Let's Play: MGS 3 Snake Eater - Part 5

Episode 09

Episode 10

LP: Tomb Raider 2: Finale

Wow all this time it took me to realize that I didn't post the final video here. I'm a big derpy McDerpinstein.

Part 18: Final

As a note: I was taking a break after the original posting to blip.tv so I could purchase a mixer and get it accustomed to my current setup. However, funding issues, and running into scammers online caused me to be unable to purchase one yet. It's a little too late right now to start recording the next game since it's almost the middle of the week now. So I'm using the rest of this week to post stuff on ebay to sell off to raise the remaining amount I need to get the mixer.

Click on this line of random nonsensical gibberish to go to my ebay listings. "fdsalkjgreakjhdsafgukjhadvkjbxdfgsdhjgzyujbxhbkjahfjhdsfg"

tl;dr

Bitches be trippin', I po' as fuck, taking a 1 week hiatus after the 2 week hiatus like a baws.

Blip.tv update: As a warning.

The next few updates for the Let's Plays are going to be a little weird. In the sense that I'm recording them while I'm feeling tired/drained. Which normally isn't like me honestly. I stay up LAAAAAAAATE to the point where I think I might have insomnia, but today I feel dead... Really dead.

Anyways, the reason why I'm recording them while I'm tired is because Tomb Raider 2 doesn't like the newer 3.x updates for my nVidia card. This also brings up the point as to why I posted the latest Let's Play videos so slowly and pretty late. With having to downgrade to get the game running it caused Adobe Premiere Pro to act extremely slow with rendering the videos. Normally I render the video once, and check it to make sure everything went smooth... If not I had to do it again. What normally took 2-3 hours now takes 6+ hours for my standard length of videos. SO in regards to getting them to render at the normal speed I decided I should record the rest of the game as quick as I can then upgrade. The uploading process will still be the same as I explained in the episodes I posted on the weekend. I'll post them in increments of 3 stages.

In other words, I apologize if I end up really quiet in the videos as I'm fighting sleep, and am trying to focus on the game.

The next game on the list was going to be Riven, but I honestly won't feel very comfortable playing that without my co-commentator Bluefinz, so I may skip out on that and play an older game that I own and haven't beaten or touched since I was a wee little chillun in elementary school.

Let's Play: Season 1 Finale

AUDIO ONLY:

The reason I hate xbox live.

Now most people would complain about the kids on there, or the gaming community in general. Maybe even talk about a bad experience in a game. Like say they were killed off by someone a far lower level than them, and go on to accuse that person of cheating, but no I've never had any grievances like that. The only reason why I dislike xbox live is because of the billing system.

I'm the type of person that only subscribes to live when there is a deal going on. Usually the 1 month $1 deals. Mainly because I'm not much of an online gamer. I use it mainly for video watching and such. The only time I ever play games online would be on PC only. *insert master race statement here* So I clearly don't use the system that often only occassionaly for netflix, or crackle.

Back in the day when you wanted to turn off auto renewal you'd do that through the phone only. I wasn't aware that every time you make a new subscription the option automatically turns on. However, with the newer changes you can easily do that online.

But god help you if you forget about that because the only email confirmation you get is one on the day of the renewal. Okay how do you cancel the subscription? Well you can't do that online yet, so you have to call in.

Guess what I spent my day doing today? That's right, I was calling in. So after explaining to the person on the phone that I just received the email, and that I already turned off the auto-renewal that I'd like to get this current subscription cancelled. I was met with a "I'm sorry, all that we're allowed to do is turn off the automatic renewal and nothing else." Oh the fuck reallly? Let me kindly divert your attention to this.

















Of course when I bring up this fact I was put on hold for 10 minutes while they figure out what to do only to get back to me and continue saying "Sorry but we can't do that." Well someone might want to fix that on the website. "I'll have someone look into it."

You're fucking kidding me right?

So I hang up on them, and this time go back to the online support section and request a call from one of them. Which presents you with a text input box to explain what your issue is and what you want to do. So when I received the call the person obviously didn't bother reading what I wrote, because I had to explain it again. This is why I also hate text inputs before customer service reps contact you. You could write the most hateful thing in the world. You could probably be in the middle of being murdered, and the people won't read your pleas for help.

At least when you use the call me section of the support they actually do their job as described. It took less than 5 minutes for the chick on the line with me to cancel the subscription, AND get my money back... It's a god damn miracle.

What's sad is that I can't even blame this on a call center that was outsourced to some Indians (dot kind, not the woo-woo), and blame it on poor English usage. This was purely an issue with people not knowing how to do their job.

Of course todays incident isn't the only thing that makes me dislike them. It has always been the support staff, and how they handle issues. I really won't bother going into those details because just thinking about them now still causes my blood to boil and make me instinctively reach for a gun and/or knife.



