2019...FEB...

Well looks like I might have some more time to post things on Twitch which is a good thing. I only have one full-time job now which means that I can have more time to stream and things. Biggest thing is I need to get some kind of capture card or a some kind of capture thing. But I'm working on that and I probably will have that sometime soon and I think that when I do I'll have more time to stream. Anyway in the meantime just updating and hoping I'll see you guys soon.

Welcome to 2019

A New Year!!!

So welcome to 2019...I have been playing a ton of Farming Simulator.

Farming Simulator 17 to be specific...but I have 19, and I'm going to get there at some point. Been thinking about a stream play of FS17. I've always been a sucker for simulator games to be honest.

But with that being said, I think FS17 is a great game, especially if you liked something like Harvest Moon.

More to some in 2019, I might actually get into blogging more often.

KOTOR Time: Why you should play as a Jedi Guardian...

Soo....I have started playing Knights of the Old Republic again...and I had a long game with a Jedi Consular build...and I forgot that fighting Darth Malak is ridiculous...even Light Side. I have started a Soldier/Guardian build to take care of that now. I think I'll be streaming this on Twitch soon. The crazy thing is, Darth Malak is harder than fighting Kreia (Spoiler alert) in KOTOR 2. I beat her pretty easily as a Jedi Consular when I played KOTOR 2. KOTOR 1 is slightly harder though.
I have plans to beat KOTOR online so everyone can watch on Twitch. I've even made a hyphenated name like Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan.
twitch.tv/gregatron5000 is where you can find it...

Nintendo Switch

So I don't have a Nintendo Switch yet...not because I don't want one, just because I generally like to wait a bit before I buy a new console. It always seems like everything that comes out is plagued with some kind of problem. I read today that there is some kind of connectivity issue that some people are having with the joycons staying connected:

http://bgr.com/2017/03/13/nintendo-switch-controller-problems-response/

But generally these issues get fixed pretty quickly, and I hope that this is the case. I know every Zelda review that I've read has said how amazing this game is, but I'm more looking forward to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U has been the best Mario Kart game released so far...at least in my opinion. But Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will fix the biggest issue that everyone had with the game...the battle mode is back to the classic version! With battle mode being back like the classic version (in the same area driving around shooting at each other), this game should be amazing. Hopefully I'll get a Switch soon after Mario Kart 8 comes out. It kind of sucks that Splatoon 2 doesn't come out until December though, that was a great game on the Wii U.

Anyway, if any of you already have a Switch, comment and tell me what you think of it.

XBOX One repaired!

So, it turns out that my XBOX One wasn't actually broken, but somehow a failed update made the system not connect to my wireless network. Anyway, after having it unplugged for approximately two months, I plugged it back in, turned it on, and it downloaded updates again! So it is now fully armed and operational as Emperor Palpatine would say. I just bought an external hard drive for it from Amazon, we'll see how that turns out. I'm liking the fact that you can play a lot of the old XBOX 360 games on it, but the bad thing is how long it takes for it to download the game to the system once you insert a disc. I put COD: Black Ops I in, and it took at least 5 hours to download it. But I loaded Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga today, and it did it much faster, so maybe that was just a fluke.

Some other updates, I've been streaming every now and then on Twitch via my PC. My Twitch stream is at https://www.twitch.tv/gregatron5000 ... so look me up sometime.

That FIFA time of year again...

So FIFA '17 is out now, and I haven't bought it yet. I'm still pretty much sticking with FIFA '16 for a while...why? Because FIFA games never change much from year to year...right?

Well for the most part they don't, but this year's edition has added some kind of story mode...and the Frostbite 3 engine. I'm still not wholly convinced I should spend in the neighborhood of $60 for it yet though. The worst thing about EA games is that I can't even get them cheaply on the PC, thanks to EA forcing you to play through Origin. I'll be honest too, I mostly only play career mode as a manager and sometimes I play Ultimate Team, so the new story mode isn't really appealing to me.  I just like getting a League Two team and getting them promoted all the way into the Premier League. Sadly, the main reason I buy a new FIFA game is for the roster updates.

Which brings me to PES 2017; I haven't played a PES game since Playstation 3. I'm a sucker for the licensed teams, and PES doesn't have a ton of them like FIFA does. But I have heard that PES is the way to go for a better quality football (soccer) experience. But then I saw a video comparing the console to the PC version, and that was a major turn-off. Why would the PC version be worse than the console version? That makes zero sense. Here is a video showing the differences:

YouTube video comparing PES PC/PS4/XBONE

The GTX 970 in my PC should blow whatever a PS4 or XBone can do out of the water...instead it looks like Konami decided to screw PC users over. Which, Konami hasn't been the greatest games publisher over the past 5 years or so anyway. They've sold their souls for pachinko machines instead. I suppose I could buy PES on XBone or something though...which I may do, I suppose I could use the ton of Bing search points that I have saved up to buy it.

Anyway, as far as FIFA goes, I don't plan on buying the new version anytime soon, I'll just continue playing '16 for the meantime.

Have any thoughts on this topic? Please comment, I'd love to hear what you think.

XBOX One woes

In my gaming history, I've gone through the PC/console switch a few times, but I think for the most part I've been a PC gamer. The first thing I had to game on was an MS-DOS computer and for the most part, I've played PC games more hours than consoles. But that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy console gaming as well, especially when it comes to retro consoles. During the PS2/XBOX/Gamecube era, I returned to PC gaming when I bought a PC and upgraded the GPU when I was in high school. One of my friends convinced me to get an XBOX 360 when I returned from Iraq in 2007, and even then it took until I actually played Call of Duty 4 to actually get into playing the XBOX 360 consistently versus the PC I built in 2006.  When I was in college, due to online gaming and working at GameStop, I switched to gaming on consoles a lot, but around 2012, I started making my transition back to PC.

In 2014, when I was in D.C. for a bit, I decided I'd get an XBOX One to play with some people that I worked with up there, since they were not PC gamers. Since then I've sometimes played the XBOX One for exclusives or FIFA, but I haven't used it a whole lot. This weekend I was gifted a 1TB external hard drive, and I hooked it up and formatted it for the XBONE. After getting everything ready, I noticed that my wireless connector stopped working. I troubleshot everything, and lo and behold, there was a hardware malfunction.

This is what I don't like about console gaming. Now in less than two years from buying an XBOX One, I now have to send it back to Microsoft for repairs. I get that they have to get cheap components sometimes for building consoles, but seriously...less than 2 years?  Meanwhile, you splurge a bit on a PC, and you won't have to worry about replacing things for a while. Not to mention the price of games on PC are definitely cheaper. And thanks to Steam and GOG and Origin, decades of games are available on PC...on modern consoles, you're essentially limited.

The only consoles this generation that I've been really content with are the Wii U and the 3DS. They have exclusive, great games, and they are super reliable (as Nintendo usually is). Other than that get a PC...

Then you probably won't be spending $115 on a stupid repair for your modern console.