Vincent and the Doctor

Have you ever seen Doctor Who? Is it something you enjoy? Honestly, I didn't get into it until the new 2005 series started. I liked the older 1963 show off and on, but something about the reboot just drew me in that didn't happen with the older one. Today I was watching some reruns of the show because it's really the kind of series that you can "experience" far more than one time with it still feeling fresh a year later.

Today's episode was called Vincent and the Doctor, the Vincent referred to in the title being Vincent van Gogh. This episode reminded me of something that I really like about Doctor Who - the show can make you laugh, feel happy, feel anger, feel sadness, and in my case, even make me cry. It details why the Doctor goes back to meet Vincent as well as a short look into how Vincent may have acted and viewed the world around him. Quite a beautiful episode out of the many intense story driven ones, only touching ever so slightly on what happened in the previous episode since that one had some very heavy material in it.

If you've never watched Doctor Who before, or you have watched the original in the past but weren't quite so interested; I highly recommend giving the 2005 version a first or second chance. Given enough time to get into the show and feel for the characters it can take you on an emotional roller coaster of beauty, intense story, and fantastic whimsy characters throughout that you won't soon forget the joy of.

Jamestown

Recently I've been playing a lot of this Jamestown game co-op with my girlfriend, and I must say this game is a blast in co-op mode. If you enjoy the old games like Galaga and want to take it up a massive notch, Jamestown might just be for you. My friend, TheShadowCookie, enjoys the game quite a bit and has mentioned that he has trouble with its difficulty level, which is saying something since he is an avid Touhou player. I recently managed to beat the final level of the game, not including the DLC, and boy was it a painful level to work my way through.

Now, if you're looking for an amazing story with thick plot and twists that make you want to hear more at every turn... well... this sure as hell isn't the game to find it in. The story is crazy and strange. I barely was able to make a lick of sense out of it other than apparently the Spanish have joined forces with Martians and Jamestown is on Mars instead of in the United States. It gets weirder from there. The game made me think I was about to play a strange RPG with the opening, and to be honest, I think that kind of a game would have made more sense with the crazy story telling job that was done in this game. You can easily skip through the story without missing much of anything at all as the gameplay is the shining point this title has to offer.

The music played during levels is fantastic. It matches the intense atmosphere with projectiles flying every which way to a T. It's quite nice to do your best to let your weapons run silent just to listen to the music as much as possible. I've been impressed lately by the music appearing in indie titles. They really have been doing a magnificent job there even in a game where the story is so disjointed and weird that it doesn't make much sense logically. Still, the story is better than some games I've seen, so I won't dwell on the weirdness any further.

Overall I would have to give this game a 7/10 for great gameplay, a fantastic music score, and some rather pretty graphics to look at with projectiles floating all about the screen. The points that strike it down to 7 are the story and the steep difficulty curve. Anyone who can play Touhou as well as TheShadowCookie saying a projectile game is hard means the game is excruciatingly difficult for most casual players and even some hardcore ones. You'll probably manage to make it to the final level after a good bit of playing if you can keep at it, but the final level is bound to stop many players in their tracks as it takes the difficulty curve from a 45 degree angle to a 90 degree straight up death trap. I'd recommend it for a fun bit of gameplay on your own, but especially for a lot of enjoyment playing co-op with friends.

My Review of Roku 2 XD Streaming Player

Originally submitted at Roku

Features the highest-quality HD streaming available.

Roku 2 XD Streaming Player

Much Faster Than My Blu-ray Player

By FrozenFoxy from Westminster, CO on 12/26/2011

 

4out of 5

Pros: Built in Wi-Fi, Easy to use, Compact, Reliability, Great value, High quality picture, Easy to set up

Cons: Sometimes can'tplay video, Sometimes boxart is gone

Best Uses: Primary TV, Living room

Describe Yourself: Technophile, Netflix fan

The product is pretty good overall from what I bought it for - Netflix. It runs much faster than my Blu-Ray player was able to with Netflix and doesn't have anywhere near the level of issues I experienced when trying that player. However, every so often boxart for movies will go missing for awhile, and I can't play a movie I'm interested in. I imagine this has to do with downloading it from the Internet, but with a 20Mb download speed and not doing anything in the rest of the house... you'd think it would be almost instantaneous. Sometimes I end up waiting a good 15 minutes for more than 30-50 titles to be playable. Perhaps I have too many titles queued at once, but it doesn't seem like it should take 15 minutes to load the rest.

