06Apr

Defiance – An Epic Struggle for Earth’s Rescue

Posted in Games, PC, PS3, Television, Xbox 360 | Leave a comment

DefianceOverview

If you haven’t heard about Defiance yet, let me take a moment to tell you a few things you need to know. Defiance is the first ever video game and TV show taking place at the same time. Now, I can’t imagine the logistical nightmare this is from the development side, but from the users side, I’m stoked. The TV side of things is being handled by the SyFy Channel, known for great shows like Battle Star Galactica, so I’m pretty confidant that the show will be something worth checking out. The first episode comes out April 15 so you can bet I’ll be tuning in.

Defiance on SyFy

The video game is being developed by Trion Worlds, known for the Rift series MMO. Trion has really got something special on their hands here and what I’ve played so far of the game really has me excited for what they are going to do with the game over the coming years. That’s right, because this game is meshing up with the TV series, the game will track and even influence the TV show over the coming seasons. But enough about all that. What is Defiance?

Story

Defiance is set in the year 2045, after the world was invaded by the Votans in 2013, a collection of alien species looking for a new home after the destruction of their own worlds. After peaceful negotiations break down between Votans and humans, a bitter conflict breaks out and what’s known as the “Pale Wars” change the Earth forever. Post conflict  the  world is virtually unrecognizable and the clashing races have to band together to survive.

Defiance ArkfallWorld

Defiance is set on earth, in the year 2045 when the entire terrain is changed to do terraforming technology unleashed during the “Pale Wars.” The once familiar cities are now almost unrecognizable aside from landmarks that lay broken and ruined. Characters living in both St. Louis and San Francisco seek alliances and work together to survive the many obstacles the new world has unleashed.

Weapons and Vehicles

The world of Defiance brings with it alien technology that is customizable and quite varied in it’s usage. From common weapons like pistols and shotguns, to specialized grenade launchers and bio-magnetic weapons, there are plenty to collect, try out, and equip for victory. I spent several hours so far just working out the best combination for my human character. Weapons that play to a particular strategy and strength are readily available and fun to use.



The world is so massive that you even have a persistent vehicle to help you get from point A to point B. Just press a key and an ATV, car or dune buggy pops up and you’re off. Navigating the terrain is made easier with a built in nav system, boosts on the vehicles and an easy to access world map. I’ve played several hours now and haven’t even come close to exploring the whole world. It’s huge.

Defiance Vehicle - ATV

Gameplay

Trion has developed a third-person shooter that utilizes a multitude of weapons, shield mods, grenade options, skins, and other customizations. It’s a shooter first, an RPG second and an open world third. Stories tie into the TV show, the main stories of the game, and more side missions than you can shake a stick at. The action is quick paced, frenzied, very team based, and everywhere. You can’t drive more than 2 minutes before you find a road-side conflict between some mutants and marines, ready for you to jump in and help them in battle.

Multiplayer Goodness

Defiance MPIf all the above isn’t enough to convince you, now imagine all this with hundreds of people all around you doing the same thing. Coming across a road-side conflict just the other day I was joined by 4 other real-life people helping to battle back the mutants and save a group of soldiers. It was unreal! While the game has had some issues with servers in the first week, the developers are working around the clock to make the game a fun experience for all. An average MMO would have trouble in the first week getting servers going and making everything work. Trion is doing this on three platforms and making it work. Unbelievable! And so far every fix they do makes things a little bit smoother.

Final Thoughts

The massive world, filled with thousands of people, leveling characters up, shooting Hellbugs and mutants, driving like madmen, and all while blending story with the SyFy show. You’ve got to experience this. Take it from me. I’m ready to jump in a experience some more.

Defiance airs on the SyFy channel April 15th and the video game is out now on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Defiance Arkfall Boss



23Mar

Lot’s O’ Music – An Organization Post

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If you love music as much as I do, there’s a chance that you’ve spent hours ripping your CDs to MP3 (or if you’re like me you’ve done the whole process several times, just to get it just right), purchasing your DRM free music from Amazon, Google Play or iTunes and organizing and cataloging and, of course (most importantly), listening  to all your wonderful music.

So how do you manage and keep track of all that tunage? I’m not claiming I’m an expert, but I’ve spent years working on my system. So I thought I would share it with you.

File Structure

This is the part that has gone through the most changes, but now that it is settled it’ll be staying like this for a long time. When managing thousands of files, a good folder structure is key. Especially if your ID3 tags get messed up! I use a folder structure like this:

“C:/Music/A/Alice In Chains”
“C:/Music/D/The Devil Wears Prada”
etc.

With all the different artists in my library it was necessary to break it down another level. Hence the alphabetical letters for each A – Z.

The idea that all these artists could site in a single folder would never work for my collection. It may for you, but consider using what I’ve done here if you want to have room to grow your library.

Format



MP3 is where it’s at. I tried WMA, OGG and FLAC and by far the most flexible and good size to sound ration is MP3. I rip all my music to 320Kbps MP3. Now, of you might find that FLAC is more to your likeing because you can afford piles of hard drives. Or you’ve got a Windows mobile device and WMA works better for you. But for me (and most of the world) it’s MP3. If you dump thousands of dollars into a home stereo system consider FLAC since it’s lossless. But I find 320Kbps sounds just great. And I do hear a difference. I listen the most on my JLab Bomoba TEKST headphones, which sound amazing by the way.

