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I want to love the Wii U. My passion for video game started

I want to love the Wii U. My passion for video game started with the original Nintendo and continued to the Super Nintendo. Nintendo has been a large part of gaming for most of my life. That said, the Wii U isn't catching my excitement.

The always amazing video game YouTube celeb boogie2988 has a new video rant as Francis, a character he does on his channel about the Wii U(video above). After a hazy start the rant is spot on with much of how I feel(warning, it is an intense video with some colorful humor that may offend some).

I like the end of the video, where he whimpers to the camera that he will get the Wii U because he loves Nintendo so much even with all its... Read All

Hello again! I was thinking about this today and I wanted to

http://synergizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/characters.jpg

Hello again! I was thinking about this today and I wanted to know your guy's opinion. So here it is:

Who is your favorite video game character?

Simple enough. I want to know what character, in any game, you absolutely love. I don't care if you think he/she is hilarious or if you just like the character development of your certain person. I'm just curious to see what people think a good character is.

Personally, my favorite character relates to my favorite series. Garrus Vakarian from the mass effect series. I love this character because of the amazing thought that went into him. He has a backstory and not to mention you have him on your team throughout all three mass... Read All

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/27/2012 at 02:48am

That's cool, I haven't played Mass Effect but heard great things about it. He must have been awesome to have made such an impact.

I am going to think about this and get back to you about it. Love the question, but yeah, I don't know right now. The hard ones take some thought :)

BR Supporter Post Author wrote on 09/27/2012 at 03:01am

Yeah, Mass Effect did a great job at actually making you care about your crew. There are tons of things you can talk to them about and if you bring them with you on a mission they have their own unique comments about what is going on.

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/27/2012 at 08:11pm

After thinking more about this I believe it is Chell. She is a strong protagonist and I respect that about her. In the comic the description of her in her file is that "she never gives up." Something awesome about that and being able to take GlaDOS's continual punishment.

BR Supporter Post Author wrote on 09/27/2012 at 11:54pm

I wouldn't know much about her. The only time I've played either of the portal games was at a friends house and I didn't pay much attention to the story at the time.

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/28/2012 at 02:34pm

Your Dad in Fallout 3 is prob up there too. Liam Neeson's acting is superb and I was very attached to his character.

BR Supporter Post Author wrote on 09/28/2012 at 03:29pm

Your father is pretty cool. He is somewhere up top on my list too. Fallout 3 had good writing period. Having a good voice to record the good writing makes it that much better.

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/28/2012 at 04:09pm

It really does.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 09/29/2012 at 07:29pm

I kind of like the silent protagonists like Link, Ness, Crono, etc. It's probably because I project myself into those characters, but that's part of the fun of video games, right?

I also really like Cloud from FF7. Not because of the huge sword, or the cool motorcycle (but those help.) I like the big reveal about his real back story that comes late in the game. Plus how many other main characters do you know of that failed miserably in their childhood dreams of becoming a hero and suffer from multiple personalities? It's a shame they made him so bland and brooding in Advent Children.

I've also always liked Samus (power armor is cool!) but now that I'm a Dad to two girls I've come to really appreciate any female character who's not just there as a romance option or as the princess to be rescued. Not only is Samus the main character but in most games she's the only protagonist and she's about as bad ass as you can get!

Timogorgon Member wrote on 09/29/2012 at 07:33pm

Oh, and I forgot to mention Kreia from KOTOR 2. She was a really cool, complex character. During my first play through I wanted her to be on my side (both in my personal feelings and in how I picked dialogue options/actions) but never really felt like I could completely trust her. The writing and voice acting for her character were also top notch.

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/30/2012 at 05:03am

Yep, one of the reasons I like Chell so much in Portal. Strong female lead.

vdogmr25 wrote on 10/01/2012 at 04:57pm

I'm gonna go silent protagonist too. The Kid from Bastion is probably one of the best characters ever. It helps that the game as a whole is a story-telling masterpiece, but with the Kid, there was just enough choice in the story to give you a different character depending on how you played the game.

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I was thinking something today I wanted to hear your

I was thinking something today I wanted to hear your thoughts on.

Skyrim or Fallout 3? I have been making my way a bit at a time through Skyrim and whereas its a great game, I think I liked Fallout 3 a bit better. At least, so far I do.

