Dimming Luminosity

Dying Light will be the topic of the day! I played this game quite a bit before Monster Hunter took over my life and I have to say it was quite the interesting game. It was a mix of Mirror's Edge (A old PS3 game involving parkour) and zombie slaying. Sounds wicked right? Yes you are right! Congratulations!

You start off this game as a sort of secret agent getting air dropped into an area that is said to have the cure for this zombie outbreak. You level up based off of combat, jumping and missions. From there you choose which you want to put more skill points in, Combat for more damage/ stronger weapons(literally and because you can actually break weapons), acrobatics being your use of stamina and sweet jump kicks, and survival which helps you with crafting items which is super important for survival as you will be making a lot of med kits. As your progress through the game you quickly find out night time is terrifying....and I mean like....TERRIFYING. The zombies or more so monsters that come out at night are fast, strong and will basically stop at nothing to kill you. Sounds fun right? Nope, nope and a whole lot of nope. 

I have not actually completed this game yet so I can't go into to much detail about the story line but it goes along the line of "hey idiot you're infected with the virus, find the cure or you know you're like dead. K thanks bye." Hopefully this peaked your interest. Oh and one last thing, if you're getting this for PC make sure your graphics card can handle it because let me tell you this is one pretty looking game I tell you what. Oh yeah and here's a video of the difference between night and day. Also it's pretty gory. 

Told you it was spoopy. 

Devil Might Cry or something?

Devil May Cry. This is a franchise that I have been devoted to since I picked my first PS2 many many moons ago. I have played and beaten every single game in the franchise with about being disappointed....okay maybe Devil May Cry 2.....let's pretend that game didn't happen. Anyway, this game basically took hack and slash games to a completely different level, with it's unique fighting dynamic, bad ass (pardon my french) character and awesome boss fights, this game set the standard for hack and slash.

You play the game as Dante, a smart ass who owns a shop that specializes in demon killing (kinda like the ghost busters but with guns and swords rather than vacuums). A mysterious women enters his shop and basically sets him on his first adventure in the franchise to a weird demon infested island. From here Dante will fight off demons while descending deeper into the island and what seems to be hell. Here he runs into many demons and monsters that know who he is. Now why do they know him you might ask? One little thing I left out....he is the son of Sparda who is basically the strongest demon fighter of hell who chose to go against everything evil only to be sent to the deepest pits of hell to be tortured. How wicked am I right? I know. All these demons see the resemblance not only in Dante himself but his fighting style as he proceeds to kill these demons with ease.

To end this little bit of my favourite franchise I would say skip the trying of this game and just buy it. They actually just revamped the series with a new art style and gave the Devil May Cry universe and new starting point as it takes place far before many of the older Devil May Cry games. So I leave you as always with a neat video on the game which hopefully inspires you to play the game.

Diablo the 3rd

No this isn't going to be some satanic post about the devil. Today i'll be talking to you about my adventures with a game called Diablo 3. This is an interesting game as there is a story to it, but you basically rush to get your character to the highest level as that is when the game really "starts". To people who don't play games they might think that doesn't sound fun at all, it is.

You choose from a select number of classes such as monk (my personal favourite), demon hunter, barbarian, witch doctor, crusader, and wizard. From there you rush to level 70 and basically start playing a game of chance, what I mean by this is you fight monsters and wait for them to drop really good gear for you to increase your characters stats. When these items drop the stat bonuses on them can "roll" differently, by roll I mean they can be either better or worse then the last exact same item you picked up, from there the game is just trying to get that item drop that is 1% better then the last.

Now I know you're asking, why is this fun? This is because it is and don't you question me on this.....okay it's fun because you start seeing yourself clear out monsters faster and start seeing your damage reaching ridiculously high numbers. I leave you now with a video of a friend of mines wizard doing a stupid amount of damage.

Day of Pay the Second

Today I am going to be talking about my adventures with Payday 2. This is a game that is heavily heavily based on cooperating with teammates. Without your team you are basically up a creek without a paddle, you have to basically strategize before you get into the game how you will rob the bank (oh yeah this game is about robbing banks), take out any security guards or cameras and get everyone in the bank down on the ground without raising any alarms. This is game actually isn't that violent for the most part as it actually requires you to think about your actions and how it will affect everyone else.

