By The Numbers: Super Bowl Edition

January 30, 2015 Izlain1 Comment

This is going to be the final By The Numbers post until next season. I thought about doing one for the Pro Bowl last weekend, but no one watches that shit. They don’t even play a real game. I also thought about skipping this altogether because I’m pissed about my team not being in the Super Bowl, but I figured I might as well.

So I hope the Patriots win. Brady is the better QB here, and fuck the Seahawks for their miraculous comeback win at the last minute. It’s the Fail Mary all over again. Did I mention FUCK SEATTLE? Yeah. Go Pats. I guess. I probably won’t even watch it.

Patriots 31, Seachickens 20

Go fuck yourself, Seattle.

#bythenumbers #nfl #picks

Couch Podtatoes Episode 31: Community Content

January 30, 2015August 11, 2018 Izlain3 Comments

I took to Twitter earlier in the week and asked for a volunteer to come onto the show. The idea was that instead of just having a guest on the show for a pre-planned topic, we would instead let the guest pick our brains and come up with their own topic, and just roll with it. An organic conversation full of interesting ums and ahs should follow, right? The person who took up the call was none other than Chris, from the blog Through Wolfy’s Eyes, whom we’ve spotlighted a time or two in the past. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to accommodate time frames, Eri had a scheduling conflict so she was unable to make show time, so I’m happy to present the “Sausage Fest Edition” of Couch Podtatoes. I won’t spoil any further surprises, so dive right in, when you’re ready.

Couch Podtatoes Epsiode 31: Community Content (runtime: 46:08)

What are we playing? (starts at 1:25)
Discussion: Guest Picks (starts at 8:14)

Host Contact information:

Izlain
Blog: Me vs. Myself and I
Twitter:@mevsmyselfandi

Guest Contact information:

Chris
Blog: Wolfy’s Eyes
Twitter: @wolfyseyes

Music Credits:
“Level Up” by Cookie Monsta (from the Riot! EP)
“Gravemakers and Gunslingers” by Coheed & Cambria (from the album No World For Tomorrow)
“Enchanted Rose” by Bury Your Dead (from the album Beauty and the Breakdown)

Couch Podtatoes is a podcast about gaming, though we might stray into other forms of media. Sometimes we use strong language, but we try to keep that to a minimum. All opinions expressed by us or our guests are our own and are in no way to be interpreted as official commentary from any companies we discuss. You can visit our official podcast page at http://couchpodtatoes.libsyn.com/. Be sure to follow us on iTunes, and/or Stitcher Radio.

Questions, comments and feedback are welcomed and encouraged!

#couchpodtatoes #podcast #gamesdiscussion #gaming

Playstation Plus Freebies Feb ’15

January 29, 2015 Izlain4 Comments

It’s that time of the month again! Wait, where are you going? No. You can come back now. You don’t need to stock up on tampons. Bad joke is bad.

Seriously though, the freebies for Playstation Plus members for the month of February have been revealed. We getting some good stuff, and some ok, stuff, and some stuff I have no idea about. So let’s start things off with the video.

For those of you still with me, here’s my commentary on the offerings.

On PS4, Transistor is the first game up. From the company that brought us Bastion, it is a spiritual successor to the game that changes things up visually, and thematically, yet should still be familiar to fans of the first game. I’ve heard nothing but good stuff about it since it released on the PC, but I have yet to try it and now I know I don’t have to buy it. I just need to get a PS4. Hey, tax season is coming, perhaps then? The second offering is a PS4 exclusive called Apotheon, which is a greek mythology themed sidescroller that looks to be more of what you’ve seen in the past from indie developers. It looks pretty, but it’s probably rather simplistic. Still, no one can complain about free, can they?

On PS3, we’re getting Yakuza 4 and The newest Thief reboot. The former game is another of those open world titles like Sleeping Dogs, GTA, inFamous, or Saint’s Row. Personally I’m sick of these types of games and they rarely keep me entertained for long, but you might like it! I am interested in the Thief reboot, as a fan of the series, though I haven’t played any save for the original that came out in the late 90’s. I loved the game then, but it was something new. These days stealth games have been overdone, and the last one that I bought and played through was Dishonored, and though I loved the lore of that game, the gameplay itself was boring and uninspired. There has also been backlash against this reboot, calling it boring and uninspired and a disappointment to fans of the IP. Despite all of that, I’m glad I never purchased it, and now will be able to try it for free. I think I might actually enjoy it, but we’ll see. My love for stealth games pretty much lived and died with the original.

