Gumballs Plays Games

Madden 15 ‘this file cannon be loaded’ fix

Posted on July 29, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I’ve recently been playing Madden 15 regularly again and when I tried to load up my connected franchise today I was hit with the error above (This file cannot be loaded because it was created with a differente version of the game.). The game hadn’t downloaded any updates that I was aware of, so I was a little panicked. I always keep both an autosave and a manual save of my franchise so I tried loading up the manual save and was hit with the same error. After that I was really panicked. I was mid way through my fourth season and had had an outstanding career so far.

I searched around and couldn’t find any clear solution to the problem. Some posts from 2014 mentioned deleting the latest roster updates, which I did, however this didn’t fix the problem. I also tried completely restarted my Xbox One, but still had the problem.

Ultimately I was able to fix the issue by deleting my Madden 15 save data from the console and downloading it from the cloud again. To do this press start on the Madden 15 icon in your games and apps and select manage game. From there go over to save data and select it to delete it. Make sure you delete the local files only, not both (which will delete your backup!). After I did this I restarted Madden 15 and after it finished syncing the data my save file worked again.

Hopefully this will work for anyone else who has encountered this problem. Thank goodness for the cloud!!

Some pics from a great Vegas weekend

Posted on July 27, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I’ve been in Vegas for work and haven’t posted much lately, but thought I’d share a few of my favorite pictures from this past weekend when Vanessa came down. It was a blast!

FIFA 16’s cover featuring Alex Morgan

Posted on July 21, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

This year marks not only the first time the FIFA series will feature women’s teams (in the form of 12 national teams) but also the first time a female athlete has graced the cover of a mainstream sports game.

FIFA is one of the best selling video games in the world, so it’s pretty cool to see a female athlete featured predominantly on the cover and it’s even cooler to see the women’s national teams make it into the game. Hopefully this is the first step of many to expand the focus beyond just male athletes in EA Sports games.

I really like the cover, featuring Alex Morgan of the United States national team. I’m honestly a little tired of seeing Messi on the cover, I think they could’ve given Morgan the cover on her own to celebrate the women’s team World Cup victory.

I’m excited for FIFA 16 to release this Fall, and I can’t wait to see this cover in my digital game collection. Congratulations Alex Morgan!

Final Fantasy X HD: Just getting started

Posted on July 20, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I’ve been slowly making my way through Final Fantasy X HD on the Vita recently. Final Fantasy X was actually my first Final Fantasy game, back in high school (I first rented it from Blockbuster in 2004). I fell in love with the game almost immediately and it took me most of the summer to finish but I enjoyed every moment of it. I was blown away by the characters, the music, the world, it was all unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

So far my return to Spira has been enjoyable. The Vita makes for a great platform to experience Final Fantasy X on. It’s great to pick up and play in small spurts here and there, and yet once you start it’s hard to put down. The game looks very crisp on the display, and the HD upgrade is pleasant to look at.

Last night I made it to two of the first challenges in Finaly Fantasy X, the rapid fire encounters with both Sin and Sinspawn Echuilles.

The cutscenes before and after the Sin encounter are incredibly good looking (they were mind blowing back on the PS2) on the Vita. I forgot just how darn good FFX looked at times. The battle with Sin was easier than I remembered it being, I just pecked away at Sin with Lulu and Wakka while Tidus slashed away at the Sinspawn. I finished the fight without any real trouble.

Without anytime for a breather you’re thrown right into the Sinspawn Echuilles fight, which is actually a bit more challenging than the Sin fight.

You’re only given Tidus and Wakka during the fight, and Echuilles presented me with my first KO situation (I suffered a few KO’s during the fight but made it through without a complete wipe!). The fight was the first exciting encounter of the game, however with some tactical thinking it didn’t go too horribly. I had Tidus cast Cheer while Wakka used his Dark Attack which saved me from most of the Drain Touch attacks. His Blender attack, however, left me in some critical health situations that I barely escaped. Fortunately I made it through the fight to be greeted with some more scenes featuring Sin’s destructive power.

I made it into Kilika and hit up the Sphere Grid before saving and calling it a night.

I remember the Sphere Grid being quite confusing at first, but eventually it became an almost addictive leveling system. Being able to see all of the ways you could power up your characters made me want to grind away and try to get as powerful as I could. I do wish the Sphere Grid would take advantage of the Vita’s touchscreen as I feel like touch would be the ideal way to navigate the grid, but it’s not so bad once you get the hang of it again.

I’m looking forward to making some more progress in Final Fantasy X over the next couple of weeks.