So i'll get into a bit more detail now. When I say it isn't that violent I mean you will only take out 4 people max per job and if you're really good, none because you can just sneak around security and steal the money. A huge aspect of this game is your concealment. You don't want to bring in giant guns on this mission as it will get you targeted quicker, you want small weapons and minimal body armour. The basic heist you will do is, go in and take out security without civilians noticing, after that you will shout everyone on the ground and tie up their hands so no one tries calling the cops, then drill into the fault, bag up all the gold and money, buddy system it out by throwing bag from person to person till it reaches the van, and lastly get in the van and drive away like with nobody noticing. See, nobody gets hurt!....ish. On top of all that you wear a mask to make it so they don't know who you are and as well with that you can get new masks and customize them to make you unique. Hopefully this made sense to you but if didn't I totally get that. That has been my little bit on Payday 2.

A week in the life of a hunter

So I posted a week ago about a new game I had purchased. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I have played this game for more hours than I would like to admit but it has all been worth it. This game rewards you for the hours you put in. One week and around.....70 hours later (Me and sleep have become distant lately) I have reached G ranking. What is this you ask? G rank is basically where the game takes off any little bit of training wheels you had and throws you into the ring with monsters that will show absolutely no mercy. You take your eyes of the game for even a second and a monster will kill you in one hit. You have to learn the habits and signals the monsters do to predict their attacks. You have to literally learn the monsters habits and for a game to put that much depth into a game is amazing. When monsters get tired or weak they retreat to their nest. There are no health bars for enemies just signs of weakness. From hitting them over and over they gain scars, broken parts, tails cut off and when the enemy is close to death it starts limping. Tell me that's not innovative. It makes it seem like you are actually hunting.

Anyway after grinding for hours and hours I have finally attained an armour set and and weapon from G rank meaning I will not die....as fast. Now what's left for me is raising my rank and finding harder and harder monsters. My goal for this week is to hit the highest rank and possibly start getting high up on the leaderboards. So this ends my little bit on Monster Hunter and hopefully this has interested you to purchase this game or at least give it a chance. 

Here is an overview of the gear I started with to the gear I now have. Not that it will mean much to any of you. 

And my gear now

Branching out

So as many of you know this blog has been about technology and gadgets up until my last post. This is going to be my attempt at doing video game reviews as it has been something I have been wanting to get into a while. I play video games almost everyday and they are a big part of my life. I use them for many reasons, stress relief, fun, and just general entertainment. But I wouldn't say i'm changing anything about this blog as video games are still "technically" technology. So this post is basically my introduction to a new and exciting part of this blog. My last post was about my all time favourite game and my next one will be about my follow up of having it for a week. So hopefully you will keep interested in my future posts as it will be about something I am very passionate about.

The thrill of the hunt....of monsters

So I know this is a tech blog but video games are technology right? I mean you're storing all this incredible information and game play on your computer or whatever gaming device you use. So why go slightly off topic? This is because one of my favourite games is getting it's 4th installment next Friday and I literally cannot contain myself. I'm going full kid at Christmas for this one. Now what game could possibly instill such excitement. Well I will tell you.

Monster Hunter is a game I have been playing since I was in high school many many years ago. Back when you whipper snappers were still in diapers! Alright that's a bit of an exaggeration i'm not that old. Anyway I stray off topic far to often. This game takes you into the world you can only dream about. The world of giant creatures and giant weapons. I have put more hours than i'd like to admit into this series of games but I do not regret it as it keeps pulling me back in.

Now to talk about the game itself. You start off as a hunter with a starting weapon in every class. This to me was like choosing my starter pokemon. Or at least close because let's be real that was probably the toughest decision most of us have had to go through.....i'll never forget you charmander. So you pick your weapon and start killing these creatures that are plaguing the village you reside in. Now there is no real leveling system in this you just receive higher ranking which let's you do harder and harder quests. The thing I love most about this game is it resides entirely upon your skill. You keep eliminating these creatures and collecting resources to build and upgrade your weapons and armour which turns into hours of grinding (grinding for you people who don't play video games is when you keep doing something over and over until you achieve the result, level or item you desire) for that one rare part of a monster. The more you upgrade the harder the monsters are you can face. But realistically if there was no time limit you could technically kill the hardest monster with the crappiest gear....it would just take a really long time.