On Vita, there’s Rogue Legacy, and Kick & Fennick. The former is a fantastic rogue-like platformer that I bought on the PC a couple of years ago. I will definitely play it some more on the console, just like I did a couple months back with Luftrausers (which I also already had on PC). It’s a cross buy game for all 3 consoles, so this one is another great addition to the library. The latter, Kick & Fennick is another platformer, and since I don’t have a Vita I don’t really care. Has anyone seen any PS4/Vita bundles in the US yet? I remember seeing a couple of ads outside of the US but that was months ago. I really need to get both, but then I’d have even more of a backlog I wouldn’t know what to do with.

So that’s it for this month. More free stuff is always good. Until next time.

#playstationplus #instantgamecollection #freestuff

Down and Dirty in Season 5

January 27, 2015 Izlain1 Comment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or perhaps don’t give two shits about MOBAs, you’d know that Season 5 of League of Legend’s competitive season has started. I spoke about it a little bit in my last post, where I had done some of my provisional ranked games to see where I’d end up. Well, I managed to finish those off since then, and have even played a couple more games beyond that.

When I finished up my 10 games, I had one 4 and lost 6. That sounds pretty horrible — and it is — but I managed to still start off in Bronze I, which is actually better than where I started when I first played ranked back in Season 3. That year I ended up in Bronze III and had to work my way up to Bronze I, then promote into Silver V, where I stopped as the season ended. It had been my goal to get to Silver that year, and I accomplished that goal. I had planned on shooting for Gold last year, and I don’t remember why I never played. I just didn’t. So I resolved to try for that goal this year. Starting off in Bronze I means I have to promote into Silver and then run up the ranks there to get to Gold. I don’t think it will be too difficult, but we’ll see.

Since finishing my provisional games, I have played two more, one loss and one win. So currently I’m 5/7 on the season, which isn’t great by any stretch, but I don’t care as long as I meet my goals. So far I have had the best luck running Braum support, but I have won a game with Sona and Corki as well. I haven’t had any luck playing top so far, despite feeling pretty good at the role — I’ve had bad teams or bad games that didn’t result in wins. I have 27 league points currently, so a few more wins and I’ll be ready to promote into Silver. That will be pretty quick, and there’s still nearly the whole year ahead of me. I did get a game in with a fellow blogger and ranked player — Nitocris that resulted in a win, and that was cool to have a duo queue partner. So yeah, you can view my match history here if you’re interested.

In other League related news, Patch 5.2 is coming down the pipeline already. Here’s a video primer:

The biggest points are the removal of Deathfire Grasp (which I never really used, even when I play mid), and a new featured game mode in the works called “Nemesis Draft.” Interested to see what that’s going to be about, which should roll around when the Lunar Revel starts up soon. There are other tweaks and fixes, the Tristana rework and more, but you can check the full notes for more info.

Riot put out another one of those creative “artsy” videos that they are famous for. This time they decided to make a music video, and it’s focusing on Amumu, The Sad Mummy. I’m sure he’s sad because he doesn’t get played too much anymore. The whole thing is rather depressing, but you can see for yourself:

Lastly on the League front, there has been a new chunk of music released. Like the Pentakill album before it, this is a full CD’s worth of music, downloadable for free. This time around it’s more of the music of League itself, and I haven’t listened to it yet so I can’t comment on how good it is/isn’t. But free stuff is always nice right? You can go download your free copy of the album over here. It’s listed as “Volume 1” so I assume that means more of this will be coming out eventually. If you’re a video game music lover, this is for you.

That’s about all the news that’s come out recently. If you are playing League of Legends this season and want to duo, drop me a line. I’m Izlain on the Rift as well, so just do a search. Otherwise, happy gaming, where ever you find yourself!!

#leagueoflegends #patchnotes #music #season5

State of the Game: A New Season

January 25, 2015 Izlain2 Comments

Another week bites the dust. So what have I been up to this time around?

Well, obviously I’ve played a bunch of H1Z1, as my last few posts were all about it. I’m up to about ten hours of play time and despite learning a bunch of how the game works, I’m not making much progress. The reason for that is because every time I manage to scavenge up a bunch of goods and am doing good, I come across some asshole who kills me. But, this is the name of the game, and I have been loving it. I just know that having a life stretch across a few sessions and then losing all that progress will make you log out and come back another day. I have been seeing more player made structures popping up, and that’s encouraging, especially when during our conversation about the game on the last episode of Couch Podtatoes, Eri expressed concerns about no one building things. I can assure you, it’s happening.