Tools

Media Monkey Interface

I’d be lost without Media Monkey. It’s the BEST audio manager tool out there. I would say you could get away with using the free version, but you really, really should just buy it. It handles my whole library with ease. In fact, I’m listening with it right now while writing this. Media Monkey provides massive library support, robust ID3 management and lots of transcoding options.

 

Bonus

If you want to listen to your music anywhere you’ve got internet access, there are two (pick your flavor) tools you can use. The first is Subsonic, a service you run like a server from your home. The other is Google Music which allows you to upload your music library (up to 20,000 files) for free and listen anywhere. Check them out.

 

What do you use? Did this help? Let me know in the comments below.

23Jan

Far Cry 3 Review

Posted in Games, PC, PS3, Xbox 360 | Leave a comment

FarCry3

I have been a fan of the Far Cry series since the first Xbox game was released. Running around in the jungle and shooting all kinds of stuff was just way too much fun to pass up. Since then I’ve followed the series religiously. Far Cry 2 was good, but Far Cry 3 has expanded greatly on many of the successful parts of the game while going back to some of that classic jungle fun.

The story is actually pretty solid. Some reviews have made fun of the main character Jason Brody for being “hard to relate to,” but I actually found it a joy to move through the story and develop him as a person and as a warrior. While he does go through a massive change, it’s done it a fun and interesting way, bringing you down the rabbit hole with him. The rest of the supporting cast take a major back seat to Jason with the exception of a few folks who help him along the way, but the point of the game is to shoot stuff and playing with any of them wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

The gameplay is extremely satisfying. But if killing the bad guys isn’t enough there is hunting of rare jungle animals, finding lost letters and tomes and helping villagers  to take up your time. I didn’t keep track of the total game time (and I’m still not 100% done) but there is plenty here to get your money’s worth.

The Multi-player and co-op dynamics are very fun as well. Teaming up with 3 others for the c0-op missions reveals a separate but related story centered around the islands. I experienced some major glitches while playing with a friend on the Xbox 360, but we made the best of it and still had a good time. I’m waiting anxiously for an update to those issues though so hopefully we’ll see that soon. Multi-player does an amazing job of requiring teamwork to win, a feature I welcomed after playing many other modern shooters. The team based play is tight and fun and well worth spending some time playing up the ranks. Ubisoft has release some decent online tools to continue the fun outside the game and manage your multi-player loadouts, decryption of items and other in game settings at the farcryoutpost.com as well as mobile apps for Android and iOS.

If you like open world shooters, dynamic worlds and a fun story, check out Far Cry 3. It’s available for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on Amazon and your local game store. Already have it? Tell me what you think in the comments below.

-mrkniceguy

23Nov

Halo 4

Posted in Games, Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE | Leave a comment

If you look at the tag cloud the bottom right corner of the site, you’ll see that one of the most talked about games here at mrkniceguy.com is Halo 3. It’s no secret that I’ve been a fan of the Halo games for the past 11 years. It’s been a fun series to play and uncover more and more of the story about Master Chief and Cortana. I’ve followed their adventure ever since the first Halo came out on the OG Xbox. So when Halo 4 was released, it was a no brainer to pick it up and play.

Halo 4 logo

I purchased Halo 4 at launch and jumped right in to the game. Playing through the first two missions on Heroic, I’m here to report that it’s every bit as good as the previous 3 Halo games. Master Chief, Cortana, and the Covenant are all back and a new class of baddies yet to be engaged. Not only is the story good, but the game looks and feels beautiful and clean. It has that classic Halo feel with a few extra elements added. The dynamics added in are pretty natural for the gameplay and don’t feel like they were just “thrown in.” The only story complaint I have so far is some pretty long cut scenes. But we’re here for a story, right?

343 Industries (commonly referred to as 343i) took over development when Bungie parted ways from Microsoft Game Studios and went independent, which was a mutually beneficial move. Microsoft then employed 343i to develop the next big piece of the Halo universe. And I think they’ve done a great job.

My favorite part of Halo 4 so far is actually the sound-scape. Sound has always been a make or break point for me in movies and games, and 343i does it right. The sounds are amazing. Doors opening and closing, the guns, the baddies, the epic struggles. It all sounds great.  I generally play with a pair of Turtle Beach headphones, so I get a full ear of the sweet, sweet sounds. And I like it.

Multiplayer is quite fun, although at this point the map selection is pretty light. I feel like I’m playing the same map every 3 or 4 games. Upcoming map packs will fix that but I wish the game had shipped with more places to play. The playlists don’t even rotate through all the maps that ship with the game but instead land on the same 3 or 4 in Infinity Slayer. That being said, I’ve spent plenty of hours on those maps and haven’t really gotten bored. Yet.

Halo 4 is solid. I’m still working my way through the campaign and will tell you more about that at a later date, but for now I can say with confidence, you should pick it up.  You can even buy Halo 4 in the newly created mrkniceguy Amazon store.

Halo 4 Gallery (more…)

02Sep

The Veldt

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Ray Bradbury, the famous author of Fahrenheit 451 (among many other things) who passed away earlier this year wrote a short story called “The Veldt” back in 1950. It’s a fantastic story about the future, technology and the imagination. If you’ve never read it before, I recommend you check out the full story here.

In 2012, the story comes to life and is retold, in part, by deadmau5 and Chris James. A long range collaborative project by the two gentlemen (deadmau5 is Joel Thomas Zimmerman from Ontario Canada while Chris James resides in Long Beach, CA) the story comes to life with vivid images, catchy vocals and the deadmau5 proven beats to match. But don’t take my word for it. Check it out.