So with all this said i'm afraid for the release of this game as it will consume much of my time in between projects. But of course school comes first unless one day we could get paid to play video games. That is the dream. Although that is starting to become a reality with twitch and live streaming games. But i'll leave that for another blog. Hopefully this has peaked your interest into the world of Monster Hunter and maybe if you ever purchase this game we can play together. I leave you with a trailer for the original game as it was what sold me on the franchise those many moons ago.

Sonic The SSD

So what is this SSD contraption? Well it's short for Solid State Drive and if you are one of my musician friends you're probably thinking "Solid state sucks. Why would you want that?" Unless you're a bass player....in which case I apologize. Anyway on to the subject at hand.

So over Christmas I purchased a SSD which I think was probably the best investment I could have made. What it does is makes anything you install on it start up ridiculously fast. Not like oh hey that was kinda fast. We're talking like Sonic the Hedgehog here. I'm able to start my computer up in 30 seconds. Tell me that's not ridiculous. Now you're probably thinking why not just use these instead of a regular hard drive on your computer? Well they are expensive as of right now. I spent around 80 bucks on 120 gigs which maybe 10 years ago was a lot of room but unfortunately that is not the case anymore.

With all that said technology has made a great leap within a short time so having these as your regular hard drive might not be far off. Hopefully I didn't bore you to much with all this technical mumbo jumbo but if you're into all this tech stuff you might find this interesting. Or not. Cut me some slack here i'm trying to be entertaining. I made a sonic joke. IT'S FUNNY GUYS. Anyway that's all for now. I leave you now with a short video of just how fast these things are.

OnePlus One = Phone

How does this equation add up? Alright you caught me. It really doesn't but why is this relevant? Well I purchased this bizarre phone that actually requires you to get invited to purchase it. Sounds crazy right? Actually a genius marketing strategy because it made in such high demand and people actually paying for invites.

But on to this actual phone. It is by a company actually called OnePlus. They do not sell this phone at any retailers and you have to purchase straight through them actually making this phone relatively cheap considering the prices of buying phones out right now a days being close to 1000. For the biggest size being a 64 gigs for roughly 480 getting shipped to Canada? That's pretty cheap. Yawn. All I've talked about is the boring stuff, ONTO THE PHONE. So I've had this phone for a few months. It's insanely fast, has a Sony camera built into it (Don't worry North Korea won't hack your phone), can shoot 4k video which will be cool once those TVs become affordable, and lastly runs on a completely different operating system than any phone. Now that last part might not matter to most of you but to me it makes a world of a difference. It means it doesn't come with all that stupid bloat ware that slows down your phone and is highly customizable in the sense of how your phone operates.

Now why would you purchase a phone from a company that won't sell to retailers and is based out of China? Because unlike their bad rap with anything saying "made in china" being terrible this is different. This company is based out of china and spend time and effort on these phones. When mine arrived I checked when it was made and they literally made that phone for me. It was made the day after I ordered it. Now if that's not cool I don't know what is....well maybe a lot of things are cool but anyway. This phone is a great piece of technology and if you are looking for a cool new phone I would highly suggest this piece of art.

(source: https://oneplus.net/)

Rifting the Oculus

So I've been inactive for a while mainly because this has been a school project and guess what? NEW PROJECT! Today I will be talking about the Oculus rift. What is this foul contraption that looks like it's going to project weird imagery in your head? Well I will tell you. It's the projected "future" of gaming. Bold statement I know.

This crazy gaming contraption that basically finally puts you into the stuff of dreams. You're completely encased in the gaming world you chose. Now I have experienced this first hand and let me tell you, it is super cool. Although it got kind of nauseating after a bit but this was back in it's beginning stages but also your body has to get used to this.  I tried a piloting game and it kind of freaked me out. I could look around the plane and even lean and see the ground below and don't even get me started on flipping upside down. Almost threw up. This took virtual reality to a whole new level. Far beyond back when I was a kid getting excited the Nintendo Virtual Boy. I tell you that was not a product that should have been released. Playing even in the store trial for not even 5 minutes gave me a headache.

Anyway I kind of strayed from topic. The Oculus Rift is a fascinating device to say the least. It's going to take the world into far more then virtual gaming such as even putting you into virtual class rooms or even just making your movie watching experience that much better. So to end this I hope that this will get to many people and possibly for the hope of us broke peoples sake gets cheaper so we can all enjoy this new type of gaming without breaking our bank.

(source: https://www.oculus.com/)