I have found that with minimal scavenging, you can actually head out into the woods and survive pretty well. Basically you need to find a source of fire, an axe (or other such bladed weapon), and a couple of empty bottles. From there, you can be a mountain man and you’ll be less likely to get ganked. Grab some sticks and cloth, and you can make a bow. From there, you can hunt deer and wolves (and bears if you don’t get mauled) for meat. Fill up the bottles in a river, cut down a tree for some wood logs, use the fire source to make a camp fire, and boil the water and cook the meat. You can survive with minimal contact.

I also ended up opening up some of the crates using the crate keys provided with my Early Access purchase. That netted me some skins for hats and clothing items so I look a lot less like every other dude.

But of course, you have to watch out for Zombies still, particularly when you make fires. They love that shit.

In other news, the new ranked season of League of Legends got started, and the Spring Split NA LCS got started this weekend. I watched a single game on Saturday and three games today, and there were some good games played. I was shocked to see some underdog teams that are upstarts (either because of name changes or newly formed teasm) take out the #1 and #2 seeds from last year, TSM and C9. However, the season is young, so there’s many more games to be played. In my own personal play time, I’ve been working on the provisional games to see what tier I’ll end up in. There was word that the system is a little more harsh now, and some players I know that were in Gold last season started out towards the bottom of Bronze. Looks like I know where I’m starting. That’s ok though, I’ll move up the ranks if I have anything to do with it. So far I’m 4/4 out of the 10 games I have to play. I know that’s not stellar, so I imagine a Bronze III or IV start, but I’ve made my way to Silver before and the goal this year is to hit Gold. Here’s my history in ranked for the past few days:

There’s been hype building because Guild Wars 2 finally announced an expansion coming down the pipeline. I haven’t really given the game a fair shot, as when I first got it, I only played long enough to check out all of the starting cities (races) and the different classes. I then moved on to other things. I came back to it a month or two ago because I decided I really wanted to check out the WvW and sPvP and ended up not being overly attracted to either. I didn’t really get too involved, but I did delete the characters I had and changed servers to hang out with Jeromai (and I think Eri is on that server too). I know that I can get involved with a guild over there too, but didn’t want to make that commitment if I wasn’t going to play often. Knowing an expansion is coming and most of the content usually ends up being end-game oriented, I figured I might as well actually do the PvE stuff and get through the game with at least one character so that I would be ready for that expansion when it comes. However, I did think about doing this with Rift (and I’m not that far off, being level 40 with my highest character) because of the Nightmare Tide expansion, but then I only played for a few hours and gave up on that as well. However, being a B2P title and not a F2P title, GW2 feels like a game I can play when I feel like it, and I don’t have to worry about sub fees or being behind on content because I would have to spend a shitload of money to get features I might like (which is part of why I dropped Rift again). So this time around I started up a new Norn Guardian, but I still have my Charr Thief, and I have a Asura Necro. So far I’m loving the Guardian, so I’m sticking with it for the time being. Double XP weekends make it easy to grind out levels so he’s already nearing 15.

I also played a little more Diablo III, still plugging away at my Hardcore Monk who hit level 60 a couple of nights back. I’m pushing for 70 so I can get some paragon levels in for any other potential characters I might decide to play in that mode. I don’t really have much to share besides that tidbit, so here’s how he looks for the time being:

Last bit of news, I want to give a big thank you to Isey from I Has PC for doing a giveaway for the game Project Zomboid. He received a copy from Eri who ran a contest, and that inspired him to run his own giveaway, and I managed to be one of the lucky winners. So thank you good sir. I only had one sit down session with it so far, but it does look to be pretty interesting. Graphically it’s not much to look at but it seems to have some depth when it comes to the sheer amount of different items in the game and I’m sure the crafting system is pretty intense. I only ran around for a while, looted some stuff, got frustrated that I couldn’t carry more, ran into zombies, couldn’t figure out how to attack, figured that out but by then I was critically injured, ran about some more and died. I think a multiplayer session is in order, because I need some guidance. I still can’t help but compare the game to H1Z1 though, and I have to say I still enjoy H1Z1 more at this point. Perhaps Eri or Isey will be able to show me the ropes and change my mind.

Oh yeah, we got a badass over here. So yeah, that’s about all for this week. I look forward to putting time into all of the above games for the foreseeable future, as I am pretty much invested in them all. I do have a considerable backlog still but sometimes you just gotta stick with a couple games for a while. We all know that this will probably change soon enough, I am so fickle after all. Til next week.

#stateofthegame #roundup #h1z1 #gw2 #leagueoflegends