A Green Mushroom

I managed to snag an NES Classic the week before Christmas and I've been playing it since then.  I don't want to review it or give impressions of it the way I normally would with a game or system I'm just diving into. The NES Classic is just pure nostalgia in and adorable little form factor.  It transports me back to being 5-10 years old again and I can't describe the joy I get from seeing my kids play it.  They're just so happy playing the same games I was at their age.  It's amazing. If you have any nostalgia for the NES you should pick up a Classic as soon as they get their stock situation under control.  You won't regret it.

Best Video Games of 2016 In this episode: Like a great many other podcasts, we are hopping on the “best of” train, and we’re gonna be discussing our best video games of 2016. Now this isn’t only games that came out this year, but games that we played this year. We were initially going to do a Top 5 each, but amazingly enough, there were more than 5 games we wanted to rank as we put together our best of 2016 lists. So...we have Top 6 lists for you! Hah! How’s that? We also do honorable mentions because we played quite a few games this year. Void more than Beej, honestly because of his Gamefly experience. He went through over 50 games using Gamefly, and you’ll have to listen if you want to find out which--if any--of the B-tier titles made it into his list. We also talk about the biggest letdowns of the year--but not much! We aren’t negative guys, and we didn’t want to dwell on things that aren’t fun to talk about. But we did want to mention the ones that were especially not w

I got my first Platinum trophy on PSN.  When I played through FFXV I did my normal thing of not caring about trophies at all.  I don't even look at them until after I finish a game, and FFXV was no different. But what was different was that when I beat the main story of FFXV I was actually close to having all the trophies in the game organically.  With modern Playstation games if you get all the trophies you unlock the "Platinum" trophy to show you've 100% the challenges the developers put into the trophies. I figured if I was going to do it for any game it should be a Final Fantasy.  So, after playing around with endgame content I wanted to experience I buckled down for a few nights and finished out the unique skills I needed to get to receive all the trophies.  While one of them was really tedious and dumb (Gladio's Survival Skill) I was really close to having the rest maxed out already.  Finishing it off wasn't too bad. Now I have my first Platinu

I really like Super Mario Run.  It's a great first real game for Nintendo to put on iOS.  It really feels like a Mario game even though it's kind of an infinite runner.  But it's not an infinite runner.  It's Mario. It was definitely worth the $10 price to open up the whole game.  One playthrough to the end of the levels doesn't take too long but the added value comes from the challenge of going back through the levels to gather colored coins.  If you manage to grab all 5 pink coins in one run you get a chance to try for the purples.  If you get the purples you can go for the black ones and those even remix the levels. There's also a Toad Rally if you feel like competing for style points against other people on the internet.  I did a bit of that one, but Mario for me has always been about the single player platforming.  That platforming definitely finds a good home on iPhones and iPads. Now I'm just really excited for the Fire Emblem and Animal Cro

Guards! Guards! was my very first Terry Pratchet novel.  He has multiple series that all gently interweave in the same setting and I was told this was a really good place to start. And I really liked the beginning of the book.  It was fun to figure out the setting and it was actually really humorous which isn't something I normally go for it books.  But in the first third of this novel it worked for me.  I also loved the ending and the way all the stories wrapped up. My problem was with the middle of the book.  I thought the whole novel could have been reduced in length by a third if a lot of the wasted time in the middle was cut out.  It's just a pacing thing. Now I'm thinking about possibly reading more of Prachet's stuff.  I just wonder if it's better paced than this book.  I can tell there are a lot of things in his writing that I like, so I should probably give him at least another novel to try to hook me.  I'm just not sure which novel of his I s

Coming back to Legion with my Druid instead of the Demon Hunter was a great idea.  It started out with a bang.  It had a really cool intro with a decent story and fun cutscenes.  Then I immediately got thrown into my artifact weapon quest which is probably one of the best World of Warcraft quests I've ever played. After that I was set up in my Druid class hall and I loved it.  The class hall idea is so good and I've always loved the Druid stuff in WoW so it completely clicked with me. I was surprised to be given a choice of zones after that.  After researching a bit I learned that all the content in Legion scales to your level so you get to pick the order you do the zones in.  There was one that looked Druid themed so I dove into it and played through the whole zone.  It was a ton of fun. After that I had a high enough item level that I started queuing for dungeons while working on the next zone. But that's where I ran out of steam.  The druid zone had such a go