Ant-Man

Posted on July 18, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I’ll admitt, I didn’t even know they were making an Ant-Man movie until about last week. I don’t ever recall seeing a trailer for it or hearing anything about it. I know very little about the character, but I do remember seeing him in some old Avengers comics. I honestly probably would have never gone to see Ant-Man on my own, but this evening some people from work wanted to see it so I tagged along.

We went to the Galaxy theater at the Cannery in North Las Vegas, and the theater itself was pretty darn nice! I loved the reclining seats, and although the only seats left were in the first three rows it wasn’t too bad once fully reclined. Heck, I’m not sure I can go back to a normal movie theater after watching a movie in these chairs, it was awesome!

Overall I enjoyed Ant-Man, however I feel that the set up was a little drawn out and overly boring. I guess most origin stories are a little drawn out, but I just wasn’t getting into the movie at all in the beginning. That said, once the character is established things start to move along at a quicker and more exciting pace. The scenes in which Ant-Man is insect sized are wonderfully pleasing to watch and they do some truly unique things with the concept. As enjoyable as Ant-Man is visually, the Marvel movie formula makes much of the film predictable and causes some of the comedy to fall flat.

In the end I enjoyed Ant-Man more than I enjoyed the last Avengers movie, however I want Marvel to step outside of the Marvel movie box a bit more, if that makes sense. I’d recommend Ant-Man to anyone both those who enjoy Marvel films in particular and even those who are just action comedy fans. There’s plenty for everyone to enjoy.

EA Sports Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is terribly diasspointing

Posted on July 14, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I pre-ordered EA Sports Rory McIlroy PGA Tour and was excited to check out EA’s first current gen golf game (also the first in two years and the first since dropping the Tiger Woods name). It took all weekend to download over the hotel WiFi, and today I finally got to give it a try.

What a disappointment! Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is lacking in so many ways compared to the great Tiger Woods games of the past. First of all the tutorial seems lazy and is also lazily narrated. The Rory McIlroy prologue lacks excitement as does McIlroy’s commentary (that you can’t skip).

Career mode was my favorite part of the Tiger Woods games, and I especially loved trying to rise from the amateur ranks to the PGA Tour, all while earning sponsorships and increasing my stats. Most of that is missing from this game. First of all, the character customization is terribly lacking.

There are hardly any customization options at all. As you can see above, there are only eight haircut styles to choose from! Not only that, but what’s even worse is you can no longer pick and choose how you spend EXP to increase your stats. The game increases your stats for you and your only choice is between a few styles to start out with (power, finesse, balanced). Career mode starts you off with the Web.com finals, and there’s no other amateur career leading up to the PGA Tour. What’s worse, is by default the game is set to simulate most of the round with you only getting to play four or five holes.

Once on the course the game doesn’t get much better. If you’re playing with spin enabled (arcade controls) any amount of spin at all affects the ball so drastically it’s almost impossible to use. Even a slight amount of backspin will stop the ball dead in its tracks and any amount of forward spin is likely to cause the ball to run clear off the green even if you land toward the front.

I’ve had several chip shots get stuck on the flag rather than sink into the hole, and putting is impossibly hard. Even with putt reads enabled putting is hopeless. In fact half the time the reads seem to be completely wrong and indicate the ball breaking in the complete opposite direction. You’re better off ignoring the reads entirely, but prepare to be frustrated beyond belief with putting. I’ve never had this much trouble with a Tiger Woods game.

There are so few courses and gameplay features in Rory McIlroy PGA Tour you’re much better off picking up any of the recent Tiger Woods games (I recommend The Masters). Rory McIlroy PGA Tour is terribly disappointing and I can’t recommend it even to the most hardcore golf fans.

Recently Watched: The Gambler

Posted on July 13, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I’m here in Las Vegas this month for work, so what better time to watch The Gambler! I had wanted to see it for awhile, but never got around to it, so I finally picked it up from Redbox this weekend.

Mark Wahlberg plays the character Jim Bennett wonderfully, and it was both agonizing and enjoyable to watch his journey to and out of rock bottom throughout the film. John Goodman and Brie Larson are also incredibly enjoyable to watch, and both play their characters well.

The transition scenes that count down the days until Bennett’s deadline to repay his debts, and the beginning of his romance with Larson’s character are some of my favorite parts of the movie, but the thrilling conclusion and the runup to it is just as good. I definitely recommend checking out The Gambler if you haven’t already.

AT&T Galaxy S6 update seemed to fix my signal issues

Posted on July 12, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

Shortly after I upgraded from the Galaxy S5 to the S6 I started having severe problems with the phone. I didn’t necessarily want to stay with Android, I wanted to go back to Apple, however I had purchased a Galaxy Gear watch early this year and I didn’t want it to become useless.