Skyrim has had some amazing moments, but I guess I prefer the end of the world games where you are born in a vault.

That said, what did you like better Skyrim or Fallout?

BR Supporter wrote on 09/26/2012 at 02:48am

Hmm, that's a hard one for me. The elder scrolls games and the fallout series are probably my favorite games besides mass effect. If I had to choose I'd probably say fallout 3 because I liked the story much better. Skyrim`s story was alright but didn't captivate me as much as fallout did.

Tungsten wrote on 09/26/2012 at 09:53am

VATS is awesome, and I hope it makes its way into other RPG's. That said, I connected a lot more with the characters and stories in Skyrim.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 09/26/2012 at 05:40pm

There used to be some rpg's back in the day that let you target body parts individually. It was a lot of fun. VATS was cool to see it in slow motion though.

Missile_Drop_Kick wrote on 09/27/2012 at 01:55am

Fallout all the way. I know we've talked about Skyrim in person (face to face). I never went on a wild killing spree in Fallout because I was bored. I did in Skyrim.

Will_Owens wrote on 10/30/2012 at 02:50pm

I've never "gotten" an Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind. I tried to like Oblivion and Skyrim, but just didn't care at all. I'll try Skyrim again sometime since I bought it. It may be because I played Fallout and Fallout 2 as a younger man, but the setting seems infinitely more interesting than the normal fantasy stuff that's been around the block and back a hundred times. Maybe it's just easier for me to relate to a character that's living in the same world as me interacting with people as they would act after a disaster rather than with people who live like Nordic lumberjacks?

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 10/30/2012 at 09:18pm

Nordic lumberjacks :D

I have heard awesome stuff about Morrowind and I owned it A LONG time ago but it never played on my PC well so I gave it to a friend. That said, people speak highly of it and with it being so cheap and the mod communities continuing attention to it it is something I am going to get eventually.

Skyrim is good, but I don't know, something about it lends me to play it less than I did Fallout 3 so far. At some point I imagine ill play more of it, but with Borderlands 2, Doom 3 and now Minecraft(sort of late on this one) I have tons of stuff.

That said, I had some awesome moments with Skyrim and enjoy the world quite a bit, even though it might be a Nordic Lumber Dream! :D

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This evening I downloaded the Torchlight 2 demo on Steam and

This evening I downloaded the Torchlight 2 demo on Steam and decided to give it a shot. Right away I noticed that the menus were pretty different from the original Torchlight. Not a huge deal, but it wasn't immediately apparent how to exit the game the first time I launched it. Its the upper right corner and is greyed out, I didn't see that the first time through.

I created an Ember Mage and liked the character customization. After creating my character I was quickly in the game killing things. I was surprised how differently it played from the original Torchlight. One main difference is that your character moves very fast around the screen. Its very smooth and I like... Read All This evening I downloaded the Torchlight 2 demo on Steam and decided to give it a shot. Right away I noticed that the menus were pretty different from the original Torchlight. Not a huge deal, but it wasn't immediately apparent how to exit the game the first time I launched it. Its the upper right corner and is greyed out, I didn't see that the first time through.

I created an Ember Mage and liked the character customization. After creating my character I was quickly in the game killing things. I was surprised how differently it played from the original Torchlight. One main difference is that your character moves very fast around the screen. Its very smooth and I like the character pacing much better than the original Torchlight or Diablo 3 even. Which is another thing about Torchlight 2, the game is really really smooth. Compared to Diablo 3, which lags the first few minutes in game, moving through Torchlight is like butter.

I like that you are not merely relegated to dungeon crawling in Torchlight 2. The outdoor environments are a welcome addition to my style. After I made it to town I got a few quests and headed out straight for the first one. After taking them down one by one I noticed the enemy and game difficulty ramp up considerably. My third quest in I met up with something like 5 champion mobs protecting the quest ending. They didn't pose a huge challenge but they did take a while to kill and all in all it was very fun.

I stopped playing around level 8 (before I stopped I snapped the pic above) and really enjoyed the game. I would say largely, Torchlight 2 is a big improvement over Torchlight. That said, I had a few nits with it as I felt the graphic style of the original was a bit better than Torchlight 2. As with the first game occasionally my character was behind the forefront graphic and the ghost/outline thing is hard to play through. Again, small things because overall the game was very fun.