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story In this episode: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story just released, and we had to do a podcast on it. Especially since we did   a pre-release show last week ! What is interesting, though, is that we have never disagreed so much about Star Wars. Despite being roughly the same level of fan (read: fanatic), the two of us look at both the SW universe and film/media in general in such different ways that our takeaways from Rogue One are starkly different. From the characters to the plot, to pacing and even whether or not this Star Wars Story needed to be told at all, we disagree on almost every point. We do, however, totally understand why the other feels the way he does. We have a long discussion about the Star Wars universe, what makes each of us love it, and why. Much of our disagreement around Rogue One comes from its dark tone, which influences our enjoyment on a film-viewing level, not as a Star Wars fan. We do, however, agree on a number of points abo

After flying through Mists of Pandaria in one play session I jumped to Warlords of Draenor.  The story hooked me much more in this expansion.  It feels like the first time that the World of Warcraft team was actually good at telling a story instead of just setting up a scenario. I bought into the premise and had a lot of fun the first night.  Playing through the start of the story with all the cutscenes and digging into garrison building was a ton of fun. Then night two hit and I was essentially back to grinding on quests and the dungeon finder.  The leveling was slower than Mists so I actually got to sample all the zones.  I think I 100% the first zone and I did random quests in all the others.  But again, dungeon finder became the most fun because the drive of the story got lost in the shuffle. Night three found me almost give up on WoW again.  I was getting bored.  Quests, gameplay, and dungeons were all blending together and just feeling the same.  But then a friend menti

After my trials and tribulations the first day trying to get back into WoW I dove into Mists of Pandaria with my main Druid who was sitting at the end of Cataclysm content at level 85. At this point it's obvious that they have made the experience grind in Mists of Pandaria much faster than it used to be.  I started shooting up levels just casually questing.  After only a few quest hubs I was able to queue for the dungeon finder and I started shooting up the levels even faster. I liked the setting of Mists of Pandaria, it was nice and relaxing, but the quest design and the zone flow wasn't any better than WoW used to be.  I mostly did the dungeon finder and that rapidly made me hit the Mists of Pandaria level cap of 90 in one afternoon.  I never even left the first zone for questing. But I had a ton of fun with the dungeon finder.  Dungeons were always my favorite part of WoW and it seems like that's still true.  I got to sample all the Mists of Pandaria dungeons t

After finishing up FFXV I had an itch to play an MMO so I bit the bullet and finally resubscribed to World of Warcraft.  It's been five or six years since I last played so I thought the best course of action would be to pick up the latest expansion and create the newest class at high level so I could jump right into the game. That means my first experience back was playing Legion as a Demon Hunter.  It did not go well.  The story was fine but I didn't actually like abilities and the way the Demon Hunter class played.  I did the entire intro which gets the Demon Hunter to level 100 and then I played enough of the expansion content to level up to 101... almost 102.  But the class never clicked with me. I didn't want to give up on my attempt to get back into WoW since I had just paid for the expansion and a month of game time so I moved on to the Paladin I had boosted. You see, to make a Demon Hunter you need a level 100 character on the server that you want to make

The Alcatraz series is the only writing of Brandon Sanderson's that I hadn't checked out.  I finally remedied that. Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians is about a kid named Alcatraz who suddenly finds out he has magic.  It's very Young Adult.  I like Young Adult books when they're closer to the higher part of the Young Adult age range.  Alcatraz is near the lower end. I felt like this was a book that my kids are almost ready for, not one meant for me.  Although I bet I would have loved it if I was 11-13. I wouldn't recommend this one for adults but if you have kids just hitting the Young Adult reading age this one would be a great book to pick up.

