Hello everyone, it's been quite a long time since I've posted on the blog and I apologize for that. Life always seems to get in the way. School, work, and a family always seems to get in the way of whats really important in life, and that's gaming. So if I still have any active follower, thanks for not removing this blog. With that being said lets start, what I hope, is the first of many posts about my death and rebirth as an enthusiastic WarGamer. Enjoy.
As many of you may or may not know, I am an avid fan of the Chaos Marines. I love them. I love them like a lonely farmer loves sheep. Well, maybe not THAT much. I do, however, love them enough to have made them my first army. And when I say I made them my first army I mean I bought a battle force of them because I loved their back story and of course their looks. I bought that expensive ass battleforce (still worth the $90 in my opinion) on a whim. What followed was a catastrophe. In my infinite wisdom I didn't bother to pick up a codex or any sort of HQ or anything like that. I just wanted to paint the minis. As it turned out...I sucked at painting. I used Testors model paint to paint my basic CSMs and they turned out terrible. The detail was almost lost and some seemed to have no necks. It was bad. I looked up to the figures I saw on the GW site and on CoolMiniOrNot.com. These were crap.
Aside from the terrible no necked traitor marines, I couldn't put a list together at all. My buddy @JD_Sampson got me a nice print out of the codex but I had never bothered to actually read the main rule book. I threw together stupid lists that were so far from legal it wasn't even funny. Entire armies of Terminators with no HQ, ugh, it was ugly. As time rolled on I learned the Force Organizational Charts and how to gradually build a respectable army. Well, sort of. The internet can be a font of information. Information and porn...and some really generic lists. After many loses I needed to find some sort of coalescing theme to my army. So I started making some Death Guard themed marines...that didn't work. So I made some World Eaters, that didn't work either. Then I combined the two...I got a couple wins. Out of the 12 times I've actually played my record stood at 2-10. I am terrible. Hence the whole Dreaded Gamer monicker. Anyway, I began looking on sites like Dakka Dakka and Bolter and Chainsword and found a few lists. Boring...BORING lists. Load up on Plague Marines or Berzerkers in a Rhino, rush into combat, lather, rinse, repeat. I got no where with that.
So a sad sad man watched as my two gaming buddies got shiny new codexes and armies and I got the crappy codex that is the CSMs. I realize that it was my skills for the most part that lead to losses for sure. But having some nice new figures and special rules doesn't hurt either. So here is where I send my battered and bruised Chaos buddies back to the warp (at least until March when a rumored new legions codex is supposed to occur) and hung my head in shame.
Until last week that is. My other favorite army: The Necrons got their own new shiny codex and a boat load of new shiny plastic figures. So, here is my proposal. I completely relearn how to play. From the ground up. Reread the rule book, learn my codex inside and out, and finally learn the proper way to paint figures. I desperately want to be a decent gamer and, as I joined this niche market to paint the models, become adept at customizing my army. So here in lies my promise to you dear readers. I will bring you on my journey to relearn EVERYTHING. Join me wont you? Let us see how an almost 30 year old man struggles to grasp rules that 8 year olds understand. Watch and laugh as I struggle to even prime my figures! It'll be a hoot! Here's to weeks of laughing at my pain! Cheers!
-Mr. V.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Trial and tribulations of building a MAME arcade cabinet.
It all started with me realizing that my original xbox was sitting collecting dust in my parents basement.
I grabbed it and blew the dust off and then began the hunt for my old matrix mod chip that I had boxed up years ago.
I ended up getting all of my boxes from my parents and realized I had collected alot of crap over the years. I went through EVER BOX and never found the chip. I decided to dump out a box of computer cables and there it was in the bottom of the box.
I installed it and set the xbox up then started loading it with my games. I would test the games on my laptop first to make sure they worked and I had all the needed files. I shot to eBAY and bought 2 pelican arcade sticks for xbox and started to fire up some of the games...
Little did I realize that MAME for the xbox is massively outdated and won't run any of the newer games I was aiming for. And the system is too slow for the 3D games...