Enough of that stuff though. There will be an update soon with music and shit.

My direction

I've been trying to come up with something to do with my Blip account.



What I know I want to do:

Post video game Let's Plays, along with my raging bits.
Post about how I felt about the game after here on this blog.


Seems very bland right?



What I would like to do also:

At the end of each game make a video of an hour long DJ set to end the "Season" on?


Does that sound good?

But it still seems bland to me... I would like some suggestions/ideas on what to do from here. I'm open to anything. What would you like to see from the show in each season?

As you may have noticed...

I have done a little bit of cleaning up on the blog. You may be wondering why, but this can be answered very simply.

In anticipation for posting up new Let's Plays I have cleared out my blip.tv account to make room for the re-recordings. At this point I have the first section of Tomb Raider 1 recorded, and currently encoding on blip.tv, so there will be a post soon with the video link.

Dirty Androids EP Remember/Wind Sails

DA - "Remember / Wind Sails"

If my last post about DA got you interested in their stuff be sure to check out the EP in the link above. It's guaranteed to be worth more than what they are planning for.

Yeah it's been a while

I know this. I will be slowly getting back into streaming LP's...

While on the subject of Let's Plays I will be redoing the Tomb Raider series. Mainly because I swear like crazy, and get lost a LOT. I will try my best to self censor, but damn is it hard. However, this time I won't be streaming them. Instead I will be recording them on my own time and posting them up. I'll leave the old ones up until I get each game finished.

In the mean time last night I did a live DJ stream on my JTV channel. As you know how I am with showing my face on the interwebs I deleted the video immediately after the set finished. However, if you still want to listen to this self-proclaimed amazing set check it out on http://soundcloud.com/imagoth2004/dj-imagoth-tra-core-set-5-5-12

FUCK YOU BETHESDA!

That's right... Fuck you...
You're horrible at making games... Always full of glitches, but nothing quite as bad as Daggerfall...
This is by FAR the worst one out of all of them.
If you jump down and you touch a wall mid fall you will glitch through it? Really?! REALLY?!
Not to mention how confusing as fuck the final area is you'd NEED a walkthrough just to get through it, and all the ones out there don't mention the fact for one KEY lever to unlock the final door which took me 3+ hours to find, Not to mention the fact to get up to these doors you need to CLIMB and climbing is SO FUCKING DIFFICULT because you have to be perpendicular with the fucking WALL... If you're off by just ONE FUCKING PIXEL You can't climb.
I spent most of my fucking time streaming this pile of horse shit with a shimmering hope that the ending would be awesome... I mean JESUS... This is the first one with Live Action cutscenes... LIVE ACTION... But what the FUCK DO I GET?
A 5-6 SECOND CLIP OF A CGI BOOK TURNING AND A 3 second audio clip of a DISEMBODIED VOICE SAYING THAT SOME GUY USED THE MAGIC PLOT ITEM TO STOP THE ARMIES FROM DESTROYING SHIT!! THE END! I will RAPE/MURDER anyone related to this game that I come into contact with in the future... INCLUDING their families, and friends. (Yeah i probably won't rape, but murder is very imminent.

Minecraft skins

This week I've been hanging out at my friends place, and after getting in an argument with some people I know online I ended up getting kinda bored, and decided to start up a new world in Minecraft.
If you don't know what Minecraft is go to google, and search it up... Or better yet CLICK THIS!

Anyways, I eventually got even more bored and decided to make some character skins. It's only two, and they're both the same character. Most of you won't be surprised when I share this, but...



Yeah I doubt anyone will really recognize him unless you play DDR, or maybe the Wii version of Pop'N Music, but this is Roku originally from Pop'N Music 6 (top) and later on 10 (bottom). I have to say though the preview pics screwed up how it looks in game... You don't see the extra layers well.
Original images (c) Konami



I was going to make a Dave one (PnM 11), but I realized part way through how much of a pain in the ass it'd be. I did pretty much make one, but it's not complete yet.
Regardless, you can download Roku as your skin by going to the Skindex website, or downloading it at the bottom of this page and uploading it on the Minecraft website.
I would like to do a skin for all the Pop'N characters, but it's a pain to find their alternate color pics. (By which I mean if you pick a character in game and then choose their song the computer is in different colors) Speaking of which I do plan on doing the alternate coloration of Roku as soon as I find a reference instead of from memory.

Downloads:
Roku PnM 6
Roku PnM 10

Delay on Myst review

Because in the middle of typing up the review and plot synapsis I forgot what I was doing.... Somehow...

Random Restaurant Review: Number 1 Garfield's Petoskey, MI

This is technically my first review ever of a restaurant, and what a way to open it than with a rather horrible one.

