Blogger Archive: GrayGhost81 
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I replied to a tweet a few days ago from @gamesyouloved that went like this:
"if someone wants to start a retro game collection
what's the best way to do it?"
My reply:
"If I were starting now, I'd go for quality over quantity and buy like, one good game every paycheck or something."
I've been thinking about this tweet and its replies for a few days now, and I'd like to elaborate on it. Of course, to answer this question, there are so many variables to consider, and each person will have his or her own set of circumstances which will dictate what can be done. Note that the question is about collecting specifically, so while I'd naturally lean on emulation, this article will be about how I would build a physical collection from scratch today if I had to.
Continue reading How Would You Start Collecting Today?
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Tetris Effect - Like many before me I wondered "how can they make Tetris worth playing in VR?" before firing this up. I tried it out last year when I acquired my physical copy from Limited Run, but it didn't get its hooks in me at the time. In my search for VR titles to play, I discovered that the main game mode for this game (which is all I have played), is rather short, so I dove back in. The pull of Tetris Effect is that yes, it's the Tetris that we all know and love but set against some beautiful and fantastic backdrops and integrated with an amazing soundtrack by Hydelic.
Continue reading VR Season Part III
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Posted on Dec 20th 2021 at 01:00:00 PM by ( GrayGhost81) Posted under vr |
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Bood & Truth - Originally conceived as a sequel in the Getaway series, Blood & Truth sees the player as a small time London gangster embroiled in a battle with a rival family who are trying to execute a "hostile" takeover. With the move controllers, you will mostly be shooting at your foes with a decent variety of guns but also interacting with objects in the environment, including some electronics hacking and lock-picking. The movement is teleportation only but it works pretty well and feels smooth. There is a very minor weapon upgrade system that can be utilized between levels but it is nothing special, especially given the fact that there are only a handful of weapons in the game overall. The game is story driven, but the story never gets in the way of the action. However, I found the characters hard to take seriously. Dramatic moments didn't have quite the impact on me that the developers intended, because the whole thing seemed a little goofy to me, especially given that you can emote with a button press, and one of the gestures you can make is a particular one finger salute. Having said that, Blood & Truth is a must-play for PSVR owners.
Continue reading VR Season Part II
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Daylight Savings Time ended a few weeks ago and that means it's time to break out my VR rig. I love playing PSVR in the fall and winter. It's one bright side (pun intended) of the cooler weather and earlier dark hours. I feel like I haven't been following PSVR releases in a long time (did I even play this thing last year?), but I have a lot of games on the shelf that I haven't touched, and this month Playstation Plus is featuring three PSVR titles for download. Here's what I've been playing.
Continue reading VR Season
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Books are like video games to me in that no matter how many I own, physically or digitally, I am always looking for more to add to my collections. In the past few months I've been on a sci-fi streak and have made an effort to try out some new authors rather than leaning on my more prolific favorites. This leads me to do internet searches of "sci fi hidden gems" and "underrated sci fi authors" and if I spent as much time reading books as I did hunting more down, I'd get a lot more reading done.
I can't remember exactly where I saw it, but as an animal lover, Greg Van Eekhout's 2018 children's novel Voyage of the Dogs caught my eye and was an almost instant purchase. VotD tells the story of Lopside and his compatriots who are dog astronauts known as Barkonauts. The Barkonauts are assigned to assist the human crew on a long term mission to set up habitat on a distant planet. Unfortunately, something went wrong during the hibernation phase of the voyage and the human crew have disappeared. Lopside and the Barkonauts must figure out what happened and survive long enough to get help.
Continue reading Voyage of the Dogs
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-Always do 'Buy It Now' only with immediate payment required. I'm on a few subreddits about eBay, and it seems non-payment on auctions is pretty rampant. I also do 'Best Offer' too, though surprisingly few people use it. If you set up or revise the item on a browser, you can set up auto-accept and auto-decline amounts on offers so you don't have to do anything. For example, list a game at BIN $19.99 with Best Offer, auto decline anything $14.99 and under and auto accept anything $15.00 and over. Makes life a lot easier, it just stinks that you can only set the auto-decline on the phone app.