Plan B: Set up an old pc to run MAME. I grabbed my wife's old amd system that was sitting in the closet and hooked it up to the network and started loading it. I fought with it for about 4 days working on it before and after work and got it to run everything decently (eventually)and was working on configuring the inputs when I realized it was an AMD athelon xp 2200 (1.8ghz) and that I had another spare machine that was a P4 2.56ghz with a nVidia 6800GT.
I booted it up intending to test to see how much faster it actually performed and found that the AGP slot had died so the computer was useless. However I swiped the 6800GT and popped into the AMD system.
Meanwhile the AMD pc that was working heard me bad mouthing how slow it was and decided it needed to run slower and now will reboot whenever I launch a 3d game. I think the video card I transplanted into it might be too powerful for the power supply but at this time I was hungry and felt a dinner break was needed.
Lamenting that I wish all the spare pcs were faster or at least could be cannibalized to make a faster one I realized that my parents had a dual core pentium sitting at their house not being used!
Tomorrow the wife will retreive it and I shall appropriate it for plan C.
I grabbed it and blew the dust off and then began the hunt for my old matrix mod chip that I had boxed up years ago.
I ended up getting all of my boxes from my parents and realized I had collected alot of crap over the years. I went through EVER BOX and never found the chip. I decided to dump out a box of computer cables and there it was in the bottom of the box.
I installed it and set the xbox up then started loading it with my games. I would test the games on my laptop first to make sure they worked and I had all the needed files. I shot to eBAY and bought 2 pelican arcade sticks for xbox and started to fire up some of the games...
Little did I realize that MAME for the xbox is massively outdated and won't run any of the newer games I was aiming for. And the system is too slow for the 3D games...
Plan B: Set up an old pc to run MAME. I grabbed my wife's old amd system that was sitting in the closet and hooked it up to the network and started loading it. I fought with it for about 4 days working on it before and after work and got it to run everything decently (eventually)and was working on configuring the inputs when I realized it was an AMD athelon xp 2200 (1.8ghz) and that I had another spare machine that was a P4 2.56ghz with a nVidia 6800GT.
I booted it up intending to test to see how much faster it actually performed and found that the AGP slot had died so the computer was useless. However I swiped the 6800GT and popped into the AMD system.
Meanwhile the AMD pc that was working heard me bad mouthing how slow it was and decided it needed to run slower and now will reboot whenever I launch a 3d game. I think the video card I transplanted into it might be too powerful for the power supply but at this time I was hungry and felt a dinner break was needed.
Lamenting that I wish all the spare pcs were faster or at least could be cannibalized to make a faster one I realized that my parents had a dual core pentium sitting at their house not being used!
Tomorrow the wife will retreive it and I shall appropriate it for plan C.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Collector's Editions...are they really collectors items?
I went to order Dawn of War 2: Retribution today and noticed the "Collector's" edition. For an extra $10 I could get a poster, art cards, a fancy box, and some in game items(that I probably would never notice).
This got me thinking about collector's editions of most video games.
I tend to buy them as they will have a music cd or some sort of statue or toy with it and they aren't usually that much more then regular editions.
But isn't calling it a collector's edition kind of a misnomer? Its not like the crap in the box will increase in value as time goes by. Actually its the opposite. How often do you see the collector's edition of something on sale or clearance somewhere a few months later for half the price?
Lets look at the collector's editions I've purchased recently.
Dead Space 2: came with a tiny version of the gun from the game that lights up, a music cd, and some crap. This was only like an extra $10 and with the credits I had from Amazon it wasn't that big of a deal. The music is nice and I geuss the gun is neat but it doesn't even have a display stand. For the cost it wasn't to bad but I probably wouldn't have bothered if I didn't have the Amazon credits.
Halo Reach Legendary: good god this thing was expensive. It came with a statue and some background booklets etc. For most this probably wasn't worht the money but the statue was really nice and I felt that it plus the other extras warranted the price unlike...
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2: My wife wanted the game and I wanted the night vision goggles so it seemed like a good idea at the time. I used the goggle once and giggled at them. They are currently sitting in a box somewhere. They aren't even cool enough to put on display.
As for collector/limited editions coming out:
SOCOM 4 Full Deployment edition: Its the game plus the ps3 move system and the mp5 gun fram for a little over the price of the move system by itself. This is the way these things should be done.