No reason to not check it out as it will play on most under computers and the demo is out now on Steam!

MoonWyrd Supporter wrote on 11/23/2012 at 06:58am

With everything that's been going on in my life I completely forgot about Torchlight II. Thanks for the write up. I'm going to have to checkout the demo. Once Steam finishes downloading the internet, that is.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/23/2012 at 08:15am

Yeah you can nab the demo now and pick up the full game at a bit of a reduced price during the Steam Autumn Sale now.

MoonWyrd Supporter wrote on 11/23/2012 at 05:21pm

Silly me, I failed to note that the Mac version hasn't been released yet. Guess I'll have to boot up the Winders box sometime in the next couple days to check this out.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/23/2012 at 06:31pm

It will get ported to Mac eventually they said. Hadn't heard of an ETA though.

MoonWyrd Supporter wrote on 11/23/2012 at 07:35pm

Yeah, that's what I gathered from the FAQ. I don't mind checking out the demo on Winders, but I dislike depending on it for long periods of game play. Too many crashes.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/26/2012 at 05:19pm

Just picked this up during the sale, $10? Yes please. Hoping for a Mac port at some point. A few expansions might not hurt either.

MoonWyrd Supporter wrote on 12/03/2012 at 03:12pm

Finally had a chance to checkout the demo. Quite fun so far. Very reminiscent of D2. Not likely to be coughing up the $$ for the full game until I fine a new job, though.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/03/2012 at 04:12pm

We might have you covered as soon we are going to run a Torchlight 2 contest! Woot.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 12/04/2012 at 03:28am

Here it is: http://cheerfulghost.com/panickedthumb/posts/781

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This is a ridiculously simple game, but Im hooked! I

http://a3.mzstatic.com/us/r1000/060/Purple/v4/b8/76/19/b876194c-2aee-f6f9-9e14-bd1240dafbde/mzl.fjwukqve.320x480-75.jpg

This is a ridiculously simple game, but I'm hooked! I recommend it as a time killer.

Scott Pilgrim is a nice little beat up game in the vein of

Scott Pilgrim is a nice little beat up game in the vein of River City Ransom. However, all the time between the games has not helped Scott Pilgrim. What you expect from a game that comes 10 odd years later is an advancement in game type. It fails to deliver that advancement, if anything, the game goes backward from River City Ransom (easily one of my most favorite video games ever.)

Why is it not as good?

The fighting is not as well done. It is extremely hard to block weapons or thrown weapons unlike River City Ransom which can make fighting difficult.

There are no new moves to unlock via books. This was easily one of the best features of River City Ransom, you only get... Read All

File this under first world problems but I have a ton of

File this under "first world problems" but I have a ton of video games. Oh wait, Cheerful Ghost to the rescue, how many games do I have? According to my handy dandy games list... http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/games I have 242 games. That's quite a lot of games. Now some of those are on my old NES and I don't really pull those out too often. But many of those are PC or PS3 games and lately I have noticed that if I stopped buying games I wouldn't be done with what I have for months. I have enough content to possibly keep me busy well into the next year.

Wondering that with Steam and as many Free to Play titles that exist if we will all will be perpetually swimming in... Read All

Timogorgon Member wrote on 09/24/2012 at 06:57pm

Lemme see what games I have yet to finish...

Disgaea 2 ('bout half wayish)
Disgaea 3 (I started a game, but stopped because I hadn't finished the 2nd one.)
Final Fantasy 12 (lost my save somewhere along the way, gotta start over)
Final Fantasy 10, but it sucks, so I don't care. :P Same for FF 13.
Mass Effect
Costume Quest
Torchlight
Fallout 3 (still playing off and on)
Borderlands (need to finish DLC)
Borderlands 2 I'm currently playing
Lone Survivor (awesome but scary! I think I'll play this around Halloween time :D)
Portal 2 (co-op)
Breath of Death VII
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Games I have but haven't even started yet:
All the Half-life games (I KNOW! I'll get around to them eventually)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Time Gentlemen, Please!
Cthulhu Saves the World
Hunted: The Demon's Forge

I'm sure there's more I'm missing, but those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Yeah, I have SO many games to get caught up on. It's almost as bad as how many books I have sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read. There's just not enough hours in the day to do everything I need to and everything I want to!

