Month: June 2015
Loving Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface!
I first really listened to the band Twenty One Pilots during Sirius XM’s Alt Nation broadcast of their Bonnaroo performance. I had heard their songs a few times before (mostly “Not Today”) but that was the first time I listened to them for an extended period of time and I was in love.
Since then I’ve been listening to their recently released album Blurryface every night during the drive into work and the album is amazing! There’s not a song on the album I don’t love, but particular favorites include “Not Today”, “Lane Boy” and “Goner”.
If you haven’t really listened to Twenty One Pilots I highly recommend giving Blurryface a listen. It’s great!
Getting a logo Squarespace
I’ve often heard ads for Squarespace, but never really had a reason to check them out since I’m pretty happy here with WordPress. However, I was searching around for easy ways to create a logo earlier this morning and came across Squarespace’s easy to use logo creation tool.
Within seconds I had a pretty neat logo that I could purchase for $10 (you can get a low res download with a watermark for free).
This is what I came up with:
Nothing fancy, and probably not worth the $10, however I then took it over to Zazzle and had some fun with the design:
I ended up ordering a couple of shirts and buttons just for the fun of it, and also had this QR code business cards made:
I’ll admit the business cards are kind of ugly, but I’m terribly impatient and didn’t spend much time at all creating them. Anyway, just thought I’d share my silly creations with you. If you’d like to create your own logo you should probably check out Squarespace’s simple creation tool as a good place to start.
Bethesda’s epic E3
I just watched Bethesda’s E3 showcase from last night and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. The DOOM gameplay looked great and I’m all of a sudden excited to play it even though I’ve never been huge into the franchise. The guns, combat animations and environments just looked downright awesome and I can’t wait to shoot and chainsaw my way through that world.
The Elder Scrolls card game took me by surprise, but given the popularity of Hearthstone I can see how they’d want to try to cash in. I’m not so sure it’d be successful, as Hearthstone does what it does so well I don’t think there’s room for another fantasy card collecting game.
The Dishonored 2 trailer was pretty neat, and I especially like that they showcased the female character. I think it would have been better to make the game focus solely on the female protagonist, but giving the player the choice to play as either isn’t so bad.
The Fallout 4 coverage at the end was mindblowingly awesome! Everything they showed blew me away, and I especially like the way the game opens. Giving the option to play as either a male or female character again is pretty nice and having a voiced main character will certainly be interesting.
The mobile game seems pretty cool and I’m going to try to check it out later today. The Pip Boy companion app is also a neat idea, but the best part of the entire showcase was the November 2015 release date! Unfortunately I’ll be deployed this Fall, so I won’t be getting my hands on Fallout 4 until next summer.
Streaming Elder Scrolls Online: Day two
Hey there, just wanted to pop in and let you know I’m about to give Elder Scrolls Online some more time and I’ve started my Twitch stream over at Twitch.tv/jdh5153. Feel free to swing by and check it out. Hopefully ESO will start to grow on me!
Finally saw Mad Max and it was amazing!
I had been wanting to see Mad Max: Fury Road since it came out, but never got around to actually doing it. This evening we finally made it out to see the movie and I’m kicking myself for not seeing it sooner! Fury Road is probably the most explosive, action packed, edge of the seat thrilling action movie I’ve ever seen!
I absolutely love the atmosphere of the movie and the dark and gritty wasteland is amazing. The characters are awesome and the action sequences throughout are absolutely brilliant! I was blown away again and again!
The soundtrack is awesome and the way it is represented in the movie is stunningly awesome!
Mad Max: Fury Road is easily the best movie I’ve seen in 2015, and easily the most exciting action movie I’ve ever seen. I can’t wait to see it again and again! I’m just sad I missed out on the IMAX experience. If you haven’t yet seen Mad Max you need to drop everything and see it now! You won’t regret it!
Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited is a bore so far
I participated in the beta for Elder Scrolls Online (for PC) and found it clunky and boring to play even then, yet I was still dumb enough to purchase the game shortly after it launched last year. I played it for a few days and found that my opinion hadn’t changed since the beta. It felt like it had potential, but ultimately I think the entire MMO genre is no longer enjoyable.
This week The Elder Scrolls Online launched on console, and again I had a desire to check it out. I found a copy at a Redbox (they’re finally starting to get Xbox One / PS4 games around here, though not very many) and decided to rent it, against my better judgement.