Mortal Kombat Kollectors edition: extra $40 for a pair of bookends and some dlc costumes. I'm on the fence on this as the bookends are cool but $40 seems to be a little excessive...
So it seems like some game companies are getting to know what a "collector's" edition should have while others are still clueless or are trying to wring ever penny out that they can. Maybe instead of calling them collector's editions or limited editions just call them special editions or something akin to the SOCOM 4 one shown above?
Don't even get me started on special editions of blu-ray movies...that makes even less sense to me.
This got me thinking about collector's editions of most video games.
I tend to buy them as they will have a music cd or some sort of statue or toy with it and they aren't usually that much more then regular editions.
But isn't calling it a collector's edition kind of a misnomer? Its not like the crap in the box will increase in value as time goes by. Actually its the opposite. How often do you see the collector's edition of something on sale or clearance somewhere a few months later for half the price?
Lets look at the collector's editions I've purchased recently.
Dead Space 2: came with a tiny version of the gun from the game that lights up, a music cd, and some crap. This was only like an extra $10 and with the credits I had from Amazon it wasn't that big of a deal. The music is nice and I geuss the gun is neat but it doesn't even have a display stand. For the cost it wasn't to bad but I probably wouldn't have bothered if I didn't have the Amazon credits.
Halo Reach Legendary: good god this thing was expensive. It came with a statue and some background booklets etc. For most this probably wasn't worht the money but the statue was really nice and I felt that it plus the other extras warranted the price unlike...
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2: My wife wanted the game and I wanted the night vision goggles so it seemed like a good idea at the time. I used the goggle once and giggled at them. They are currently sitting in a box somewhere. They aren't even cool enough to put on display.
As for collector/limited editions coming out:
SOCOM 4 Full Deployment edition: Its the game plus the ps3 move system and the mp5 gun fram for a little over the price of the move system by itself. This is the way these things should be done.
Mortal Kombat Kollectors edition: extra $40 for a pair of bookends and some dlc costumes. I'm on the fence on this as the bookends are cool but $40 seems to be a little excessive...
So it seems like some game companies are getting to know what a "collector's" edition should have while others are still clueless or are trying to wring ever penny out that they can. Maybe instead of calling them collector's editions or limited editions just call them special editions or something akin to the SOCOM 4 one shown above?
Don't even get me started on special editions of blu-ray movies...that makes even less sense to me.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Religulous by Bill Maher (From my last Blog)
Well friends, as promised, I finished Religulous and what follows are my critiques and comments of the film.
First off, I have to say, some of the things I'm going to comment on and say may go completely against your beliefs. I'm in no way trying offend you, these are opinions and ideas.
The film begins with Bill Maher traveling all over the world to not only question, but challenge people's faith. He doesn't pick solely on Christianity. And in that comment, I think is where I find my first issue with the movie. Bill engages people in conversation under the pretense of questioning his or their faith, but instead, he ends up challenging their faith. I have no problem with someone questioning or engaging someone in conversation on damn near any topic, but, when one proceeds to challenge someone on their beliefs, its a recipe for disaster. Questioning will allow someone to open up and explain their beliefs and thoughts, however, when one challenges those beliefs, the believer in turn, tends to become radically defensive.
The movie's pretense is good, Bill travels the world and questions people's faith and asks them why faith is enough...why the belief in God is sane, yet, the belief in Santa Claus is crazy. (This is actually a topic he brings up with one of his interviewees) I just don't agree with how far he takes it. He continues to say "...I don't know what I believe" yet, if you watch the interviews, it's QUITE CLEAR he believes that there is no god, and that it is ridiculous that anyone believes in the possibility of a God (not getting into separate religions right now).
Some parallels and arguments he brings up are rather creative and thought provoking. For instance, I didn't know that Jesus Christ' story is basically a verbatim ripoff of Horus, the son of Osiris in ancient Egyptian theology. Horus was: born on December 25th, born of a virgin, was a carpenter, healed the sick, raised a man who's name translates into Lazarus, he was crucified, and he was risen on the 3rd day of his death, and oh yeah, 2 women proclaimed he was raised. It's pretty thought provoking.