Before Star Wars Rogue One In this episode: We’re excited because a new Star Wars movie is coming out. We couldn’t resist talking about it before hand. This is not a spoiler episode, and we are releasing this a day early for you folks to listen to in time for the weekend’s releae. We will only be talking about stuff from the trailers and maybe a bit from the prequel novel. Next week will be our spoiler filled review of the movie. So stay tuned! Our worries and concerns are minimal. Void is worried we already know so much of the plot from the trailers and just context of the movie, but we think it may be very character driven. It may not be as good as the mainline Star Wars movies, which wouldn’t bode well for the other spin-offs, and he is also worried the tone of “war movie” may not fit the franchise as well as the science-fantasy does. Beej is worried there are so few Jedi and that aspect because it’s a major hallmark of the franchise. We know other media can tell

I've had a bunch of time to listen to audiobooks lately between doing all the sidequests in FFXV and trying to get back into MMOs.  So much of that time doesn't require listening to in-game audio. I decided to finally tackle a bunch of audiobooks that had been sitting in my backlog for awhile.  These are books I picked up in sales or as part of deals so they were super cheap.  They aren't ones I spent a lot of money on so I didn't have to feel bad if they didn't click with me and I put them down without finishing them. I rapidly removed them from my backlog as I started bouncing off of them.  For a lot of them it was obvious why they ended up on super sale, they just weren't great.  But for a few others they were just books that didn't click with me.  They had too generic of a setting, started off with characters I didn't like, or just didn't get to the premise fast enough. It felt good to check off a bunch of audiobooks from my list and I did

Pokemon Sun was fun for a Pokemon game!  It's still Pokemon but if that's what you're looking for then this is a really good version of it. In fact, I would say this is my favorite Pokemon game at this point.  I've played about half of the generations and this is the first time the story got me to care about it at all.  Plus, all the modern conveniences continue to roll in and make this game better. There's not a lot to say besides it's Pokemon again and it's a good one.  If you want to hear me go on about it for awhile then check out the podcast episode from a few weeks back:

The latest Star Wars Expanded Universe novel, Catalyst, is a direct prequel to the upcoming Rogue One out later this week.  It wasn't great. I mean, it was ok.  It wasn't horrible or anything.  But, it also wasn't a good book on it's own. Mostly, Catalyst is just an introduction to two of the characters that will be in Rogue One.  It follows Krennic (that guy in white from the trailers) and Galen (Jyn's father).  They both have an engineering background.  Krennic is a military man and in charge of overseeing the Death Star building.  Galen is a super intelligent scientist doing energy research with kyber crystals.  Galen is a pacifist who wants to use his research to provide power to everyone.  Krennic slowly ropes him into helping with the Death Star main weapon without Galen ever figuring it out. And that's most of the book right there.  Not a lot else happens.  There are parts with other characters but they don't really matter that much.  It'

I watched the first Mr. Robot episode and was really impressed by it.  I thought this was a show I can really buy into. But then I watched more. The show got worse with each episode.  It slowly becomes a story about drugs, addiction, mental health, and corporate america.  It becomes less and less about being a good guy hacker. I got to around episode 5 or 6 and just had to stop.  It seemed like the next episode was going to be about gang violence around the drug trade.  I've gotten my lifetime fill of those stories from watching Breaking Bad. So, sadly, Mr. Robot ended up not being for me.  After an amazing first episode it fades and turns into a show I'm not into.

The Holidays AND Final Fantasy XV In this episode: The holidays are stressful, and it’s hard to get your geek time in when you’re constantly juggling family responsibilities, the time changes, the darkness, the seasonal depression, the gift buying, decorating...well, you get the picture. For us, we have different mechanisms to help us cope with all this. Beej plays mindless adventure games and MMOs to escape the winter doldrums, as well as reading a lot more. Ebooks are especially good, as are digital comics for road trips. Cozy scented candles and meditation in low light also keeps him evened out. Void only has a few weeks off during the year, so he uses his extended Christmas break for some quiet time and extra reading. He also tends to power through games and spend lots of time gaming with his family. Being able to sit down and play games with his kids are incredibly soothing, and it’s good quality family time, too. Most of us have multiple family meetings, and geeking o

The Crown is the latest Netflix Original that my wife and I checked out and we simply love it.  It's a show about Queen Elizabeth and Season 1 is all about her transition to Queen when her father dies. It deals with British monarchy, has a fantastic cast, and is really good drama.  I don't know how to sell it though.  I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of a way to explain why I like it. I don't watch a lot of straight up dramas.  I guess this isn't quite that, since it is a historical piece and seems to be historically accurate.  Maybe part of the appeal is being an American and just not having a Monarchy.  It seems so foreign and interesting. But part of it is just that the cast, setting, and plot are great. My only complaint is that there's only one season so far!  We finished it and immediately wanted more! If anything above sounds interesting you should most definitely check it out.

