly recommended.

4) Axiom Verge (PS4)

The work of a single guy, this 2D Metroid clone was the game I was waiting for and never knew existed. Again, it dominated my time around Thanksgiving and I loved every last second of it. For an inexpensive downloadable game, this one is a no-brainer.

3) Diablo 3 (PS4)

The PC version was good, the PS3 version better, but the PS4 version is just superb. I played more of this on PS4 than any other game this past year, pushing my Wizard and Barbarian characters (that had been imported over from PS3) to new levels of insane power. The game very recently updated with a brand new patch, so I’ll be returning to this one soon. Or maybe not, since who know’s how long this next game will last…

2) Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U)

When Xenoblade came out for Wii a few years ago it blew away those who played it. Which weren’t many, since it was released here in limited amounts. But it was a masterpiece of a game full of charm and innovation that I remember very fondly. This is the sequel for Wii U, and it’s even better. I’m currently playing it, 80 hours in, and I feel I have only scratched the surface. It’s basically a single player MMO with all the systems you expect from the genre, set in a truly massive world with some of the very best graphics I have ever seen (on the Wii U!?!?!). It’s easily one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played and I don’t think it will ever be surpassed on the Wii U. A monumental achievement in game design. And yet, despite all this praise, not my game of the year…

1) Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (3DS)

You knew it was coming didn’t you? When this game came out my savefile passed 100 hours in the first 10 days. Think about that. I played like a man possessed, but as much as I accomplished there was always more. This is easily the best MH game yet, and the addition of online play directly from the 3DS (a first for the series) took the gameplay to an entirely new level. I ended up putting the game aside after about 250 hours of play, but returned to it after my Oz trip and have amassed another 60-odd hours since then. SFL and I have been hunting regularly every week and it just keeps getting better. At this rate it won’t just be the game of 2015, it’ll be the game of 2016 as well 🙂

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Time | 1 Comment »

NXT Albany

Sunday, February 28th, 2016

Last weekend we went to a wrestling show! Specifically we went to see NXT, which is the division within WWE devoted to newer (up-and-coming) wrestlers. They don’t tour much at all, and the tickets were cheap!

When we arrived we joined a massive line outside the venue (Albany Armory). While it was an hour before the show, we were still about 2 blocks from the entrance and the line just grew from there. Thank god it was unseasonally warm out!

Once inside our seats didn’t even exist! However the usher set us up with fantastic seats right near the ring, just to the left of the above shot.

We didn’t what to expect, but since we (as it turned out mistakenly) thought there was another show elsewhere on the same night we thought the roster would be half ‘stars’ and half no-names. So when the first match was Asuka vs Eva Marie and the crowd exploded, it was quite thrilling!

All the stars were there: Apollo Crews, Carmella, Alex Riley. We had a perfect view (we could even hear the wrestlers talking to each other). The crowd was full of energy and enthusiasm, which went into overdrive when Enzo and Big Cass came out:

The matches were great. It turns out wrestling is much more fun than on TV, and the lack of colour commentary makes it easier to notice just how good these guys (and girls) are at performing and entertaining the crowd.

And yes the fighting is ‘fake’, but it’s still physical and athletic and impressive to watch. Here’s KLS doing just that (while eating some chips!):

The crowd was large, and the house was packed. Here’s a shot I took during intermission:

After the break they rolled out the big stars: Sami Zayne, Bayley, Samoa Joe and Finn Balor. You could barely here anything for the endless crowd cheers and chants. It was a lot of fun!

That’s Sami Zayne throwing ‘The Drifter’ Elias Samson. One day one of these guys may be headlining Raw or Smackdown. I can say “I saw them when they played the Armory in ’16” 🙂

As I said, it was a fun night.

Posted in Celebrity, Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

I’m Back!

Sunday, February 28th, 2016

Guess who’s back?

Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

The Great North Walk

Saturday, January 9th, 2016

I caught a bus yesterday to Speers Point, a town on the shores of Lake Maquarie.

I was there since I wanted to do the portion of The Great North Walk that connected the lake to Newcastle. The entire walk runs all the way to (or from) Sydney but I’d never done any of it.

The lake was beautiful and I briefly considered abandoning my plan and walking to Belmont. However I was looking forward to a bush walk and followed the markers guiding hikers along the trail:

After a bit of walking through the suburbs, I reached the bush and this sign:

I was a little surprised at this point since I thought Newcastle was only 8 km away and Charlestown 3. Apparently this leg of the walk was a bit longer than I expected. I didn’t know too much about the route except that until Charlestown almost all of it would be in the bush. Here’s the path vanishing into the trees:

The first half hour or so was fun, if a little hot. The bush was thin, the path wide and dry, and the songs of birds were everywhere. I watched carefully for snakes but only saw lizards. I’m sure snakes had their eyes on me though from hideaways like this one:

The sun rose higher and it got hotter. Getting close to an hour into the bush the path had started breaking up and patches of mud and even puddles (remnants of the recent storms) were to be seen.

As I pushed on through spiderwebs and knee-high grasses it became increasingly humid and wet. It was clear that the path – now much smaller and slightly overgrown – had been a creek only days prior. My shoes sunk into mud.

The puddles became larger; the mud deeper. Along with the birdsong I started hearing frogs. I was drenched in sweat; my bottle of water long since empty. I’d been walking for almost 2 hours. Where was I?

Around this time I saw the only other person I would see on the track, an elderly lady heading from Dudley to Toronto (a considerable distance). We had a chat for a while and she was very afraid of snakes, telling me this section of the track was known for them. I told her I’d seen none and that puddles and mud would be her biggest problem. She told me Charlestown was only 20 minutes away. Hallelujah!

That’s how the track went under the freeway. The tunnel was long and very dark, and I can only imagine what sort of evil creatures dwelled at to bottom of the sickly creek that passed through the tunnel as well. This was only 10 minutes or so from Charlestown, but even at the very end the trail had surprises, including sharp rises and drops under a near-rainforest canopy.

I shuffled along at double my usual speed, eager to put this hell behind me.

When Charlestown Square finally loomed into sight I was overcome with joy. Although only a little over two hours it had been one of the most unpleasant bush walks I’d ever done and although I’m glad I did it I know I’ll never tread those paths again!

I had initially planned to walk the entire (15 km?!) trail to Newcastle. That plan was quickly abandoned, although as fate would have it I ended up walking back another way anyway.