-Always do free shipping and let eBay calculate actual shipping (you'll need to weigh and measure your parcels when you are making the listing). It gives you a range so you'll know the maximum that will come out of the sale, so you just factor that into your price. Another reason to do free shipping is, if you don't, the buyer can give you a star rating on "shipping cost" which is nonsense because you can make it so they can't see what you paid for the label. If you do free shipping, they can't rate you on this.
Continue reading eBay Selling Tips
[img width=700 height=525]https://i.imgur.com/bTI8NuC.jpg[/img] Classic Game Fest 2020/2021 - Austin, Texas
Around this time last year, I wrote a very popular entry about my goal to drastically reduce my game collection and the work I was doing to achieve said goal. Reading this back a year later, I can tell I was writing from a peak point of games outgoing. I spoke about reducing shelving units from three to two, and how I'd like to go from two to one. I noted that I had gotten on the shelf physical titles down to about 750 pieces. So, what has happened since then? In twelve months was I able to get down to that magical goal of one shelving unit for games? Am I buying any games anymore? Perhaps the answer will be surprising.
Continue reading Liquidation II
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I'm having a hard time coming up with something to write about, so it's time to pull from the old bag of cliches. Ok, let's see here...ah! "If you could take one game console or handheld to a deserted island, what would it be and why?" I love this one, don't you? The question forces you to narrow down your gaming collection to just one console, with the assumption being that it is the only one you can play for the rest of your life. There are many things to consider in making this decision. Are the controllers comfortable? Is the library deep enough to keep you busy forever? Let's assume for the sake of the question that the hardware will never break down, so the durability of the hardware doesn't need to be considered. So, let's say the choice is for one console with all original controllers and the existing library.
There is one more thing to consider here. Can I choose a modded console or does it have to be factory conditions? I have many modded consoles that can play most of the games of most of the consoles that came before them. Although I'd obviously prefer this, it dilutes the exercise, so let's go with a factory console, and to make it even tougher we'll say no backwards compatibility. That's right, choosing PS2 does not mean you can play PS1 games, no Gamecube on the Wii, and so on.
Continue reading The Desert Island Question
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I make it a point to try new music frequently. It is important to me to not get stuck in my ways with only comforting classics from my teenage years. Though many albums come and go, every once in a while an album will come along that becomes an immediate obsession. My current obsession is the Gazelle Twin album, Unflesh. I heard about it in a youtube video about albums with disturbing content and the background given in the video along with the cover art caught my attention. Gazelle Twin is the pseudonym of English songwriter and producer Elizabeth Bernholz, who created Unflesh, her second album, in her home. The album was released in 2014.
Continue reading Gazelle Twin - Unflesh
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Tomb Raider: Legend - The Legend Trilogy is a bit of a blind spot for me, and by that I mean I never played the original CORE developed series and skipped right to Crystal Dynamics' second reboot of the series known as Tomb Raider 2013. The team's first reboot of the franchise was actually in 2006 with Legend, which is the only Tomb Raider game on the original XBOX. This is one of my favorite games that I have played in a long time. Crystal Dynamics took what was great about the original series but made it more accessible to more casual players such as myself. The game is somewhat linear but there are many opportunities to explore and find collectibles. The graphics look great, even though I wouldn't necessarily recommend playing this particular version as it is available on more modern consoles. Oddly enough one of my favorite things about this game were its ease of use features. For example the time from booting up the game to jumping back into your game is mere seconds. Also, the game checkpoints constantly, which is a strong contrast to the next game I'm going to talk about.
