Blogger Archive: GrayGhost81 
[img width=700 height=393]https://i.imgur.com/KIyfupq.jpg[/img] Swarm Riders
Shortly after I bought my Nintendo Switch, I caught wind of the trend of ultra cheap games on the eShop (shout-out to our very own Russ Lyman for making a video on these which was one of the things that initially got me into them). Since then, I've been adding about ten bucks to my account every few months and checking the eShop weekly to see what games are on sale for under one US dollar. I have many games on my Switch now. Make no mistake, many of them are not very good, but the low risk and potentially high reward have yielded some diamonds in the rough that I have thoroughly enjoyed. Here are a few of them.
Continue reading The Nintendo eShop is a haystack. Here are some needles.
eBay is one of the most classic and storied mainstream sites in internet history. Launching in 1995, the site has gone through many changes and evolutions to become the massive presence it is today. I recently discovered that my eBay account is turning twenty years old this month, so I'd like to take a trip down memory lane with my history of using eBay, starting all the way back with my first purchase of an item that I still own to this day.
Origins
My first eBay purchase was this two pack of McFarlane Metal Gear Solid action figures in October of 2000. I'm not a toy collector and never have been, but I'm a Metal Gear Solid fanatic to this day. I still have these figures and will continue to hold onto them even though they will remain forever sealed in this fishbowl and even though Snake looks a bit like Ricky Martin for some reason. I don't remember too much about my other transactions this far back in the past, but it's wild to consider that this purchase was made when I was still living with my parents. I would imagine I purchased some actual video games around this time as well, but I didn't consider myself a collector back then. It is very likely that I used eBay around this time to fuel my other passion, music.
Continue reading My eBay account is twenty years old!
[img width=700 height=524]https://i.imgur.com/WcF2l6b.jpg[/img] Marnie Stern
Lately I've been going back to a lot of albums that were important to me in the 2000-2010 decade. It all started when we were doing our 2007 alums of the year list for the podcast. Though the Justice self-titled album made my list, I mentioned that I didn't think it quite had the lustre it used to, but that another album I listened to a lot around the same time, Crystal Castles self-titled debut, absolutely did. Since we recorded that episode, the Crystal Castles album has remained in heavy rotation. It is still every bit as fresh and exciting as it was when it came out. I would end up going on a bit of a rabbit hole looking for albums I used to love but had kind of forgotten about. Here are a few that deserve a look.
Continue reading Forgotten Albums of the 2000s
[img width=700 height=592]https://i.imgur.com/rDHvSoL.jpg[/img]
Last fall a coworker of mine named Sidd took a vacation to Japan. He had studied abroad there when he was younger and has a deep love for the country and its people. Knowing that my fandom of Japanese culture veers between low-key otaku and hardcore weeb depending on what day it is, Sidd asked me if I'd like him to bring anything back with him from the land of the rising sun. Of course I jumped at the chance to get some authentic souvenirs, but I didn't want to just give him a list of video games to bring back. I enlisted the help of Adam Bickman2k for some ideas. I'd like to thank Adam for his suggestions because without them my list of requests would have consisted of "Game Boy games" and "Godzilla stuff."
Continue reading Japan Haul 2019
[img width=700 height=466]https://i.imgur.com/KhetC5A.jpg[/img]
Many times when acquiring video games for my collection, I have thought "this will be worth money some day." I rarely put any thought behind what I would do when that some day appeared. The COVID situation and subsequent stay at home orders have caused a rise in video game prices as people stuck at home look for ways to occupy themselves. This price bubble is calling me like siren's song saying "let it all go, NOW is the time." I'm thinking about many things besides just the rising prices. Our lease renews in the winter, and although we don't wish to move it is always a possibility. We literally have an extra bedroom for the game collection, and the more I think about how much that costs us by having a higher rent than we could, the more upset I get with myself. Most of the consoles I have can be played digitally or emulated. Yes, there are pros and cons to that but it is a major factor.