Garfield's is the cheap alternative to Applebee's, and by cheap I don't mean the food (even though some of them are cheap), but the type of theme idea. The entire restaurant has the same type of theme as an Applebee's with random doodads and things on the walls. Very laid back atmosphere… I even spotted an old typewriter, and back bumper for a random car with working lights and a license saying "Garfield's" on it. Each of the tables has a large sheet of paper covering it with some menu item written on them in two crayon colors. They even leave a little cup of crayons for everyone to color and draw whatever they want.

Seating time was pretty quick, but then again by the time my family and I made it there weren't many other people. The other times I've been there were at least 2 people working the front, but by the looks of it tonight there was only one working, and the other never shown up.

Regardless, Tonight I ordered a “Fish and Chips” meal, and a fresh citrus margarita. While my family members ordered a meal deal which included two entrees and two sides for one person. Not full size obviously since it's made for one person. They both chose a steak, and grilled shrimp with the side of a loaded potato/baked potato, and salad.

In all my years of eating out I've noticed that each place tends to do fish and chips differently, and you can tell by the taste and texture, rather easily if you know what to look for, how it was made.

The first thing out were the cokes, and since I ordered an alcoholic beverage it'd be a little while. Now usually when it comes to margarita's the rim of the glass has either salt, or some form of sugar depending on the type of margarita flavor. The picture of my drink even showed salt along the rim. However, one thing it lacked was obviously the salt on the rim. The taste was basically a plain grapefruit flavor and some type of liqueur. I ended up dabbing some salt into my hand and licking it off before taking a sip. However, as much as I thought it'd enhance the flavor, and maybe there were some hidden ones, I realized that it was all for naught as I still only tasted the same stuff... Only a little saltier, this was one of the last things I needed with this meal.

After about a 30 minute wait and 9 tables full in the main area and 3 in the bar we received our meals. My “Fish and Chips” were nice and warm. It came with 4 pieces of what looked like some type of Panko breaded whitefish. Panko is a type of flaky bread crumbs used to coat foods for deep-frying in some Japanese meals. It makes the coating very airy so you can taste a lot more of the food that has been coated. The fries were the correct thickness and cuts as you find in a British fish and chips meal. However, the only problem I had with it was that it was covered in a large amount of season salt. Now don't get me wrong I love season salt. When I was younger I'd eat everything with it, but still I knew to use it in moderation as it is pretty high in sodium. Eating these things made my stomach a little queasy after. Just to help chill it down I had to dunk them into my tartar sauce. There really isn't much to say about their tartar sauce by the way. It was a pretty standard homemade kind. Relish + Mayo + a little squeeze of lemon = Garfield's tartar sauce. The meal even came with a very small amount of coleslaw which also didn't have anything special about it that made it their own… Well other than the fact that the vegetables were cut a little thicker. The fish I had a problem with. With normal whitefish you can taste the very mild flavor of it even if it's been deep-fried. However, with this there was no flavor at all except the slight taste of the new oil they put into their deep-fryer. The next bite I took I covered it in lemon juice to see if that'd help. I still could barely tell I was eating fish. If someone told me I was eating something else I probably would've believed them because it still had no flavor except for the newly added lemon juice. On my 3rd piece I decided it'd be a bright idea to put a few drops of my margarita onto it, and holy shit.... I could finally taste the fish. The flavor of it was just right. I couldn't even taste the oil that had soaked into the Panko. However, the feeling of delight was soon taken away when I just couldn't handle the rest of my meal anymore, but it didn't stop me from trying out a couple pieces of my other family members’ meals.

The grilled shrimp was excellent, but like my chips, had a rather thick taste of season salt. Each of the steaks were cooked to how their respective family members liking, but was extremely peppery which was never mentioned in the menu. So much pepper in fact that my mother who has Gerd to the point where she need two surgeries couldn't eat her meal. (Gastro esophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a condition in which the stomach contents (food or liquid) leak backwards from the stomach into the esophagus (the tube from the mouth to the stomach). This action can irritate the esophagus, causing heartburn and other symptoms.) Even I had trouble eating the small piece of steak I had.

The only real problem with this is that each 2 entree 2 side combo was about $13 ($12.99). However you can tell how tiny this combo is when each skewer (2) of shrimp had 4-5 pieces, and a very small steak served on a rather large green plate. I know this doesn't present a good visual but here is something that'll help you get a visual. Think of a plate with a diameter of about 12 inches, and a circle of about 8 inches inside of it.

12 inches = plate
8 inches = food

Even after eating the food the other two were still hungry. As was I… To the point that I was seriously thinking about getting some dessert, but the thought of them somehow finding a way to incorporate in season salt made me change my mind.

