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Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Monday, June 30, 2014
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
50 - Iron Manliness
This week on the triumphant return of The Broke Nerdcast: Jay and Wally are joined by author Sean Arthur Cox as he discusses his new novel "New Tricks", a tale that takes the familiar fantasy tropes we all know and turning them on their head!
Once they do everything in their power to not spoil the best bits of the book, they guys discuss Star Wars Land at Disney World and the guys brainstorm and design the single greatest theme park attraction to be crafted by man by putting you into an Iron Man suit!
Listen to the show today!
Link: http://tinyurl.com/BuyNewTricks
iTunes reviews help support the show and it is FREE!
Read Wally’s TMG coverage and reviews!
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
42 - "WE ARE DONE PROFESSIONALLY, MATE!"
Thanks to a corrupted audio file, this week's episode is only 3/4 long. But hey,
three-quarters of an episode is better than no episode right?
Returning Guest B.J. Wanlund drops by to tell us all about the new video games
he's been playing, Jay discusses Hemlock Grove, and Wally talks about his trip to Disney.
iTunes reviews help support the show and it is FREE!
Read Wally’s TMG coverage and reviews!
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
39 - Grape Bass
The Broke Nerdcast hold tribute to Roger Ebert this week by taking our top
three favorite movies of all time and seeing how he felt about them. He liked
all but one of our selections and the movie that received the "thumbs down"
may surprise you!
Before we honor Ebert's legacy, we go into such varied topics as playing
Before we honor Ebert's legacy, we go into such varied topics as playing
NES games on your Ouya, a classic developer shutting down its doors, and
bloody good horror movies.
So listen to the Broke Nerdcast, where we would do more stuff if our families
So listen to the Broke Nerdcast, where we would do more stuff if our families
enjoyed ramen for dinner every night of the week.
iTunes reviews help support the show and it is FREE!
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Episode 17: TMG vs. The BNC!
Join The Married Gamers Chris and Kelly on the Broke Nerdcast as they welcome guests Jay and Wally to the show! Tuck the kiddos in early this week as they determine the best things you could buy in conjunction with a copy of “50 Shades of Grey”. We determine why “The Munsters” reboot sounds like the greatest thing ever made. Then the show gets serious when Jason mentions how red his state is. Then we give you our top picks for the greatest video games ever made, Will there be any surprises or does the show devolve into ANOTHER Harmonix love fest? Find that out and more as The Broke Nerdcast’s peanut butter mixes with The Married Gamers’ chocolate! Tasty!
Download the MP3 here!
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Perusing Pixeldom
Seeing as how I am a broke nerd, I have to try to figure out ways that I would still be able to do the things I like to do. Most of the extra money that we have currently go to our impeding Disney World vacation, so what am I to do?
Well, there are a few things that I've been doing that I'm sure many other broke nerds are doing, like only going to the movies on discounted nights, or entering sweepstakes (I hope to write more about sweeps blogs like Embracing Beauty ); however, I've been looking near and far for a way for me to get discounted or free Microsoft Points.
I have won a few different sweepstakes in which I have won these points, which are purchased in exchange for games, movies, and downloadable content (DLC). Specifically, I need these points due to my crippling addiction to Rock Band.
Enter Pixeldom.
Pixeldom, whose motto is, "Share Something, Get Something", allows you to review movies, videogames, or even the weekly video podcast-type show they produce and in return, you get "pixels". After you earn enough of this digital currency, they allow you to exchange them for iTunes, Microsoft, Sony, AMC, or even McDonald's giftcards.
After hearing about this site, I immediately went into my archive of reviews that I've written all the way back from ten years ago and whittled them down to the required length of less than 1000 words. This was rather advantageous, as with each new movie or game entry, you receive even more pixels than if you were just reviewing something someone had already posted.
The down parts of this whole thing was, in fact, the 1000 word limit. If you've read any of my reviews...and I'm assuming you have considering you are, in fact, currently reading one of them, then you know I tend to write a lot more than that. After reading other reviews on the site, there are also a lot of reviews that seem to just be a sentence or two and do not give any real criticism of the subjects. While I understand that this is inherent to a system like this, it makes me wish that the pixels would be based on quality.
Pixeldom seems to feel the way I do about quality as well, as a way to encourage good writing, they hand out extra pixels for comments and having people signify that they like your review by clicking "Pixel It".
The customer service via Twitter @pxldm is fast and friendly as my own mistake was quickly explained and they gave me points for the confusion. They were a complete class act very similar to how the acclaimed @XboxSupport group work.
After getting enough points for my Microsoft Points, there were a few hiccups as I had to log out and back in for it to allow me to purchase them despite having just received the points, but they are in beta and I was surprised that it was as smooth as it was.
