Wireless

UPDATE: I wrote this over a week ago, but just now realized that Blogger's "schedule a post later" never actually posted.

I knew it had been a long time since I'd written here, but I didn't realize it had been almost half a year. Whoops. Part of the reason for that is that I haven't been playing a ton of games since I canceled GameFly. Don't get me wrong, I've still been playing things occasionally. But I haven't really been diving into a game like I did when I felt like I was "on the clock" with a rented game. Time is money in that situation and now that I've been buying games outright, I tend to take my time. 

Another reason is that to blog, I have to be at home and have my laptop on. I hardly ever bother to switch on my (aging) laptop since I have a phone and tablet that are instant-on and much easier to walk around the house with. Related to this, keeping up with news on phones & tablets is kind of a hobby for me. Sort of taking the place of keeping up with news on videogames if you're going by what's in my Google Reader compared to a year or two ago. With this in mind I thought I'd write a bit about what I've been doing with that lately since it's way too much text for twitter. Feel free to skip this post if you don't care. I'll get back to videogames eventually. Probably.

Still reading? Ok, well I've been on T-Mobile for over a decade. It's been fairly decent for the most part, but in the last few years when everyone switched to data-centric smartphones they've been falling behind. Not being able to sell a phone with an "i" at the start of it is not something that I really care about, but it's sort of embarassing for the company and a big deal to lots of customers that are leaving in droves. Also, the TMO data network itself is falling behind everyone else's. LTE is still a year away and if you get far from a major city or highway, you're on dialup modem speeds. That basically means text-only internet and don't even bother trying to upload anything.

I've been frustrated with this and approaching the end of my contract with them so I wanted to check out some other options. Since I have an unlocked Galaxy Nexus that works just fine on both AT&T and TMO, I thought I'd try AT&T. But AT&T is really expensive. So when I heard about Straight Talk wireless (that just uses AT&T's network but for much lower prices) I jumped at it. You also have the option to use TMO's network, but that wouldn't really do me any good. I ordered a SIM card and put it in my Nexus about a week ago. So how is it so far? 

It’s been better than T-mobile at my house only. At my brother’s house, just south of KC, I was expecting to get 3G on AT&T where TMO only has 2G (based on looking at AT&T data coverage maps) but I only ever saw 2G. Speed tests on AT&T have been pretty dismal and it stutters even trying to load Instagram.  Not too impressive. 

Another situation where TMO has been suffering in the last year is at places that are really crowded like stadiums or parades. A few weeks back I went to a Chiefs game at Arrowhead stadium and I couldn't do a thing with my TMO phone while a friend was having no problems with his Verizon LTE. So when I tried the Straight Talk AT&T SIM with the same phone I expected improvement. But I never did get any data once I got inside the stadium w/ AT&T. It was even having trouble getting a voice signal. I swapped SIMs back to TMO in my seat after about 10 min. of being frustrated (and Verizon LTE once again working flawlessly). Surprisingly, the TMO wasn't bad this time. It probably had something to do with their recent improved network coverage in KC.

I’ll be curious to test it out down at my mom’s house in the Ozarks, but so far I’m not impressed. I may be sticking with TMO after all. You may be wondering why I don't just switch to Verizon if it's been so impressive. Well I may eventually end up doing just that. But for now, I'm enjoying my unlocked phone, cheap TMO plan, and no-contract freedom. So that's my little wireless experiment. Hopefully it can help somebody else.

Mass Effect 3

I finished Mass Effect 3 a couple weeks ago. It's really been the only game that I've really dug into lately. Everything else has been downloadable and I haven't consistently played anything like I did when I was into ME3. Every chance I got I fired up the Xbox and I have it set to auto play whatever disc is in there. So it didn't get used for any other games for a few weeks. I think I did most of the "side" mission type stuff as well. So I got a lot out of that game, I guess you could say. And I didn't think the ending was that bad.

I may mention some general spoilers here if you haven't finished it. I think it tied up the big arcing series fairly well. The only thing I didn't love is that you didn't really get a sense of what the heck happened to your crew. A few of them were shown on the Normandy at the end. Am I supposed to assume the rest are dead somewhere? I may go back and play through it again as the other gender and make more Renegade choices. But I haven't wanted to dive right back in just yet.

As you can tell from the post frequency, I just haven't played a lot of games. I figured I should write about ME3 since it closes out the trilogy and I was way in to it while I was playing it. But now I'm working my way through Fez and the Walking Dead from Telltale.