Continue reading XBOX Rodeo Volume One
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If you do an internet search for "original XBOX hidden gems," chances are you'll see The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay mentioned on most, if not all of the lists you read. This game is often noted for its high quality in spite of being a movie licensed game. Although I do have an XBOX copy of this game on my shelf, I decided to play the remastered version on the PS3, which is included on the disc of The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, also developed by Starbreeze. Butcher Bay is a first person stealth focused shooter with action-adventure elements. As Riddick, voiced by Vin Diesel, your goal is to...wait for it...escape from the high security prison known as Butcher Bay.
Continue reading Riddick-ulous
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I read forty three books in 2020, and although this is fewer than the two previous years, I'm giving myself a pass due to an understandable increase in anxiety and lack of focus that most of us experienced due to the events of the year. Still, I was able to log many quality books from many different styles and genres, and I'd like to tell you about some of them. For those unaware, I rate everything I read on Goodreads and I like following people I know, so please connect if you have an active account. https://www.goodreads.com...r/show/74121213-grayghost
Continue reading 2020 Reading Recap
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Have you ever been playing a game and gotten to the point where you know you can approach the final boss and finish the game any time you want to, but are having so much fun that you don't want the game to end? That's where I was with Cat Quest, a light, relaxing RPG developed by Gentlebros and released in 2017. This is a game I picked up on the Playstation 4 based only on the title and cover art. It took me a while to get around to playing it, but the comfort food RPG gameplay and addictive feedback loop were just what the doctor ordered for a relaxing winter playthrough.
I don't think I can give a better elevator pitch for this game than the developers themselves did. From the game's official website: "This is a game heavily inspired by Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy and Skyrim. It aims to provide a streamlined and concise open world experience. Think of it as the overworld of Final Fantasy, the combat and exploration of Zelda, and the open world of Skyrim all in one package!" In the game, you play as a cat trying to rescue his kidnapped sister. All the NPCs are cats and the game is littered with cat puns (see what I did there?).
Continue reading Cat Quest
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As I've written about a few times, I'm a big fan of selling on eBay. For all of its shortcomings on the seller side, I still find myself able to leverage it to earn enough extra money that it is worth my time. One speed bump I have run into lately is that I am running out of big ticket items in my video game collection to purge, so I had been doing a bit of thrifting in the hopes of finding things to flip for profit, but I was having little success. Recently, I started visiting the Goodwill Outlet Center which is conveniently on my way home from work. It is quite an experience to go there, and I have been able to find some great loot, most of it to flip, some of it to add to my collections.
If you have been to a normal Goodwill store (or any traditional thrift store), you will be greeted with retail furnishings stocked with used clothing and miscellaneous items that have been donated by the general public. A Goodwill Outlet is something completely different. When you walk in, all you will see are big blue bins with people digging vigorously through them looking for treasure. At the particular location I go to, books are five for a dollar, and everything else is weighed and charged $1.49 per pound. Bins are changed out one aisle at a time about once every half hour, and people line up for the fresh bins to be released upon them in a Black Friday style frenzy. I have yet to line up because the action is a bit too much for me, and I like taking my time.
Continue reading Dig and Flip
Xenoblade Chronicles: Future Connected - Listeners of the Playcast will be familiar with my very long history with playing Xenoblade Chronicles. In summation, I started the game in early 2019 on the 3DS. I got about eight hours into the game and decided to start the game over because I was enjoying it so much that I wanted to play in on a big screen. I fired it up on one of my modded WiiUs and got about thirty hours into it. I tried to tweak something related to the mod that I won't get into here and bricked the virtual Wii on this particular WiiU. I could not access the game or my save. I was more upset about that than I was about messing up this WiiU. I played other games for a few months but Xenoblade Chronicles never stopped calling me. Rather than starting again for a third time, I decided to go back to my 3DS save and continue the game. It took a very long time but I eventually beat the game. I absolutely loved every minute of the eighty hours it took me to roll the credits.
Continue reading What I've Been Playing
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