Overall, though, I don't regret my purchase of the Roku at all. It works quite well, it's amazingly compact, and I get to enjoy all the Netflix I could want from anywhere without running a wire all the way to my modem in another room.

(legalese)

Stream and Halloween Special 2

Stream seems to have gone pretty well. Managed to stay there the entire 24 hours, and thanks to everyone we also managed to raise $742 this year with Extra Life for the Children's Miracle Network! Great work everyone! We played quite a few games and even some multiplayer games during the stream as well as beating Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter and Mass Effect.

In other news, special 2 for Halloween has started and is American McGee's Alice. This special will wrap up the Halloween month and bring us into November where we will start to see Dead Island, Dead Space 2, and other games brought back into action. Hope you'll all enjoy that.

Halloween and Extra Life

I update this thing a whole lot, don't I? Hah. Never been that avid of a blogger I guess.

In any case, we've got a Halloween special going on right now if you're interested to check it out - Penumbra: Black Plague. I honestly like it a lot more than the first one. I believe we're nearing about the halfway point of the game right now, and later this Halloween month we will be seeing a secondary Halloween special to fill all 31 days of Halloween.

We're also going to be doing an Extra Life stream on October 15th at 8AM PST/PDT to support the Children's Miracle Network. We've already reached our $500 goal, but further contributions to help out the kids are always awesome. Feel free to check out the donation page at http://www.tiny.cc/frozenfoxy2011 or come to the stream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/frozenfoxy-s-gamez

Hope to see you all at the stream and that you continue to enjoy what's coming out.

In other news, I finally got through Mass Effect for the first time. The game is, as expected, quite amazing in its entirety. Anyone who hasn't managed to complete it yet like I hadn't will definitely want to sit down and soak in the experience. I think it was fantastic. The other game I recently finished was Driver San Francisco. Story is crappy, driving is flaky, and it's overall kind of boring. I think the best part was going out of your own body to crash into people you're racing against. Even that gets tedious after awhile though. Oh well. Not a game I'd recommend all that highly unless you're really into driving games or not into them at all. I've heard that people who don't like driving games enjoyed this one, interestingly enough. Hm.

Anyway, signing out till next time.

3000 Subscriber Special Coming Soon

So I hit 3000 subscribers awhile back. I plan to do something for it, even though it's been awhile. I've started a pre-3000 subscriber thing... which should be up today at some point. At least, the beginning of it anyway. Once I get that done, I'll start working on the actual 3000 subscriber special for everyone to enjoy. Look out for it coming to a Channel near you!

Update 2-23-2011

You know, I realized why I never started one of these... I never constantly keep up with them. Not particularly sure what to write in them either. Is it a journal or is it an observation of what is happening in the world? It's a log of something, anyway... a bio log? Life log? Hm. Not particularly sure.

In any case, the computer I normally record games on remains dead at the moment. I have been able to install X-COM UFO Defense on my laptop and record that. Everything else seems like a lost cause on the laptop. People have been donating to help out with the computer that needs to be fixed, which is very much appreciated! It shouldn't be that much longer till it gets fixed if things keep going the way they are. Once it is fixed I'll go back to making LPs on that system and finish off the X-COM LP as well. I've been using the names of those who have donated as soldiers in X-COM. Got a few new ones I'll be using very soon. Hopefully the old computer will be up and running again in no time.

If you'd like to donate, feel free to do so at frozenfoxy@gmail.com

Signing off for the moment.