BR Supporter wrote on 09/24/2012 at 07:56pm

There are a few games that I haven't completed recently, but most the time I finish games that I enjoy to play. I guess I only finish games that I enjoy the story of such as:

Fallout 3: beat it 3 to 4 times
Fallout New Vegas: 3 to 4 as well
Oblivion: beat this once but logged about 400-500 hours in it
Skyrim: Only beat this once
Mass effect 1: 2 play-throughs
Mass effect 2: 3 play-throughs
Mass effect 3: 1 play-through but I'm going to star another soon with all the new dlc

So I guess my conclusion is that I will play entirely through a game that I really enjoy(multiple times) such as mass effect, which its story is by far my #1.

There are also games which I haven't beat yet, but that is due to something I enjoy more coming along and pushing it aside. Some of these games are:

Dead Island
Magicka
Titan quest

These are games I don't enjoy as much as others and therefore usually I stop playing them and instead play a more enjoyable game to me.

I guess that about sums it up.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/25/2012 at 12:49am

Whiteboy: When did you get GTA? Is it the Ps3 version? Haven't played GTA since 2 on Windows back in the day.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/25/2012 at 12:49am

BR: Did you play Fallout 3 differently with the multiple play throughs? I could see myself sitting down and playing that again. I beat it originally on the PS3, I could do it again on the PC.

BR Supporter wrote on 09/25/2012 at 02:35am

Yeah, I did play as an evil and good character. Although I have played with similar characters through the story. There wasn't many different ways you could go in fallout 3. Fallout New Vegas on the other hand had tons of different endings depending on which faction you chose to follow.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/25/2012 at 02:39am

Did you blow up Megaton? I still kind of want to try that :)

BR Supporter wrote on 09/25/2012 at 04:42pm

Did it on two characters and not on the other two.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 09/26/2012 at 06:48pm

@jdodson: It's the PS2 version, and I've had it for a long time. I sunk a ton of hours into it but the game is HUGE and after while I just started playing other stuff and never came back to it.

I still have just one character on Fallout 3, and I'm a "good" guy for the most part. :) If I ever do get around to playing a second time I'll probably go the evil route. I played through the first Knights of the Old Republic game several times and did both good and evil characters. Playing evil characters is fun at first, but after awhile I start to feel bad lol.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/27/2012 at 01:45am

I agree. Doing the bad thing leaves me with a strange feeling. I imagine the second play through it would be better considering I had chosen the right path I know what the end run of that is.

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Humble Bundle 6! Humble Indie Bundle 6 features six

Humble Bundle 6!

"Humble Indie Bundle 6 features six fantastic titles and five breathtaking soundtracks. Name your price and dive into the critically acclaimed action-RPG Torchlight; the rugged sci-fi action platformer Rochard; physics-based brick breaker Shatter; top down space combat sim Space Pirates and Zombies; and steampunk puzzle platformer Vessel. Customers who beat the average price will also get the incredible frantic acrobatic platformer, Dustforce!"

I will pick this up a bit later when the average has been settled and a few more games become available. I missed the Torchlight 2 pre-order so I will be getting this primarally to add Torchlight to my Steam... Read All

The one benefit to playing Borderlands 2 on the PS3 is

The one benefit to playing Borderlands 2 on the PS3 is split-screen multi-player with friends. Tonight one of my friends came over and we played a few hours together. He went Gunzerker and I went Commando. It was a good pairing but it took me a bit to get the hang of Axton. Was used to run and gunning with Salvador so it took me a bit to get used to dropping a turret and staying behind it. Axton's skill tree isn't my cup of tea, but I found one path that was interesting.

As we were playing it went like this: See a group of bad guys, I drop the turret and he pops into Zerk mode and runs in. Clean up. It broke down a few times when we were not working together but overall... Read All

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 09/22/2012 at 10:49am

You've mentioned a few times about difficulty. I don't know if you've yet to have a run in with a Badass Pyro Threser but, those are by far the most overpowered enemies up to where I'm at. They can take out your shields AND all your hp in almost a single hit with their pyro shockwave. Getting up on something tall is the trick.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/22/2012 at 10:42pm

I haven't, thanks for letting me know. Incendiary damage so far hasn't been too fun. I don't remember taking elemental damage in the original Borderlands. Interesting they added it for regular players to take in 2.

