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Tony

Breaking out again?

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I wanted to post this Monday after the season finale of Prison Break, but the Ohio State/Florida game was on (and didn’t end well) so I never got around to commenting on the last episode of my (currently) favorite show. (Spoiler Warning)

So for my fellow Prison Break fans, what did you think? The finale certainly left quite a few storylines wide open. What happened to Kellerman? Was he gunned down in the back of the police van, or were his escorts? Is Sucre going to buy the farm on a Panamanian street corner? And what’s the deal with the crazy old man and Sona? Is there something more to Michael than meets the eye? My theory? He’s some kind of super-soldier genetically enhanced by the government, and the whole frame-job of his brother was to get his training kick started. Far fetched? Of course. But things certainly got wierd in this last episode.

And who else will be in Sona with Scofield? It’s obvious that Mahone is in there. Bellick, too, right? I’m assuming Bagwell will find his way in there somehow, and will hopefully meet an ignominious end. I think his time has finally come.

So it looks like we’ll be breaking out of prison again in the fall. I can’t wait!

Prison Break

Scared to power-up

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So my 360 arrived back from the repair shop last week. And I still haven’t powered it up. I’m nervous. A little while ago, after posting my 360 woes, I got a note from buttonmashing.com reader Cyriel. In part, his email reads:

I also had my 360 die on me a couple of weeks ago, got it back 2 days ago.. not bad.. only 7 days. I went to play my arcade games. They worked fine….when I was online… if I logged off Live they all turned to trial versions. My wife has a gamertag that she bought stuff with as well and she doesn’t seem to have access to any of her games on or offline. She doesn’t have access to any of the games I bought at all either.

I called Microsoft and was on the phone with them for 2 hours making 2 new silver accounts to which they will supposedly deposit some microsoft points to purchase my games back for this xbox… my wife had to do the same. BUT they are not going to add ALL the points electronically, only some, for the rest they will call me with a 25 character code that I need to enter in as if I am redeeming a points card…..what????!!

I don’t have a ton of purchased content on my system, but I’m still worried something is going to go awry and I’ll be stuck with less of a machine than what I sent in. What a pain.

I know some of you readers have sent in your Boxes to have them repaired. Any similar horror stories? Or was it just plug and play? (Yeah, right. Like anything Microsoft has done was ever plug-and-play. Zing!)

Light posting

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It’s been a light posting week for me. I’ve been fighting a cold and I’ve been fighting countless bad guys in Everquest 2. Couple that with a blogging funk, and you’ve got the makings of a light posting week. I’m heading out of town this weekend with just my DS in tow, so there won’t be much blogging anyway. Oh, and there’s a little Final Four game to worry about, too.

My repaired Xbox 360 arrived yesterday, but I’m nervous about hooking it back up. I’ll explain more later. For now, I’ll just let you know that I’m not dead.

The blogging will resume in earnest next week.

Big Carnival update

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The Carnival is still going strong, but I wanted to post a quick update with a list of the homes of the next few Carnival of Gamers. The next Carnival, being held April 5th, will be heading over to Gaming Nexus. Head over there to check them out, and of course check out the Carnival HQ for details on what the carnival is and how to participate. We’re always looking for new video game bloggers to submit their stuff.

Here’s a short list of future Carnival sites. Some of them are newer sites (at least to me) so check them out when you get a chance:

May: Conservathink
June: Gameproducer.net
July: I eat games

There’s still plenty time to get your submissions in, we look forward to hearing from you!

Comic watch – Get Fuzzy

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(This is a new (hopefully regular) feature here at buttonmashing.com, where I find comic strips in the dead-tree newspaper desperately trying be relevant by making pop culture references by referring to video games. I’m not trying to be a “Comics Curmudgeon” (one of my favorite sites) but I still have to point it out when I come across it.)

As the inaugural edition of the Comic Watch, it pains me that I have to single out Get Fuzzy, which is one of the comics I geniunely enjoy, but today’s comic wasn’t one of them:

Get Fuzzy

Surprisingly, the “girls don’t play video games” or “guys who play video games don’t have girlfriends” and “video gamers are lazy” are topics usually ignored by most comics attempting to use video games as punch lines. It’s usually “look how violent little Jimmy is becoming since he started playing that Atari Video-Machine 9000!” So in that sense, GF is going off the beaten path, but it’s still unfunny. Haha! Rob hates girls AND exercise because he loves video games! What a nerd!

It also bothers me that Satchel is bagging on Rob like this. Usually they’re pals that support each other’s quirks, not point them out like the sore thumbs that they may or may not be. But that’s neither here nor there.

As you’ll see, most comics don’t “get it.” A few do (Bill Amend comes to mind) but I feel a responsibility to call them out when they don’t. Consider yourself warned!

(And seriously, if you love to hate (or hate yourself because you love) the daily comics found in your paper, you have to read Comics Curmudgeon)

Back in business!

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At least I’m almost back in business. I got my main PC fully upgraded (components listed here) and everything seems to be running smoothly. And of course much faster to boot. Every experience seems better with a clean fresh Windows install and new hardware.

And speaking of better experiences, I had no idea how much I was missing, graphically, in Everquest 2. I had the graphic detailed dialed all the way down so my old machine could handle it. The game looked decent, but I wasn’t blown away by it. After the new install with all the increased power, I was able to crank the details way up, and holy smokes! What a difference it makes. I had no idea there was grass in the Commonlands! I had no idea the mountains in the background looked so good! It was a HUGE improvement over my previous experience — the lighting effects, the spell effects, the details on my character and on the monsters — Wow! I am very impressed with how good Everquest really looks!

So it looks like I’ll be spending a lot more time playing EQ2, especially since my 360 is still in repairs. I don’t expect to see it for another week, so I guess I’ll have to be a PC gamer for a little longer.

(Hopefully this will also mean I will have a little more time to dedicate to actually blogging about video games, not just meaningless updates about my PC)

March Madness

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My Buckeyes squeaked out a close one against Xavier. Phew, that was too close for comfort. I’ll be live-blogging all of OSU’s tournament game at my Ohio State site, Men of the Scarlet and Gray.

I thought the tournament might limit blogging here, but I don’t think that will be the case. Wireless internet and laptops were built for sports fans and bloggers, too.

When it rains

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It really pours. My Xbox 360 is somewhere on its way to get repaired and now my main PC has died. I was already planning on a major upgrade soon, this just fast tracks that process.

My dead PC was being held together by the proverbial duct tape and fishing line. It’s gone through three video cards, three hard drives and numerous severe crashes. I lost count how many times I’ve reinstalled Windows on it. The motherboard, processor and memory were all four years old. It was time to upgrade.

I turned to Tom’s Hardware for some reviews and Pricewatch for the best prices. I was pleasantly surprised that Newegg has such good prices. Using Pricewatch, I’m always nervous that the lowest priced components are coming from shady operations, so I was much more confident going with Newegg.

The new system isn’t going to break any benchmark records, but should be solid for the next few years. My new rig will consist of:

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
EVGA GeForce 7600GT
CORSAIR XMS2 1GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Seagate Barracuda 160GB SATA

I’m pretty excited to get all my stuff. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll get it until Monday, even though I paid for expedited shipping. So it will be a DS weekend for me.

Video game capital of America?

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Where is the Video Game Capital of America? Seattle? Austin? San Jose? Nope. Salt Lake City. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

It’s called gamer’s thumb, and families in Salt Lake City could be among the nation’s most afflicted: the city has been named No. 1 in the number of households owning video game systems.

The least? People living in Florida’s coastal areas. Makes sense — go to the beach or play Halo 2? No a tough decision there.