After two weeks, the points have made it here in a handwritten envelope....I couldn't be happier.
All said, this is a great website for those who like to review movies and games and always wanted to get something for the work.
You know? Like me.
See my Pixeldom page by clicking these words and don't forget to comment and Pixel my reviews!
www.pixeldom.com
Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points [Online Game Code]
Xbox 360 Live 4000 Points
Well, there are a few things that I've been doing that I'm sure many other broke nerds are doing, like only going to the movies on discounted nights, or entering sweepstakes (I hope to write more about sweeps blogs like Embracing Beauty ); however, I've been looking near and far for a way for me to get discounted or free Microsoft Points.
I have won a few different sweepstakes in which I have won these points, which are purchased in exchange for games, movies, and downloadable content (DLC). Specifically, I need these points due to my crippling addiction to Rock Band.
Enter Pixeldom.
Pixeldom, whose motto is, "Share Something, Get Something", allows you to review movies, videogames, or even the weekly video podcast-type show they produce and in return, you get "pixels". After you earn enough of this digital currency, they allow you to exchange them for iTunes, Microsoft, Sony, AMC, or even McDonald's giftcards.
After hearing about this site, I immediately went into my archive of reviews that I've written all the way back from ten years ago and whittled them down to the required length of less than 1000 words. This was rather advantageous, as with each new movie or game entry, you receive even more pixels than if you were just reviewing something someone had already posted.
The down parts of this whole thing was, in fact, the 1000 word limit. If you've read any of my reviews...and I'm assuming you have considering you are, in fact, currently reading one of them, then you know I tend to write a lot more than that. After reading other reviews on the site, there are also a lot of reviews that seem to just be a sentence or two and do not give any real criticism of the subjects. While I understand that this is inherent to a system like this, it makes me wish that the pixels would be based on quality.
Pixeldom seems to feel the way I do about quality as well, as a way to encourage good writing, they hand out extra pixels for comments and having people signify that they like your review by clicking "Pixel It".
The customer service via Twitter @pxldm is fast and friendly as my own mistake was quickly explained and they gave me points for the confusion. They were a complete class act very similar to how the acclaimed @XboxSupport group work.
After getting enough points for my Microsoft Points, there were a few hiccups as I had to log out and back in for it to allow me to purchase them despite having just received the points, but they are in beta and I was surprised that it was as smooth as it was.
After two weeks, the points have made it here in a handwritten envelope....I couldn't be happier.
All said, this is a great website for those who like to review movies and games and always wanted to get something for the work.
You know? Like me.
See my Pixeldom page by clicking these words and don't forget to comment and Pixel my reviews!
www.pixeldom.com
Xbox 360 Live 1600 Points [Online Game Code]
Xbox 360 Live 4000 PointsTuesday, June 7, 2011
E3 Special Report: Strange Things Afoot On the 360
So the big three have fired their collective shots across each others bow in this year’s E3 and I’ve learned something very important about myself. I must not be a gamer anymore.
Let me clarify: I love playing video games, but I don’t seem to be nearly as excited and genuinely dislike some of the more beloved franchises on each of the consoles.
Yesterday morning, Microsoft held their pre-E3 shin dig and announced new User Interface changes for the 360 to make the experience more in line with what we all thought we were getting when Kinect came out and everything will be controlled with gestures and voice if we so please. The highlight of this part of the conference was “Xbox Bing” that allows you to search the Xbox universe using only your voice. For example, if I were to say, “Xbox Bing Sesame Street”, everything related to “Sesame Street” would appear for me to peruse.
Also announced was a new app for using YouTube. This is a great new addition to the social networking apps already available and in fact might become my favorite social networking app yet if it wasn’t for the data caps that are poised to start making me change the way I consume media, but I’ll get into that in more detail at a later date.
I really wish that the other apps would be updated to allow us to be able to see Twitpics or follow links since I feel that they are useless without that functionality.
Also announced was live television streaming to the Xbox, which looks interesting.
Microsoft also announced a few diversionary apps that make use of the Kinect technology that were made available immediately. I downloaded a couple of them and played around with “Kinect Me” and “Buddy Creator”.
“Kinect Me” (or is it “Me Kinect”?) is an app that would create an avatar by scanning your face and body and creating an avatar with your face and clothes. It takes pictures of your doppelganger to share. It works fairly well and it allows you to get some achievements, but it has a few shortcomings. First thing that’s apparent is that there is not a way to edit your body type and thus, I looked nothing like myself. I am a pretty big guy and the Avatar was skinnier than anyone I know, but at least I know what I’d look like if I were to lose an amazing amount of weight and bone density. The second issue is the fact that you really can’t do anything with this thing except share it on Kinectshare.com, so there really isn’t a point.