Now Playing

I updated the list to you left (assuming you're not reading this in an RSS reader) so you at least know I'm still playing lots of things. Also I played through Mass Effect 3 and didn't hate the ending. Maybe I should write about that? More soon, I promise.

Awww COME ON!

The above title is sort of Marcus Fenix's catchphrase.

Gears of War 3. I played it, I finished it, I don't feel like writing a whole lot about it. It was a pretty good looking shooter that reminded me how bad I am at those sorts of games. Especially the hiding behind cover and spraying a ton of bullets into dudes over and over. And reloading. Lots of reloading. I've played all three of them now, but I can't remember much about the story. And no, I didn't play any of the multiplayer.

Yes, I realized this is probably my worst post ever. I just don't want you to get the impression that I haven't been finishing any games lately. :)

Zelda

In the last two days I finished several long running entertainment...things. Zelda: Skyward Sword, World Without End, and Friday Night Lights. It would have all been in one day but Zelda, true to form, was frustratingly difficult and long and drawn out in the last battle. This being a videogame blog, I should probably stick to Zelda.

< I try to avoid all but the most minor spoilers in the following paragraphs >

I was at 52 hours when I hit the last save point. The last boss took me three attempts because, like a few other boss fights in the game, you have to be incredibly precise with the (often imprecise) Wii Motion Plus, and you don't get much feedback as to if what you're doing is even correct. So I looked it up like I had done several times before while playing through this. Trust me, if I hadn't done this my tally would have been closer to 70 hours and I may have never played a Zelda game again. Sometimes at my discretion I "cheat" to save myself a ton of time and frustration. So the game was incredibly long. I would have preferred something topping out at around 30 hours. But while the credits rolled, I was trying to think about what made it take so long. The answer, besides all the dialogue that sometimes treated you like you were brain dead and had never played a videogame before, was that there was just a ton of content. People give Nintendo grief for backtracking and making you replay levels but there really wasn't much of that. Or at least it was done in such a way that there was a valid story reason for you to go back to somewhere and the terrain and enemies were different enough as to make it feel almost like a new environment.

This game looks really good for being on a 5 year old, underpowered, non-HD system. I can't wait to see what they do with better hardware. Which leads me to my next point. I'd love to see a refresh of the series. Throw out all the sacred cows and give me something new. Maybe Retro Studios can breathe some new life into the series. They've certainly shown they can handle some of the old Nintendo greats.

So I disliked the length and some of the dialogue along with the some of the controls. But there was a lot to love too. The world seemed incredibly full and fleshed out. The enemies were interesting 3D takes on the old Zelda standbys. Some new and old weapons and tools were used creatively. And for once the helper character didn't make me want to stab my eyes out. At least not all of the time. Some of the late game content where you had all of the tools at your disposal were really neat because they asked you to combine all of them to get past obstacles rather than just "use the bow and arrow a lot in this dungeon since you just found it here." I liked the somewhat subtle explanation they give for there always being an evil power that tries to take over the world, always a pretty blond girl with magic powers that gets herself into trouble, and always a boy in green clothes that has to save her.

Monthly Blog Post

Looking back at my last few posts, they seem to be no more frequent than about once a month. Since it's the end of January, I guess I'm due. Thing is, not much has changed since the last time I wrote. I'm still making my way through a bunch of those games, and haven't started anything new or finished any of them. I was on the beach for a week last week, which would make you think I played a lot of 3DS, but that wasn't really the case. Bright sun and bad battery life had something to do with that I suppose. I rediscovered a lot of books I've been meaning to get to, whether in actual paper (useful on a plane when they make you turn everything off or on a beach where I'd rather not risk an iPad) or on the Kindle app. I guess I did pick up the 3D version of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and made my way through a bit of it, enough to get the bow and arrow anyway. The re-release looks pretty good, and still holds up well in 2012.

I've been making my way through Sword and Sworcery on the iPad. Remember how I said that the bigger screen makes it easier for games? Well, since the art style of this is all pixelated it would probably look fine on the smaller screen. But that's not been my problem with it. For a mobile game, it really demands a good solid 20-30 min. per chapter. And don't even think about app switching over to the browser to get you out of a jam. You tend to lose progress. I'll get through it eventually if only for the great atmosphere and humor.