With the S6 I started having problems maintaining a data connection, even if my device said I had full bars and LTE. The internet would simply stop working on the phone for no reason. I would try turning airplane mode on and off and occasionally this would work for a few minutes, but the data connection would slow to a crawl and be entirely useless. This would happen at work and all throughout Boise where previously I had a strong signal everywhere. This issue was so frustrating because I had grown to rely on having an internet connection in my pocket wherever I went and now it felt like I went back to having a flip phone. I would also experience dropped calls even when I had full bars.

I talked to AT&T tech support and they couldn’t come up with any solutions, and in the end they referred me to Samsung tech support. I talked to Samsung who also were no help and denied that this issue even existed despite there being forum posts all over the place from users experiencing the exact same issue.

Yesterday my phone took an OTA update, a 146MB update that changes the build number from OE2 to OF3, and now it seems my phone is functioning normally again (knock on wood!). I hope this was the fix because I was seriously about to just go out and pay full price for an iPhone 6. If you were experiencing the same issues go ahead and update your phone and let me know if the update improves anything. Best of luck!

Recently watched: Ted 2

Posted on July 5, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

Yesterday afternoon we made it out to see Seth MacFarlane’s Ted 2. The original Ted was a movie that had me laughing from beginning to end, however it was hard to convince people it was worth seeing as most just thought the concept was silly.

So far Ted 2 hasn’t really made much of a splash at the box office which had me doubting whether it’d be worth seeing, but I’m happy to report it was an enjoyable experience. The theater was rather empty, however it was a 1:30 showtime on the Fourth of July, so that wasn’t unexpected. I’m a little bummed we didn’t make it out to see it on opening weekend since it’s always a blast seeing comedies in a packed theater, but it was still enjoyable.

The movie had us laughing pretty hard quite often, however it’s not as outrageously funny as the first for sure. A lot of the jokes are quite predictable for anyone who’s seen the first film or has watched a lot of Family Guy, yet they still were able to produce laughs. Some of the more unpredictable moments really hit their marks, unfortunately a lot of these moments come from the supporting cast.

There are a few things that I didn’t like at all about Ted 2, one of which being the opening credits. They were well produced, but it seemed like they just dragged on which was a bit of a bore. The movie is also a bit slow moving at times, mostly while trying to set up the plot which is a bummer. Sometimes I wish comedies didn’t even bother trying to set up a coherent narrative, and I think the narrative is Ted’s weakest point. It’s the moments in-between pivotal story moments that really shine, and luckily they’re able to produce enough laughs to make the rest of the movie bearable.

If you enjoyed Ted, or love Seth MacFarlane’s sense of humor you’ll probably enjoy Ted 2. Is it spectacular? No, but it’s still an enjoyable ride.

Finally got a Vita!

Posted on July 4, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

This weekend I finally got around to picking up a Playstation Vita. I had been thinking about it for awhile, especially after I bought a PS TV and started playing Final Fantasy X HD and Persona 4 Golden on it. I felt like those games would play much better in a mobile environment as I never really had the motivation to boot up the PS TV. I finally took the plunge and picked up the Borderlands 2 bundle for $199 at GameStop (they accept Google Wallet by the way!).

The bundle comes with a voucher for Borderlands 2 (and its DLC) and an 8GB Vita memory card. 8GB isn’t very much, especially if you’re going to be downloading games, but my PS TV also came with a 8GB card so for now I’m using that and will throw in the new card when I want to download more games.

So far I’m enjoying using the Vita. It feels good in the hands, it’s not too heavy and the screen looks pretty darn good! The system also produces a decent amount of sound and it sounds pretty good when using the speakers.

Playstation Vita

The UI definitely navigates better using the touch screen when compared to navigating it on the PS TV, so that’s a plus, but I still think the Playstation UI is pretty ugly.

As of right now I own Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD, Persona 4 Golden, Borderlands 2 and MLB The Show 15 (which I bought in the store as a redeemable voucher only because it was $19.99 at GameStop and $40 on the Playstation store). The only game I’ve played so far is Final Fantasy X, but it plays great on the Vita. It’s nice to pick up and play for a bit here and there and will be great for my bus trip next week.

I’ve been browsing the store and nothing else is really popping out at me. I had often heard that Vita support is pretty subpar, but hopefully I’ll find some more things to check out. I’m thinking about picking up Metal Gear Solid HD collection as the only MGS game I’ve actually finished is MGS2 on the 360. Do these games play well on the Vita?

Do you have any recommendations for must own Vita / classic games? Let me know please!