Continue reading Liquidation
[img width=494 height=262]https://i.imgur.com/liixBFt.jpg[/img]
It's June 2020, and with another month of being primarily homebound due to COVID-19, I was able to catch up on a few more films. Here some reviews for a handful of them:
Reptillian - As I settled in for this viewing, I did not realize I was about to see one of the most infamous kaiju films of all time. Reptillian is an English language Korean reboot of the Yongary series created in response to the 1998 American Godzilla film. The acting is so bad it falls into that uncanny valley territory that feels like a bad dream. The CGI is terrible. This movie unfortunately is not even so bad it's good. Avoid at all costs.
Continue reading Quarantine Cinema 2
[img width=700 height=393]https://i.imgur.com/WfqFlsa.jpg[/img]
I'm fortunate enough to still be at work, but my movie viewing has still had a major uptick since quarantine started. Here are few of the films I've seen with my wife in the past two months or so.
Westworld and Futureworld - I haven't read the novel or seen the recent tv show, but I quite enjoyed this duology from the 1970s, which centers on amusement parks for rich adults where robots play npcs in real life. Both of these films hold up quite well and to this day are recommended by many as sci-fi classics.
Pacific Rim - Yes, I'm a massive Kaiju fan, but I couldn't care less for American Kaiju productions in general. It was my wife who convinced me to watch this movie and I thought it was pretty darned good. Pacific Rim succeeds where the American Godzilla film from 2014 failed: it leans into the action and doesn't hide its main attraction, the monsters and mechs. I wish I had watched this movie sooner. It's the best western interpretation of a giant monster movie that I have ever seen.
Continue reading Quarantine Cinema
[img width=315 height=500]https://i.imgur.com/iLBac7e.jpg[/img]
Have you ever wished you could relive moments from your past with the knowledge and wisdom you have now? I think everyone has fantasized about this to a certain extent. It could be as minor as wishing you'd made a better comeback in a argument to making different decisions at major forks in the road of your life. I think about this a lot, to be quite honest. I'm very happy with where my life is now, but I can't help but be tempted by the thought of going back in time to take different courses of action, be they simple or major. In the 1987 novel Replay, author Ken Grimwood explores what would happen to a person who was forced to relive a large chunk of his life, in his younger body and with all of his memories and consciousness intact. I'd seen the novel mentioned in a handful of 'best sci-fi novels' lists on YouTube and was so intigued by the premise that Replay jumped right to the top of my 'to be read' queue. I'm not a fast reader, but I cruised through this one in just a few days. So is this time-jumping tale worth your valuable time? Continue reading to find out.
Continue reading REPLAY
[img width=700 height=393]https://i.imgur.com/3wYTohm.jpg[/img]
When we played South Park: The Stick of Truth for the podcast, I could not tell you the last time I watched a full episode of the show. It's pretty impressive that the show has been on the air for so long with basically the same two dudes at the helm the entire time. I've seen many episodes over the years, but never watched through an entire season. I'm not sure if I still have them, but at one point I owned a few seasons on DVD but I don't think I ever watched them. South Park was pretty much a show that I had seen a few episodes of, thought was pretty funny, and no strong opinion of. I do remember the movie being hilarious, though.
Continue reading This is now a South Park fansite!
[img width=700 height=393]https://i.imgur.com/00FRohB.jpg[/img]
I'm currently re-watching my favorite show of all time, Studio Trigger's bombastic masterpiece Kill La Kill. I recently scored a copy of the Kill La Kill video game on the Nintendo Switch and I wanted to refresh my memory on the finer details of the story of the anime before I dove into the game. I'm thoroughly enjoying the revenge quest of the heroine Ryuko Matoi, who I commonly cosplay as, and I'm still amazed how much color and action are packed into every episode. The seventh episode of the show, titled "A Loser I Can't Hate," is one of my favorite episodes of any serialized series I have ever seen. Allow me to explain why I love this episode so much and why you should check it out even if you have never seen the show!