I didn't plan on and don't plan on commenting on everything I saw in the movie. I could get into conversation about how Christians call Mormon's crazy, and how Jews can't get along with Muslims, and dammit, none of them can get along with each other. Hell, when I go to church, I find it hard to find people that get along with each other, let alone another sect. Church does a real good job at screwing up religion.
Is religion the opiate of the masses? Probably. Is it answers for those that have questions that can't be answered by scientific information? Yes. Does it make people feel better on their death bed? Yes...and what's wrong with that? I really think that Kevin Smith wrote it best. "I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier." Do I personally know what's out there? No. Do I believe that God came down and impregnated a woman and had a baby and that baby died for our sins? No. I DO however believe in Jesus Christ. I think Christianity messed the damn message up. Regardless of divinity, if one strives to live their life like Jesus Christ, they're going to be a pretty darn good person. And, isn't that all we're looking for in life? Live a good life. That's it. If one is living their life as a downpayment on something they might get in a magical land after they die...isn't that just...wrong? Wouldn't it be better to be nice, to you know...be nice? I'm not saying one has to be exactly like Jesus. That's impossible. It's a different time and place. But, people...treat each other how you'd like to be treated. It's not hard, and believe me, it will make your life better and make you a real good example for those around you.
First off, I have to say, some of the things I'm going to comment on and say may go completely against your beliefs. I'm in no way trying offend you, these are opinions and ideas.
The film begins with Bill Maher traveling all over the world to not only question, but challenge people's faith. He doesn't pick solely on Christianity. And in that comment, I think is where I find my first issue with the movie. Bill engages people in conversation under the pretense of questioning his or their faith, but instead, he ends up challenging their faith. I have no problem with someone questioning or engaging someone in conversation on damn near any topic, but, when one proceeds to challenge someone on their beliefs, its a recipe for disaster. Questioning will allow someone to open up and explain their beliefs and thoughts, however, when one challenges those beliefs, the believer in turn, tends to become radically defensive.
The movie's pretense is good, Bill travels the world and questions people's faith and asks them why faith is enough...why the belief in God is sane, yet, the belief in Santa Claus is crazy. (This is actually a topic he brings up with one of his interviewees) I just don't agree with how far he takes it. He continues to say "...I don't know what I believe" yet, if you watch the interviews, it's QUITE CLEAR he believes that there is no god, and that it is ridiculous that anyone believes in the possibility of a God (not getting into separate religions right now).
Some parallels and arguments he brings up are rather creative and thought provoking. For instance, I didn't know that Jesus Christ' story is basically a verbatim ripoff of Horus, the son of Osiris in ancient Egyptian theology. Horus was: born on December 25th, born of a virgin, was a carpenter, healed the sick, raised a man who's name translates into Lazarus, he was crucified, and he was risen on the 3rd day of his death, and oh yeah, 2 women proclaimed he was raised. It's pretty thought provoking.
I didn't plan on and don't plan on commenting on everything I saw in the movie. I could get into conversation about how Christians call Mormon's crazy, and how Jews can't get along with Muslims, and dammit, none of them can get along with each other. Hell, when I go to church, I find it hard to find people that get along with each other, let alone another sect. Church does a real good job at screwing up religion.
Is religion the opiate of the masses? Probably. Is it answers for those that have questions that can't be answered by scientific information? Yes. Does it make people feel better on their death bed? Yes...and what's wrong with that? I really think that Kevin Smith wrote it best. "I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier." Do I personally know what's out there? No. Do I believe that God came down and impregnated a woman and had a baby and that baby died for our sins? No. I DO however believe in Jesus Christ. I think Christianity messed the damn message up. Regardless of divinity, if one strives to live their life like Jesus Christ, they're going to be a pretty darn good person. And, isn't that all we're looking for in life? Live a good life. That's it. If one is living their life as a downpayment on something they might get in a magical land after they die...isn't that just...wrong? Wouldn't it be better to be nice, to you know...be nice? I'm not saying one has to be exactly like Jesus. That's impossible. It's a different time and place. But, people...treat each other how you'd like to be treated. It's not hard, and believe me, it will make your life better and make you a real good example for those around you.
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