Missile_Drop_Kick wrote on 09/22/2012 at 11:57pm

Hello from Chicago (currently at least)! I played a few hours like you suggested. It got much better in the 2nd and 3rd hour. I actually figured out the weapon. I ended up putting in another 2 hours and getting a bunch of video. I need to get home to edit it and figure out how to comment on it. However, it was much better. I finally got to use Zero's disappearing powers. Awesome.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/23/2012 at 07:14am

I agree, the game opens up a bunch after your main power unlock. Also when you start getting awesome drops.

BR Supporter wrote on 09/25/2012 at 06:49pm

I'll definitely say that once you get some cool guns the game becomes a lot better cause it is fun to just blow your enemies to pieces.

Timogorgon Member wrote on 09/26/2012 at 07:00pm

I still haven't had too much time in the game, but I've played a little co-op with my wife and now I've done a little solo playing as well. The game is (at least at this point) more difficult than the original Borderlands, but in a good way. The baddies feel challenging without making me feel like the computer is cheating. One thing I noticed right away was that navigating the menu during co-op was better but still not great. It was better once we swapped our split screen to divide vertically rather than horizontally though.

I'm still pretty early in the game on both my characters so I haven't found any especially awesome guns yet. I have to say that starting with the Gearbox gunpack was nice. The SMG and Sniper Rifle were especially useful in the first couple missions.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 09/27/2012 at 01:46am

The guns open up more as the game progresses. If memory serves the original Borderlands didn't have awesome guns right away, but then again I did get a shotgun early on that I kept until the end, it was that awesome.

So far nothing that awesome yet, but some good stuff for sure.

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I played WoW a bunch. The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the

I played WoW a bunch. The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King kept me going for a while, but I dropped out before Cataclysm came out.

I had no idea another another expansion was coming out until I saw a Kung Fu Panda commercial, that ended up being a WoW commercial?!? Mists of Pandaria? What the heck?

It might be drawing me back... thankfully my computer can't handle it, so it'll be a while before I lose myself to it, but I'm definitely interested.

Anyone else picking it up right away?

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/21/2012 at 04:39am

This expansion really interests me and I am not a WoW player. They add a kind of pokemon mini game to it, plus I really like the look of Pandara. I dig the whole dark game thing, but I enjoy bright open worlds too. WoW had that, but maybe I just started as a Undead and... Wait I did :)

That said, the Undead area has its bright places and it was fun. I just can't get around a sub...

TonyJapMayo wrote on 09/21/2012 at 05:33am

is GW2 better than WOW? I might buy GW2..

AdamPFarnsworth Post Author wrote on 09/21/2012 at 07:23am

I've not played GW2, but hopefully someone else knows :)

Ben_Dodson wrote on 09/21/2012 at 03:40pm

Is GW2 better than WOW? That is like asking the question is Torchlight 2 better than Diablo 3. Both are great games that are similar but everyone has their bias and you then can ask the question what coffee is the best and you will get different responses.

Mist is looking to be a fun expansion. The keep claiming it will get back to the original WOW roots of exploring and Horde v Alliance conflict.

There are many new mini games as Jon talked about Pokemon. If that wasn't enough there will be a type of Farmville with the Tillers faction. There is already a Plants v Zombies in the game.

Cataclysm revamped the Old World in a huge way. The 1-60 leveling is by far the best it has ever been. However the 80-85 content there are many opinions on this and mine is I am glad it is over. I am not going to make a huge post in that regards.

Kung-Fu Panda meets WOW we shall see but from the test I have seen and the feed back I have read this should be good.

And Jon I am sorry but when WOW is under 2Mil subs I am sure they will make it free. Until then 15$ a month.

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/23/2012 at 05:42pm

Yeah, I don't think WoW will go F2P for ALONG time, if ever.

The game I want to go F2P though? The original Everquest. That would be awesome.

Missile_Drop_Kick wrote on 09/27/2012 at 01:54am

I can see why you quit WOW when Cataclysm came out. This girl would make me quit too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QFtqIqaYLs

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/27/2012 at 01:58am

This dude is better. He is a character based on gaming stereotypes and I love him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZXNMs8D-Ow&feature=related

jdodson Admin wrote on 09/27/2012 at 02:04am

Oh man, he just dropped this about the Panda expansion, hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VvYGAVvphU&list=UU4_bwov47DseacR1-ttTdOg&index=0&feature=plcp

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