The Genius Game is the best gameshow I've seen in a very very long time.  I hesitated to check it out after reading about it since it's in Korean and you have to read subtitles the whole time but... oh man, I'm so glad I pulled the trigger and watched it. They take a ton of modern game design and board game design principles, mix them with social situations, and do amazing things with them.  I can't recommend this show highly enough. The first season is on YouTube:

I finally got around to watching Suicide Squad!  It was... alright. It definitely wasn't good.  But it wasn't horrible either. I'm glad I've watched it at the very least. In the end I the only characters I liked were Deadshot and Harley Quinn.  Everyone else felt like they were needlessly cluttering up the movie and wasting my time. Not to mention the plot was boring, predictable, and pretty dumb.  I mean, I know it's a comic movie and I'm supposed to suspend my disbelief but I had so much trouble doing that for this movie. If you're into comic book movies you should probably rent or borrow Suicide Squad once just to see it but chances are you'll never need to own it.  If you're not into comic books movies in general then you should definitely skip this one.

Owl Boy is a really cool platformer that I ended up putting down. I mean... it's gorgeous, it sounds great, the music is fantastic, you fly but it still manages to be a platformer, and all around it's a really cool take on platforming games. But, it gets really hard.  I think I got decently far into it but I finally ran into a wall where I just kept getting destroyed.  I'm generally a good platformer player too, so it was surprising to find how frustrated I got with this.  I don't mind putting it effort when I feel like I'm learning how to play and slowly getting closer to my goal but some of the difficulty in Owl Boy is a huge spike that seems way too hard to overcome. So, I set this one down.  If I ever want a super difficult platformer I might come back to this, but not in the foreseeable future.  But, I do love a lot of what the developer has done here so I'd love to see what they do with their next game.

I finished Final Fantasy XV already.  I've been home sick so I had a lot of time to blast through this game.  It was really fun and I liked it a lot! But in a lot of ways Final Fantasy XV is an ambitious mess.  You can see that this game was caught in development hell for a long time.  There are a ton of different ideas thrown together and while some work... some just don't.  Some are super deep and others are barely fleshed out.  There are a lot of questionable decisions in the game design and just little inconsistencies too.  Overall, this game is ambitious and even though it doesn't always succeed at what it sets out to do... at least it tries. But despite that, I liked this game a lot and I love seeing another mainline Final Fantasy come out!  It feels like this was a game Square Enix needed to get out of their development pipeline so they could finally move on and start on the next one. Before I go further I should say that even though it's only been out

Pokemon (plus Pokemon Sun and Moon) Like pretty much everyone else these days, we grew up with Pokemon. And with it being the 20th anniversary of the series, we wanted to talk about the wonderful little pocket monsters and our history with them. For the most part, Void has kept up with the series, playing through each iteration and seeing the changes that have come from Pokemon Red and Blue and Yellow all the way to Pokemon Sun and Moon. Beej, however, has only played Blue and Omega Ruby, so our takes on the series are different, but we both love it. In terms of the games themselves, the generations iterate very slowly, and despite being 20 years later, the games are fundamentally the same. Each generation gives you modern conveniences and quality of life improvements that make the newer games well worth playing if you enjoy the formula. Given the length and popularity of Pokemon over the past 20 years, there have been oodles of pokemon spin off games. One of our favorites wa

Uncharted 4 was the only game throughout my latest Gamefly stint that I actually used the "Keep it" button to hold onto.  I had played about 6 hours of it at the time, thought I was probably half way through the campaign, and was having a lot of fun.  I thought I would finish it leisurely since I could keep it for really cheap. Now I'm something like 15 or 20 hours in and I thought I must be near the end.  But, I looked and I'm only a third of the way through the game.  I can't do another 30-40 hours of this game.  So, I'm throwing in the towel. I really don't know why games feel like they need to be super long to be worth it.  I love a good short game these days.  They seem to tell a more impactful and less drawn-out story.  Firewatch is still in the running for my game of the year and it clocks in at around 3-4 hours for a full playthrough. So... even though I had fun with the beginning of Uncharted 4 in the end it was just too long of a game w