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mikeszekely

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Everything posted by mikeszekely

  1. mikeszekely
    I tend to prefer more linear games. Even in a lot of RPGs, I'll ignore a lot of the side quests because I just don't feel like doing them. I actually never cared for GTA, didn't play RDR, and prefer linear Spider-Man games to the open world ones. There are exceptions to that rule, though, and those exceptions tend to be some of my favorite games. Sleeping Dogs was a big one, although I skipped almost all of the camera hacking and street racing missions. Skyrim was another, because it gave me a huge, living world to play in, so much so that I was constantly finding things to do and get involved in four nearly 40 hours without playing the main game further than getting my first shout. In that case, it wasn't about the story so much as me finding my place in the world (short answer: guy who throws lightning at stuff). Far Cry 2 definitely fell into the first group. I didn't care what the story was, side missions were boring, and main missions were a pain to get to from the hub. Far Cry 3 falls solidly into the second. I've done about three or four main story missions (for those that did play it, my next story mission is to ), but I've put almost all of my free time into it this weekend. I've spent a lot of time hunting (I only have the items that require unique skins left to craft), activating radio towers (7, I think), and liberating bases (9 or 10). When I get tired of that, I'll go back to the story.
  2. mikeszekely
    I can't say for sure, as I avoid public toilets as much as possible. I only recall using the restroom at a Da Ya Li way out around the 6th Ring, and at one of the parks (either Purple Zizhuyuan or Beihai), and while they gross I'd say they're no worse than the public restrooms here in the greater Pittsburgh area. When were you there? As I understand it, A LOT of these changes are in the past few years. The Olympics were sort of Beijing's world debut, and a lot of the civic pride I experienced seems to have its roots in the idea that Beijing is now the face that China shows to the world. There are signs up now advertising the "Beijing Spirit" (Patriotism, Innovation, Inclusiveness, Virtue) that my wife tells me are pretty new. Yeah, that part is still the same. An irritation at tourist sites, but a necessary skill if you plan on getting on or off a bus in Beijing.Getting back on topic... But they're part of the original toy's gimmick! I was thinking it was freaking awesome that the trailer had those! Hot Rod, perhaps... but Rodimus Prime?
  3. mikeszekely
    Yeah, I'm guessing it's changed a lot, because there were very few bicycles, and cars everywhere. The most impressive thing about that is that aside from lights (of which there are few), road signs and rules are treated as more like a guideline than law. Cars constantly change lanes and cut each other off, never using turn signals and always with inches to spare, and everybody is honking all the time. The mind blowing thing about it is that in three weeks, I didn't see a single accident!I wouldn't drive in Beijing, and riding a bike is like asking to be killed. But the public transportation is actually pretty great. The attitude there isn't just Chinese national pride; Beijingers see themselves as a shining example of the best China has to offer. They see their city as the best in China, they think they're better than non-Beijingers, and that pride motivates most of them to set an example. The city was clean, the buses were clean (and cheap), and everyone is on their best behavior. The few times anyone was even remotely rude, everyone else would gang up on him with lines like, "Shut up! Act like a Beijinger!" My only complaint is that, with all the traffic, buses going into the city (my in-laws live in the 4th Ring) don't go particularly fast, so it can take awhile to get from point A to point B. Well, that and the fact that a healthy 30-something like myself will rarely get to sit on the bus.
  4. mikeszekely
    I wasn't until you pointed it out...
  5. mikeszekely
    There was like one guy from Crysis who was in Crysis 2, and he dies in the first hour! And I never was clear on how North Koreans accidentally finding some long-buried alien squid turned into humanoid aliens invading New York (or why aliens in New York caused a plague). And Crysis 2 was a lot more linear.I'm not saying I didn't like Crysis 2... using the stealth mode on the exosuit really changes the way you approach an encounter, and I appreciated that. It just felt, from a design point of view, only tangentially connected to the original Crysis, and more similar to games like Call of Duty and Halo than to the original Far Cry. And while I'm interested in Crysis 3, I'm really hoping it'll be more similar to the original than Crysis 2. (And available on Steam instead of Origin, although that seems doubtful).
  6. mikeszekely
    Man, why do I gotta live in stupid America? Sometimes it's great, but sometimes it's so boring! In all seriousness, when I was in Beijing last spring, we passed a street filled with shops on our way back from the Forbidden City. A lot of it seemed like your typical boring stuff, but amid all the clothing stores and cheap electronics was a Bandai store. I really wanted to go, but my in-laws aren't really into that sort of stuff and they wanted to keep taking me to see the historical stuff. I figure when I finish grad school I'm going to invest more time in learning Chinese (especially reading) and the Beijing bus routes so that next time I'm there, I can go to the Bandai store by myself.
  7. mikeszekely
    That's pretty much how I felt. I enjoyed Far Cry, so I got Far Cry 2 and couldn't get into it. It just seemed dull. Far Cry 3 is pretty fun, though. I've probably played it for 4-5 hours so far, and I've only done one plot-related quest. Far Cry 3 kind of sort of feels like the original Far Cry and Skyrim had a baby. You've got the crouching through jungle foliage thing going, but the sandbox feels much bigger and it's easy to find non-plot things to do. Fixed. I mean, let's be honest, Warhead (while good) was really still the first game, and Crysis 2 was Call of Duty with Halo rejects instead of terrorists.
  8. mikeszekely
    Far Cry 3 is way better than Far Cry 2. Discuss.
  9. mikeszekely
    You have a local store that sells 3rd party? Where I live, you buy your toys at Target (two local, three semi-local), Walmart (two local, five semi-local), or TRU (one local, one semi-local). Occasionally, one or two hard-to-find toys will turn up some place odd, like Ross (one local), Marshalls (two local, if you count TJ Maxx), or (oddly enough) Aldi's (where I found Airrachnid and Vehicon). Between those, you may never find some figures (I never found a local MP-10, Prime Dreadwing, any of the Prime First Editions, FoC Onslaught, FoC Swindle, FoC Brawl, and nearly missed Airrachnid, Vehicon, and Generations Perceptor). I have zero chance of getting a 3rd party figure that I don't buy online.
  10. mikeszekely
    Yeah, but even better than a thread of people basically cursing him, are the reviews on the Amazon.uk page with the ridiculous sense of entitlement. It's like Amazon is worse than Hitler because they won't sell them a toy at a third of its actual price, as if they weren't aware that the price was likely a mistake and too good to be true.
  11. mikeszekely
    My original PlayStation crapped out, although I'm foggy on the details. In total, I had three original PlayStations, but the third was just because I wanted a slim. My original PS2 succumbed to the dreaded disc read error. My second PS2, which is modded, still worked the last time I wanted to use it (although my wife nearly broke it once). My original 60GB PS3 got the YLOD last year, so I'm on my second PS3. My launch-day Xbox 360 got the RROD, and I replaced it with a 120GB probably six months before the the Xbox 360 S hit the market. That Xbox 360 still works fine for me, but my wife wanted a Kinect for Dance Central so I wound up buying a 250GB Kinect Bundle with Dance Central 2 for her for her birthday, so all in all three Xbox 360s. I only ever had one Xbox, which continues to work to this day. For all the crap Microsoft gets about the RROD, Microsoft actually has a slightly better track record with me. I've only had to replace one defective 360 and never an original Xbox, but I've had to replace a defective PlayStation every generation.
  12. mikeszekely
    Fixed.
  13. mikeszekely
    I said the same thing about Rodimus, but settled for the Hasbro version anyway.
  14. mikeszekely
    Seriously? At that price I'm half tempted to order another one... Yeah.
  15. mikeszekely
    Yeah... no. I was always more into anime for the giant stampy robots than underage girls with no noses and elf ears flashing their panties.
  16. mikeszekely
    Just buy it from Amazon UK. Even with shipping, it'll probably be cheaper. And if your local TRU doesn't have one now, it's not likely to ever get (another) one. Apparently my local TRU only ever have four, so I was glad to get one from their website.Side note: I've decided that, while I love almost everything about MP-10, I hate his "ion cannon." In the process of making it fold up and store in his back (like a scene from a Dreamwave issue, I think), Prime wound up with a weapon that looks tiny in relation to the rest of him. I've been posing mine with the rifle from MP-01.
  17. mikeszekely
    I can't definitively say that it's normal, since I don't have a MyBook (I have five externals, and four of them are the portable kind that are only plugged in when I want to use them). I'm also 98% a Windows guy, and don't bother to back up either of the Macs I own. What I will say is that there's a good chance that it's normal. Windows, since Vista, performs disk operations from time to time to prevent the drive from becoming fragmented. I assume Mac OS does something similar, since I've never heard of fragmentation being an issue for a Mac. Another thing to consider is that the drive could be doing SMART testing or other diagnostics.
  18. mikeszekely
    Was running errands, and stopped at TRU for the heck of it. No new Prime or FoC Deluxes, but they had four pegs of FoC two pack "data discs", and a ton of Voyager Soundwave and Soundblasters. Ultimately, I passed on all of them. $10.99 is too much for a pair of pogs that turn into robots, bats, and jaguars that look like butt and have no poseability. As for Soundwave, I do think that the Voyager looks a bit better than the Deluxe, but not enough (and the Deluxe I already have is more in scale with the other WfC/FoC figures I have).
  19. mikeszekely
    Mine had nothing but Prime Bumblebees and plenty of first-wave FoC. Which sucks, because I've basically given up on Prime, and really just want FoC Onslaught, Brawl, Starscream, and Kickback. Eh? I thought TRU was the only store that was supposed to have FE? Well, if you do ever find a PRID Vehicon, buy him. I don't have a FE Vehicon to compare him to, but I can say he's probably my favorite Prime figure so far, due almost entirely to the fact that he looks awesome in alt mode, awesome in bot mode with very little car kibble, and it's almost entirely due to an ingenious transformation that takes the top 30% of the car and keeps folding it in on itself to become the bulk of his lower legs. He'd be perfect, if his arms didn't have such a weird elbow.
  20. mikeszekely
    Grimlock's got a hollow torso that his head fits into so he doesn't have a huge dino head for a backpack, and he looks to be better than either Classics Deluxe or Animated Voyager Grimlock. And the back of FoC Prime's legs are hollow so his thighs fit in them for his transformation, making him no worse than WfC Megatron, or Classics/Universe/RTS/Generations Mirage, Prowl, Wheeljack, Tracks, Smokescreen, Silverstreak, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, or Scourge, and only slightly worse than RTS Jazz and Universe Onslaught.I'm not saying the FoC has been great. Shockwave's a little small and spindly and has a wretched alt mode. For legs that don't do anything but fold up underneath, Jazz has awful poseability. The three Combaticons I've managed to get my hands on (Swindle, Vortex, and Blast-Off) have been particularly wretched, with scout-quality figures horribly compromised to ensure that they can transform into bot, alt, arm, or leg. And in Swindle's case especially, the hollow plastic complaint is justified with forearms that are clearly hollow for no other reason than to skimp on plastic. And I know they can do much better (Transformers Prime RID Vehicon stands out as a particularly awesome recent Deluxe). But FoC Prime, for all of his faults, is actually the best FoC figure so far, with solid bot mode that pegs into a solid alt mode. And Grimlock's looking pretty good too, IMHO. I don't expect a Deluxe or Voyager figure to be perfect, just good enough.
  21. mikeszekely
    Complaining about the hollow spaces on FoC toys is getting old. I mean, one figures like Swindle, where his forearms are hollow for no better reason than to save plastic, sure, I get it. But having some hollow spaces on the back Grimlock's legs in bot mode and some of his underside in dino mode due to his transformation isn't that big a deal. I mean, he's a Voyager, not a Masterpiece, and tons better than Classics Deluxe Grimlock (who I intend to replace with FoC Grimlock on my Classics shelf).
  22. mikeszekely
    Yes. To both.
  23. mikeszekely
    I haven't enjoyed a numbered Final Fantasy game after IX.
  24. mikeszekely
    Hmm... I'm not a fan of the G2 colors, and I already have retail Vortex, Blast-Off, and Swindle... But that is a really tempting price.
  25. mikeszekely
    I've got the same CPU and same amount of RAM, but I used an Asus P8Z77-V mobo, a 128GB Kingston 200V SSD to boot, a GeForce GTX 660ti, a 1TB Western Digital for installing games, and a 3TB Seagate Barracuda for storage.What case an PSU did you use? I used a white NZXT Phantom and a 750w Antec HCG PSU. I've traditionally used Antec cases and have been pretty pleased, but I'm actually really happy with the Phantom. FWIW, I'm not convinced the GTX 670 is worth it. Yeah, it puts up some awesome numbers, but the 660ti doesn't sacrifice too much performance and it costs a lot less.
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