PixlBit

Good morning my fellow Pixlbits!

It’s upon us all already: the final week of BaD! Time to roll up the sleeves and keep on trucking to the finish line (and beyond!).

This past weekend for me and the missus was a quiet one. We spent Saturday cleaning the house and Sunday cooking and picking out the wedding pics we want for our album. It’s only been eight months since the ceremony

As for gaming, I played two games this weekend and attempted to play one other. Successfully played were Batman: Arkham Asylum and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Not so successful was Jade Empire.

I’m over half way through Arkham Asylum at this stage having just escaped from Killer Croc’s lair. The parts with Scarecrow leading up to the Killer Croc battle (if you can call it that) are my favourite of the game for sure. I love the way the game breaks the 3^rd wall at times and plays with your expectations. While Scarecrow himself isn’t too difficult to defeat, the sections with him stand out in my mind as most memorable and were the main reason I wanted to rebuy/replay the game.

 

You're a weird looking fucker but I like you

My playtime on XCOM however didn’t fare as well. In fact, you could say it sucked (or rather I suck). I mentioned about a week ago that my whole squad was decimated on a mission so I decided I was going to reload that section to avoid the loss. On yesterday’s playthrough, I chose to try a different mission and suffered the same result. I’m simply not advanced enough and feel as though I’ve made mistakes in my squad building. I’ve heard it said that a setback is a setup for a comeback, so with that in mind, I’m going to start a new save and actually put some thought into my progress. I’m also going to name my squad mates so that I’m more attached to them and able to track their progress easier. Humanity may be down, but it ain’t out……………. yet.

So onto Jade Empire. As it’s still some weeks away for the release of FFX HD, I decided I’d make a start at Jade Empire for my RPG fix. Unbeknownst to myself at the time of purchase, there are a number of issues with playing Jade Empire on Windows 8 (which unfortunately I have). I have the game installed via Steam, but am unable to progress through start up. The Steam Community Hub of the game may prove to be useful for rectifying the issue, but it’ll take some time to traverse through the conflicting results for fixes. I ran into a similar situation for KOTOR2 but there was one universally recognized solution so it was no problem. My plan this week is to look at my options and decide what route I want to take to get the game working. Some of the comments on the Steam Hub made mention of possible viruses encountered while attempting to install mods so I’ll have to be somewhat careful. I don’t suppose anyone here has Jade Empire working on Windows 8? Any advice would be great.

 

Let him play!

Other than gaming, the wife and I finished our re-watching of Game of Thrones Season 3 on Saturday. Very strong season and it’s nice timing leading up to season 4 starting on April 6^th. Not long now!

Last night being Sunday means True Detective of course (duh!) with the show continuing its fast paced storytelling and diving more into the present. I was surprised to learn that there are only two episodes left so that puts the complete season at only eight episodes. Bit short for my liking but the quality has been immense. My hope is that it’s all wrapped up nicely at the finale as I’m not sure this is the kind of show that should have more than one season. Ratings may dictate otherwise, but with the story already covering a large chuck of time (from 1995 to present day), in my opinion they’d have to change the main stars to tell something meaningful. Better off to just do a new show me thinks.

For the quick fire round, I finished rereading Scott Pilgrim Volume 2 and am on to V3. I had forgotten a lot of the interplay between Ramona and Knives which was fun to rediscover. I started my way back to fitness this morning by getting a workout in before work. I have done this in the past but since we moved last year, it’s taken a backseat. I plan to put about 50 mins in each morning before my usual wake up to shake the cobwebs. I’m generally pretty quick to get back to, what I view as, my nominal fitness so hopefully I see some results in a month or so. I’m not trying to go pro here but it’s nice to at least feel healthy and fit (-ish).

So for a man with nothing to say, that actually turned into quite a long blog. Thanks for reading as always folks. I know Mondays suck, but without them, the weekends wouldn’t be so sweet.

Stay BaD!

Later