“Buddy Creator” is a pretty exciting app, but it’s not because of its content, but because of the possibilities opened with the technology. What it does is scan the front and back of an object, in my case a few plush animals I borrowed from my daughter, and inserts the object in the game space. You create a personality for the character and provide a voice and it takes you to a rather lame game where you follow on screen directions asking you to do simple gestures. The issues with this app is that after doing the gesturing, there really doesn’t seem to be much else you can do with the character but watch it do the bizarre action animations based on the role the app gives it. For example, I scanned an Elmo plush and the app assigned it to a “clown” personality and this apparently means that he will walk around and poop balloons and confetti. The on-stage demo of this app showed 1:1 body tracking and I never could find where I could do this or where I would be able to hear my voice over work be used and I was REALLY looking forward to hearing that. If anyone knows if there is something I’m missing, then please tell me as I love this idea, but the execution seems slapped together. It’s pretty awesome to be able to use your own things in the game space as it was shown in the early Kinect trailers. An interesting side bar is that I tried to scan my daughter into the game, but she came out as a deformed monster baby with my arm jutting out of her armpit. The results were so disturbing; especially with the “Ninja” character profile, I had to delete her entirely.
There was a huge Kinect push this year from Microsoft for all of the other games announced with some really intuitive control schemes being planned for core games, like head tracking in “Forza 4” that allows you to look into turns, audible calling in “Madden 12”, and weapons training in “Ghost Recon” that looked rather impressive.
Of course there was a focus on casual games and this is why I made my previous statement. I am not looking forward to anything but the casual games like “Kinect Sports: Second Season”, “Dance Central 2”, “Disneyland” and the like. I mean, sure, I want to play “Halo 4” and the update of the original “Combat Evolved”, but there wasn’t much excitement behind it.
This wraps up the Xbox conference, for me anyways, as I really have no opinion about all of the stuff I don’t think I’ll ever play. I’ll try to get my thoughts on Sony’s Conference (the Vita), and Nintendo (Wii U) tomorrow, but until then…party on dudes.
P.S. Next year, hire less over the top actors M$. They made the games look dumb.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Sony Announces Something, ANYTHING (Updated Again!)
For almost a week now, the Playstation Network (PSN) has not been working. The online infrastructure was apparently hacked by someone and Sony decided that the best course of action was to shut it down entirely.I'm not effected by this whole thing since I don't have a Playstation 3 for a variety of reasons, the first and foremost being that they were stupidly expensive when they first came out and the people who run Sony seem like they have a stick in thier collective asses. Microsoft and Nintendo have a sense of wonder and fun about them, but Sony is like that filmmaker who feels that thier mediocre body of work is way more important than trying to do anything fun with it.
It got better when they started doing the commercials with Kevin Butler, but it seemed like any time any announcements are made, it has no life, no excitement. It's as if they are more in love with the products that they produce and the fans should just accept what they do.
A prime example of how poorly the company regards thier customers has been the launch of the Playstation Move. It was quietly released and generated very little excitement in my opinion as I had no idea that it was even being released until the day I saw it on store shelves.
In contrast, when the Kinect was released, Microsoft SHUT DOWN TIME SQUARE to throw a dance party.
With all of that said, it’s really of no surprise to me as to how poorly Sony is treating this PSN outage with nearly zero transparency as to what is going on with their network. Now there are millions of people who haven’t been able to use this service for five days and counting, but has Sony given us information about when the service will be back up? Will people get refunds for the outage that pay for the PSN Plus service or DC Online? How about personal information? Should we report the cards we use as stolen?The answer, of course, is that they haven’t said.
Normally, I wouldn’t even worry about this, but what Sony DID decide to announce is almost insulting in my opinion.
Sony has announced plans to release a Playstation branded tablet.
Huh?
Does anyone really WANT another hat thrown in the tablet arena? Apple seems to have a pretty good grasp of this market, and I’m sure HP, Motorola, RIM, and all of the others out there creating these devices will do a fine job as well, but why announce the release of a product that no one expected, wanted, and named for a product line that currently has a terrible ongoing issue?
As the axiom goes, time will tell, but I don’t see this tablet business going anywhere and I feel that this was a limp attempt to distract from the horrible ongoing troubles the PSN is having.
UPDATED
On Twitter Jason Evangelho of the incredible site www.videogamewriters.com pointed out that Xperia Play is a separate division from the division who are developing the tablet. I'm not changing the content of the article since I still think this was poor timing, but it definitely should be noted.
UPDATED AGAIN!
Sony has finally told everyone what is going on and it's not good.
The shorthand is that on April 20, 2011,
What that means to PSN users is that if they had that info in there, you may want to monitor your accounts and change all of your passwords.
You can see the official Sony response by clicking here.
PlayStation 3 120 GB
Xbox 360 4GB Console with Kinect
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