PixlBit

Hello Pixlbit, and Happy Friday! The weekend is almost here, which means a couple of days of free time (sorry folks if you have to work on the weekends). I’m currently typing this blog while watching Team USA vs Canada for the right to go to the Gold Medal Game, so I apologize in advance if some of my writing doesn’t make sense. On this nice Friday morning I thought I would add another edition of Quick Hits (CUSS WORD, Canada just scored). For today’s Quick Hits I thought I would cover some Olympic thoughts, The Buccaneers New Helmet, What I’m Playing, and of course Pickups! So let’s get this started…and c’mon USA, get on the board!

 

Olympic Thoughts

 

Oh it was hard watching the USA Women lose yesterday. Such a hell of a game, but I agree with Jeremy Roenick, that it seemed that in the 3^rd Period they were playing not to lose. Hell of a comeback by Canada.

 

It was the first time since 1936 that Ladies Figure Skating was shut out of a medal. This is a crazy stat, but there were a lot of excellent programs last night. I think Gold would have earned a medal if she didn’t fall, but they are young and next Olympics watch out!

 

So the Dutch Speed Skating coach started to mouth off a bit about the United States. He had some valid points about our speed skaters blaming their uniforms (granted Under Armour is crap) but he then goes on to start talking sh*t. Yeah our soccer team doesn’t belong?

FIFA says otherwise. #13^th in Mens, and #1 in Women’s. Where is the Netherlands?

 

I had more here but I decided against it. Congrats Dutch Speed Skating coach on your gold. I hope you enjoyed your 15 minutes, because this time next year the world isn’t going to care about Speed Skating, and media from around the world will have covered the Super Bowl.

 

Tampa Bay’s New Helmet

This showed up on my Twitter feed yesterday.

 

I was fine with their old logo, but I’m not big on the current trend of giant helmet logos. I hope the logo is on both sides, and not just big logo on one side/number on the other. It wasn’t a good look for Boise, and it has become even worse with the copycat teams like Arizona State, Western Michigan, Toledo, and anyone else trying it out (to be fair SDSU had a prototype and it didn’t look good)

 

What I Am Playing

Pokemon X

I’m still stuck at the connecting cave, so I’ve been roaming around training my team, and fighting random folks in a building where you get titles for beating others. If I could only figure out how to get past this cave I’d be happy.

 

Wordament

I saw this last night and it sounded like fun. Think of it as online Boggle…with achievements. I’m playing a bunch of it on my Nexus 7.

 

The game is simple: you have a short time limit to make as many words as possible with the given letters. You can rotate the board to help you find new words, and at the end of each round you can see a list of the words that can be made

 

It’s fun to also see where people rank after each puzzle (I hope people are not cheating because this game is fun, and I’m impressed with these scores).

 

For you achievement folks you can earn them without being on your X-Box. They are not worth a lot, but they are easy to acieve (I played something like 10 rounds and I earned 60% of them). Check it out if you like word games.

 

Ridge Racer Slipstream

 

So I found this game on the Google Play Store and since it’s free, it’s worth a shot. I have to admit I’ve only played the tutorial and one race but the game looks really good

 

I took a screen shot during a race. The one thing I’m not a fan of is the steering sensitivity. In games like Real Racing 3, turning the tablet is more fluid, while with this game at times the tablet while in panoramic mode is almost at portrait mode just to turn.

 

You can customize your cars by upgrading various parts like engine, boost, etc. You earn in game currency by winning races, which probably means you will have to race the same races multiple times to earn some cash, or you can buy in game cash through in app purchases. Leveling up and earning in game currency is the same as in other similar games, as well as in game achievements.

 

If you are a Ridge Racer fan, give it a try. It’s free on Android, and a $1 on iOS.

 

I’m playing a couple of other games but I’ll save those for later (the game ended and USA did not win. Congrats Canada)

 

Pickups

 

Games

First game I bought is from a thrift store where they had all their CDs on a cart for .50 cents each. It was full of random CDs (80% was Christian Music) and there were quite a few Windows 95 discs. I thought about buying one but passed.