Altogether, the restaurant isn't the best Applebee’s knock off (and when I use this term I don't assume that Applebee’s is better, but you do get a lot more for your money). A meal for about 3 people averages around $40-45. As a note I'm not using tonight’s reference for my final verdict. This is actually about my 5-6th time I've been here because I'm a glutton for punishment. The food quality has always been sub-par, and the different drinks that I get are barely passable except for the ones that aren't hard to mess up (I'm look at you screwdrivers).

If you're a college student at the nearby North Central Michigan College and you want to go to a nearby bar in the winter I suggest coming here. Just try not to get a mixed drink that’s not uncommon.

The service is great. Everyone is very nice, so it's not their fault that I'm giving them such a bad review.

I give this place 4 out of 10.

Garfield’s
1301 Spring Street
Petoskey, MI 49770-8720

Point-and-Click Adventuring Tiems

Most of you who watch my streams have noticed when I suddenly got in a kick of point-and-click games... This would explain why the most people that’d show up were 4.
During my adventuring I stumbled across an old Winblows games called Lighthouse: The Dark Being. Created by Sierra On-line back in 1996 it was very well known for its extremely vague and difficult puzzles. This, I must say, piqued my interest quite a bit. My years of puzzle solving however, NEVER helped me when it came to this game.
Unlike other point-and-click games where the developers made it easy for you to infer what you had to do, this game makes it seem like they made it almost impossible to complete on your first playthrough without missing an item or fucking something up so bad that you'd have to reload a previous save file, or what usually happens, you go around to every location you've been to just to make sure you got everything.
The story was slightly entertaining, and for the graphics at that time they were semi-amazing. You play as an assumed female character (Note: the handbag), who just moved into a new place along the Oregon coast. He/She/It is a writer, and your neighbor is some sort of mad scientist in a way who lives in a lighthouse with his annoying infant. You look out of the window to see the place struck by lightning and then glow. You hear and answering machine message from the guy telling you to come over to his place to watch his daughter for him.
When you get there the front door is locked. Why would someone tell you to come over to watch your baby and yet you have the doors locked? I’d probably just say to hell with it, go back home and look up porn. Sadly, that isn’t an option in this game. Instead, you have to open his mailbox and take his note. Why such an odd place for a note? Not just that, but isn’t going through someone’s mail… I don’t know… ILLEGAL?! The note basically tells you how to unlock the door, and after entering you journey the house to find the child.
Of course, you find the kid and everything is peachy. Until there is a loud noise which scares the damn menace, and you’re ears start to bleed from the annoying crying. So you go check on the thing to find the “Dark Being” that the game is titled after take the kid (Thank fucking GOD!), and jump through a portal. Obviously you’re supposed to jump in after it. In the mad scientists journal it basically just talks about how this parallel place is just a concept of Godel’s Universe.
For you math geeks you can open your textbooks to page 573, and read section 8 paragraph 2: For those who aren’t in college and/or math geeks: WIKI THAT SHIT!
The story doesn’t really go beyond this. You just need to get the doctor and the kid back. Meanwhile, building a DustBuster™ powered gun to capture the “Dark Being”.
Regardless of story, critics could never get over these god damned puzzles. On some of them you have to be precise with your clicks, or even turn up your monitors’ brightness settings so you can actually see an item in a less than optimally lit room.
I think it's needless to say that I had to use a walkthrough at a few points (Mainly the extremely confusing mineshaft maze), and let me tell you... You may be thinking ‘Well why didn’t you just make a map for the maze?’ Well guess what? You fucking can't. AT ALL! Shit is so jumbled you'd be lost even more if you did try to make one. Luckily, the creators had a hint system for the game, but the fucking tw@ seemed extremely selective in helping you, and at points making it even vaguer.
During the time frame of point and click games, it seemed to dwindle off and die for a while in the late 90's... Which I blame on Lighthouse: The Dark Being even though it was released in 96. The few people who have watched the playthough of the game kept saying. "Wow! This is like Myst." I've heard it so many times (23 times to be exact) that I just said... "Fuck! This is nothing like Myst except for the interface and how you interact with it... It's a standard Point-and-Click 1st person game... You know what? I'm gonna play through all of those so you people will see the difference." Which I more than happily did…

Tree of Life: Afghan (project)

As some of you people know I crochet. (Yes extremely gay I know)
I learned of a craft show that's coming up, and all I have are hats. I'm tired of making hats. So I found a free pattern on the Lions Brand Yarn website for an afghan.

This how far I am after 1 day of work.

Chances of getting it done before the show? 9%

First Post

Well because the payment of the website went downhill I'm gonna start posting my stuff here.

I'll be posting stuff for JTV, and maybe art and music stuff.

You can contact me over:
Skype: imagoth2004
Yahoo: imagoth2009
AIM: imagoth2004