I just finished up playing through the first hour of ESO on the Xbox One, and was just as underwhelmed as I was when I first played it on PC. The opening to the game isn’t very strong at all, but I guess most MMO’s are slow to start anyway. Beyond that, I still don’t find the combat enjoyable at all, and none of the characters or the quests they’ve sent me on are interesting at all. When every single side quest in The Witcher 3 features interesting characters, environments and stories, it’s hard to play through dull MMO quests in a game like ESO.
The console version of Elder Scrolls Online doesn’t feature any sort of text chat, so instead communication is accomplished via voice. Voice chat is distance based, and players will begin to fade away as they get far enough away from you. This is certainly an interesting system, and something Destiny desperately needed (or still needs if you’re still into it). I will say the voice chat can be a little jarring, especially while wandering around in the wilderness and all of a sudden a voice cuts in. I’ve been startled by a random voice in mid conversation several times already, and I suppose it’s a nice way of making the game feel less lonely. At the same time I haven’t experienced any sort of meaningful interaction with other players, and all I’ve really done is run from quest to quest skipping through the boring conversations and dull conclusions to the quests.
In a nutshell I can say that Elder Scrolls Online is simply underwhelming. If you’re really into MMO’s then you may just be able to enjoy ESO, and it certainly plays well enough for a console MMO. I think my time will be better spent playing The Witcher and continuing my journey through Fallout: New Vegas, so I doubt I’ll play much more of Elder Scrolls Online.
Idaho’s First Panera Bread (in Nampa)
This past week Idaho’s very first Panera Bread opened in Nampa, and I finally made it out there this evening. One of the things that saddened me when I got stationed in Idaho was that there were no Panera Bread’s in the entire state! How could that be?! Well I can finally get my Panera Bread fix twenty minutes outside of Boise. Previously I could only get my hands on the wonderful Chipotle Chicken Panini while I was on leave back in Pennsylvania or TDY to somewhere like Florida.
I’m glad Panera has finally made it to Idaho, however I do hope they open a store in Boise before too long so I don’t have to make the drive to Nampa. Something is better than nothing at least.
The experience was a little hectic, this being the location’s first Friday evening since it opened. The restaurant was packed and the line was long and slow moving. It seemed everyone had a lot of questions as they made it to the registers to order, which I can understand as many might not have ever eaten at a Panera before. There was a staff member handing out menus to those waiting in line and answering any questions they had which was nice, however I’m not sure it made things quicker. This wasn’t so much the staff’s fault, it was more slow moving customers, but again this was all to be expected.
I’m sure I’ll be making many more trips out to Nampa for Panera Bread lunches in the near future. Now if only Yuengling could make its way out here!
Awake Caffeinated Chocolate!
This morning, as I was picking up an after work snack, something caught my eye at the checkout. There was a display filled with Awake Caffeinated Chocolate bites, and I knew I had to try them. People love chocolate and people love caffeine, so why not combine the two? Each bite contains 50mg of caffeine, or roughly half a cup of coffee’s worth (according to the packaging). They were about $0.63 each, so I grabbed two.
The chocolate bites tasted smooth and very much like any other chocolate bar (nothing strange to them at all). I feel like they’d make a great companion for a cup of coffee if you want a little extra kick delivered via delicious chocolate. If you happen to see these bites (they also come in bars) at a checkout counter go ahead and give them a try, they’re quite enjoyable!
Civilization: Beyond Earth / Starships bundle sale
I noticed yesterday that Amazon was selling a bundle that includes Civilization: Beyond Earth and Sid Meier’s Starships for $29.99, which was tempting. I had been wanting to check out Beyond Earth since its release last October, but the mixed reviews made it sound disappointing. I had also thought about buying Starships on the iPad several times, however the reviews of it also kept me from making the plunge.
I absolutely love Civ V and Revolution 2, however I don’t often find the time required to play them. I’ve put a little more than 20 hours into Civ V and probably at least 8-10 into Revolution 2, however between the two games I’ve actually only finished maybe four or five games (against AI). Combined with the fact that I’m trying to replay through the Fallout games on PC and still have Witcher 3, FIFA and Halo to occupy my time on the Xbox One, I’m not quite sure I’d be able to give Beyond Earth the time it deserves.
$30 for both games certainly seems like a steal (considering they’d total $65 together at their normal retail prices), but I don’t feel an immediate need to own Beyond Earth either.
Steam is making my decision even more difficult as it has the same bundle available for $26.99 which almost seems too good to pass up. But do I really need these games? Do you recommend checking them out?
Gumballs Plays Games 