Continue reading A Loser I Can't Hate
[img width=700 height=393]https://i.imgur.com/77Wz5OY.jpg[/img]
I've been nerding out on music for as long as I can remember. I was raised on classic rock and grew into alternative music in my teenage years. In my twenties, I dropped the elitist indie blinders I had developed in high school and grew a sincere love for pop music. When I was in my early thirties, I worked at a company with a couple of other music nerds who where older than me and for years we bonded over music and shared our discoveries with each other. During that time, for the first time, I began keeping current with the best and worst albums released in a given year (and sharing my picks with those old coworkers is a tradition that we maintain to this day). Now, I have the #concertcast, which is the music segment of the RFG Playcast, which you hopefully know as the podcast I do with the singlebanana. What you are about to read is my first public albums of the year list.
Continue reading Albums of the Year 2019
[img width=700 height=454]https://i.imgur.com/e6JWJy7.jpg[/img]
The first Final Fantasy game I completed was the Playstation version of the first game in 2012. I hated it. I've written about the insanely high encounter rate in that version of the game before, but it bears repeating because I never see anyone else mentioning it. Last year I played the PSP version of Final Fantasy IV on one of my Vitas and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I knew the series deserved a second chance and I'm glad I gave it one. With those two completed, I've been thinking for a long time about which game in the series would be next for me. All of the games seem interesting to me, and each title (except for IV and VI maybe) has its fans as well as its major haters. Although I thought I might skip to the Playstation era of the franchise, I decided to go to the Playstation 2. I remember the time I was a guest on the Collectorcast, Chris spoke highly of Final Fantasy XII but Bil was very persuasive making his case for the tenth game in the series. So a few weeks ago I decided once again to play through a Final Fantasy title, once again on the Playstation Vita. This is not a review, as I am not finished with the game, and I don't think I'd want to review this game even if I was. Rather, I feel a desire to share some thoughts on this very strange game.
Continue reading Currently Playing: Final Fantasy X HD
[img width=700 height=393]https://i.imgur.com/UNOUwet.jpg[/img]
I recently played all the way through a game that was really outside of my comfort zone. My regular listeners and readers will know that I tend to see gaming as a relaxing, leisurely activity. I am not a fan of difficult games. Life has enough difficulties and although I don't mind a challenge here or there, I'm usually not looking to get my ass kicked. I recently signed myself up for a swift ass kicking, but I did not realize it when I first started River City Girls. I thought I was starting a run of the mill beat 'em up in the vein of Turtles in Time, and although I quickly realized this isn't that kind of game, I stuck with it through the end and I'm glad I did.
Continue reading River City Girls
[img width=640 height=325]https://i.imgur.com/xbW97o2.jpg[/img]
For many gamers, October is the time to pull out ghoulish and spooky horror titles to drum up scares appropriate for the Halloween season. As a cohost of the community playthroughs on this site, I tend to get my annual fill of October creepiness with our traditionally horror-themed games during this month every year since our inception. This year however, I decided to try to pack in a few more horror themed titles in my free time to get into the spirit. Of the handful of horror games I played this month, one was a huge disappointment and another was a complete revelation.
Continue reading Dead or Alive
[img width=477 height=268]https://i.imgur.com/Mb6RtJo.jpg[/img]
When it comes to sandbox games, licensed music is typically part of the package. It adds to the feeling of being immersed in whatever game world you have chosen. Get in a vehicle and tune to your favorite radio station. It's just like real life. Because I love music, this is one of my favorite elements of open world games. Even in games to which the "sandbox" moniker doesn't apply, like Fallout 3, I am always grateful for some kind of customizable radio function to choose my own audio backdrop for my adventures. Of course, some consoles allow you to add your own soundtrack from music on the hard drive or a streaming service (depending on the game), but here I'm talking about curated licensed tracks chosen by the developers specifically for their game.
Continue reading The Amazing Music of Saints Row: The Third
|