 

I picked this game up because it looked interesting. It probably won’t run right on my tower because it’s for Windows 95, and the last time I tried to play a Win 95 game (C&C Red Alert) it ran funny.

 

 

I bought the Vita version at Best Buy for $10. I’m not a big video game baseball fan, so older games are fine with me. I’m actually just playing Road To The Show, which is just your created character’s at-bats and any defensive plays. I’m terrible on defense, but I’m hitting .418 so I’m still in Double A. I bought the PS3 version from GameStop just so I can do that upload your save to play on the PS3 and vice versa, but that option has been disabled. Oh well, maybe I will just start another RTTS file on the PS3.

 

I had a lot of fun with NBA Live 09 on the PS3, and now I think I have every Live from 06-09 on the 360 (06,07,and 08 are not good). I created myself in the game, and by created myself I mean I’m now as big and as athletic as LeBron. I’m using the Memphis Grizzles and so far we are 6-0.

Halo 3 was $5 for the Collector’s Edition, which means I now have 3 copies of this game. I also completed my Mass Effect games. So far I’ve played a bit of the original as Cobra Shepard, and well I think I was expecting too much from these games.

 

I’m a sucker for match 3 games so once Cradle of Egypt 2 dropped to $10 new I picked it up. It’s a shame the other Cradle of game is still $15. I think I am almost done with the “story” mode because I unlocked all but one or two of the power ups.

I found Band Hero with the Guitar Hero grip for $3 in the bargain bin at GameStop. Turns out I need an older DS that has the GBA slot. I’ll wait for a coupon for used systems at GameStop so I can pick one of them up.

 

I had some credit on the eShop for my 3DS and they had a sale on some games so I added a few to my handheld

 

I knew nothing about this game, but the gameplay video looked interesting, and it was a couple of dollars. So far the game isn’t bad. It’s a little weird to control because you tap on the screen to where you want her to shoot while controlling her using the nub. It’s a little tough for us left handed folks.

 

I think this game was $2 or $3 dollars. It looked interesting so I downloaded it, but I haven’t tried it yet.

 

Soccer because everyone likes video game soccer. Simple controls but where is Team USA?

 

 There are some really good 360 sales going on right now, which allowed me to pick up games that I’ve been watching at GameStop for cheap.

 

The driving theme is alive and well. Dirt 3 is fun but I’m not too excited over the Gymhana portions of the game. I haven’t tried Driver yet, but I loved the two on Playstation, and Parallel Lines (the one that tried to be Grand Theft Auto). The one game I am underwhelmed with is Ridge Racer Unbounded. I liked the series when it was using the same tracks and drift happy racing, but this game it’s trying to be a little too much like Burnout.

 

I finally bought this game because I thought $15 for it was crazy. It doesn’t fill that need I have to play games like Rock Band Unplugged on the PSP, and Rock Band on the DS, but it does come close. I also bought the Paramore Music Pack that is used in Rock Band

 

Music

I bought some CDs from various spots

 

These were from that thrift store where there was a cart full of .50 cent CDs. Nothing too exciting, and a couple of them are blind buys.

 

A couple of these CDs were picked up at another thrift store, and at the local mom & pop at the mall. I think the mom & pop stopped doing the buy 5 get 5 free which sucked but oh well, $2 a CD still isn’t bad.

 

Lego

My first Lego purchases of the new year!

 

Finally Toys R Us has these Microfighters in stock and at a normal price (I think the suggest retail is $10). No crazy Toys R Us mark up. I also bought the new minifig pack for the Imperial Guards. I’m going to be buying multiple packs of this set because of those figures.

 

Well Pixlbit, I’m making this short because I want to build my new sets, and try to make more progress in Pokemon. Again any tips or suggestions on Pokemon let me know.

 

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris