PixlBit

What is going on Pixlbit? I know many of you are excited because as I type this many folks are getting ready for the announcement of the new X-Box, which means one thing: Looks like it’s time for me to start thinking about getting a 360. Yes since the days of the original X-Box, I bought the console once the newer version was announced. Why you may ask? Thanks for asking! I don’t play online (but I did enjoy playing Battlefield online on the original X-Box), I played the games that were exclusives and enjoyed the hell out of Forza and Project Gotham Racing.

I’m currently listening to the X-Box Conference while typing this and well, it sounds interesting but there are a lot of features I really don’t care about. I do like the hand gestures a la Minority Report/Tony Stark’s basement, but all the other things feel like its more of a “Hey look at the 1,000,000 features we can cram into a box” than a strong game system. When it came time for the games, I wasn’t blown away by how they looked because a lot of it I thought were just cut scenes. Let me see some preliminary gameplay, something interesting. I know the dedicated are going to buy this console at launch, and more power to you, but I’m undecided. I will probably stick with Sony in the next round…whenever I get the new console.

Ok it’s been a couple of hours since I wrote that part of this week’s blog while watching/listening to the X-Box One Announcement, and it’s time to jump to other things that interest me:

 

Last week I went to another cousin’s graduation! Again congrats to all you graduates!

 

That’s me in the back of a van on the way to San Marcos (it’s 20 minutes outside of San Diego). On the way over there I had a plan of watching some videos I packed on the Nexus 7, but 20 minutes into the trip I fell asleep.

 

My view during the graduation. I thought CSUSM was big enough to where they split the University Ceremony to one big one, and then you go to a different venue for the College’s Ceremony where they read your name, and you get the diploma book. Nope, but the ceremony went pretty well. There was a 90-year-old man who was receiving his forth degree. Yeah FORTH! For all of us single degree holders, we’re slackers.

 

The next day my Aunt took us on a tour of San Diego…tourist style. A little background: I went to school in SD, and I have never done any of the touristy things while there, so this was interesting.

 

First stop was the Hotel Del Coronado or as the locals call it “Hotel Del.” This is the iconic front, and everyone seems to show up to take pictures, look for the ghost that roams the halls, and some folks actually stay there, and some get married. For our little group we roamed around, went up a couple of floors, and checked out the property.

Next touristy spot was the USS Midway. The Midway came home after I graduated so I never got to roam around it. For you guys visiting, it PAYS to buy online, and print your tickets. There was a crazy line, and we went right up to the front.

 

As big as the ship looks outside, I didn’t think the it looked that big inside. I did enjoy walking around, looking at the planes in the hanger.

 

This is the F-14 Tomcat (Top Gun) and the F-4 Phantom (Old Blue Angels). Growing up I wanted to be a fighter pilot and I would build model kits, so these planes I knew. I also built a couple of Aircraft Carriers but only of the Enterprise, and the Forrestal, so the Midway was new to me.

 

A Seahawk helicopter. Pretty cool.

 

The Midway’s island

 

The view of the Coronado Bridge from the Flight Deck

 

A Corsair. This was one of my favorite models to build because of the wing structure and the color.

On the way out I spotted this ball signed by the coaches from the carrier basketball game

 

Steve Fisher!...GO AZTECS!!!

 

After our visit we went on a harbor cruise that took us up and down SD Harbor. It was a little warm, but once we hit the water, an awesome breeze hit and we spent the next couple of hours listening to our captain talk about everything that was surrounding the bay, as well as some history. Here are some pictures from the cruise

 

San Diego

 

Fly Navy on North Island

 

This is the Ronald Regan, and the ship farther back is the Carl Vinson. Notice the floating fence?

 

Going under the Coronado Bridge

 

 

 

 

This is the USS New York. This ship was built with salvaged steel from the World Trade Center.

The Hospital Ship Mercy

 

And some ships getting some TLC.

 

Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres!

Well that was my mini San Diego vacation. If you haven’t visited America’s Finest City, you need to go. There’s a lot more to it than a Zoo, and a jumping Killer Whale.

 

 

WHAT IS CHRIS PLAYING?

 

I went back to Simpsons Tapped Out, long enough to buy the limited edition stuff, earn some cash, and unlock

 

Agnes Skinner.

 

 

I finally won this week’s Treasures of Montezuma Blitz! ChunksTM is one hell of a player, nothing but class in sending a Congrats message after I got lucky and finally got a win. If you have a Vita, and like to play this game send me an invite. It’s always fun to see what scores my friends have, and I try to beat them!

 

Anyone else get this message? I beat the recent God of War and got this a week.

 

This is where I am currently stuck on this level. It’s a pain, but not as bad as some of the earlier ones.

 

So after trying to side load this on my Nexus, I finally broke down and put it on my phone. I don’t get why the game makers didn’t let every Android device play this but oh well.

 

The game uses the faces of the actors in the new film, to add some interest (and tie-in) with the movie, and this drag racing game.

 

The game isn’t bad, in fact it’s your typical Freemium game where you can play for a bit, but if you connect to Facebook, and shell out a couple of bucks you can play a whole lot longer.

*I really should connect it to Facebook just to break up the constant spamming of my timeline with quotes the poster doesn’t understand but thinks it makes them sound “deep”, the millions of pictures shared from Reddit, and whatever witty thing George Takei posted. Yup that’s Facebook in a nutshell.

 

 

I tried another iOS game

And well it was interesting at first, but I quickly got tired of it.

 

Oh just play nice with my Nexus 7 already

I guess it’s a slimmed down version of the Lego games but it isn’t a bad thing. I do like the touch a spot and the your character will go there and attack. You can pick which side you want to play as, and then boom after a tutorial, off you go. I haven’t played much of it because I lost interest, because I wanted to advance in Candy Crush, but I will probably go back to this game soon.

 

I’ve been playing a mission or two per session, and well I’m not overly excited about it. The game has it’s moments of being fun in a GTA way, but it still didn’t sway too far from it’s roots as a True Crime game. I think the hype for this game ruined it for me. I want to get into this game, and maybe once I get sucked into the game (it’s slowly happening) I’ll really enjoy it.

 

Picked this up this morning, and yes it really isn’t a good game. I’m halfway through half the story mode already and it’s good and bad. You have the aspect of playing through some parts of the movies (Hello Safe Dragging) and then there are some created parts of the story. I do like the racing, but the shooting parts are terrible, and even some parts of the racing becomes racing on ice (yeah the controls are that much fun). I do like that when you  do encounter shooting levels, you can switch to the driver.

The game does offer little add-ons like extra health, perfect start, etc. This makes some secondary goals much easier to earn, and for one level the extra health helped A LOT!

 

Current progress after playing a little under 2 hours

 

Current progress in the Story Mode.

 

 

RANDOMS

 

I found this at Best Buy for $5 bucks, and thought it was a good price.

 

This is the soft case for the Vita. It’s a nice case, but I’m not big on soft cases, and I already have a pretty nice hard shell case.

 

 

This was the main reason why I bought this set: a 30 game case. It has slots for a couple of memory cards, and tons of room for games. The trick now is finding 30 games on the Vita I actually want to own *rimshot (Sony please PLEASE make some decent sports games, for the Vita. Games like NBA Live/NHL/NBA Jam/NCAA Football would be epic on this system).

While grabbing lunch at the Costco ($1.50 Polish Sausage with a Coke is a STEAL) I made the mistake of walking around the media section and picked up 2 Broke Girls

 

I need to buy Season 2 whenever it’s released.

 

Well that’s all for now, more later!

-Chris