Nyko Data bank thoughts

Back in January Nyko announced their PlayStation 4 hard drive extension data bank. When I first heard about it, I was like yaaay we have an easier way to upgrade the HDD on the PlayStation 4! One that makes it possible to connect a 3.5 inch drive to the PS4.  This alone should be amazing, people should be jumping up in the air screaming like they just don’t care, right? No while the data bank can be seen as good for some, it’s a pretty ugly extension that goes on the top of the PS4.

In my personal opinion the only good thing about it is that it allows consumers to put larger HDDs in (or “on”) their PS4s. a large capacity 2.5” HDD is hard to find and really freaking expensive. I’d personally rather get the extension and buy a 3TB HDD for $130 than a 2TB 2.5” HDD for $500 or more (darn Canadian economy making everything expensive). I do have a few problems with the device, the fact that the PS4 can only connect to one of the hard drives at a time meaning you can’t use the 500GB internal memory with the let’s say 3TB external storage.

It’s an interesting concept, I only wish that it was able to use both the internal and external storage & that it looked nicer when connected to the system.

What do you think?

Thoughts of Disgaea and its future.

It was many years ago when I experienced Disgaea for the first time. I had never played such a game in my young life, and I couldn’t understand why it took me so long to come across it! I first played Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness shortly after hacking my PSP. The story was amazing and killing enemies while those many memorable songs played in the background were some of the best times I had during high school. Fast forward to now while I’m playing catch up in Disgaea 4 and eagerly waiting for Disgaea 5 to be released here in North America. I only have one question, how will it fair to its predecessors?

Disgaea 1 & 2 were amazing, nice & balanced with tons of replay ability, I never got the chance to play Disgaea 3 for myself but watched playthroughs of it on youtube. I had to get the PS TV to play Disgaea 4 and although I’m a bit disappointed with some of the mechanics when compared to the first two, I’m still loving the story presented in the game.  The good thing about Nippon Ichi is that they seemed to have listened to their fans and are streamlining some of the mechanics making Disgaea 5 more like Disgaea 1 & 2 and I guess D2 (which I also never got to play L )

Playing through Disgaea 4, for the first time I’ve played a Disgaea game without using any form of cheating or downloading a game save, I’ve started from the bottom and so far have put in around 180 hours in the game. I personally consider myself to still be a novice of the game considering I only just unlocked the LOC and am about to start my item world run of a legendary Arcadia! (somehow I managed to beat the 8 Pringer battle to get one) I’m excited to get my characters as strong as I can through hard work and determination.

I have high hopes for Disgaea 5, when I think about the power that the PS4 has, I’m excited to think about how great the game could be. (Disgaea 4 lags on PS TV) The technology that is present now should make for one hell of a game. There is one thing I would love to see from a Disgaea game in the future though, bringing all the protagonist from the Disgaea universe together in one games MAIN storyline with the final boss being like Baal or Pringer X or both threatening to destroy all the netherworlds & celestia, I suppose the human world as well just for the fun of it. It will probably never happen but a man can dream cant he?! 

Nvidia Shield Thoughts

Nvidia, a company that I hold in high regard has announced the Shield, the third and most likely final piece to the Shield family. Joining the Shield Portable and the Shield Tablet, the Shield set top box will be coming to living rooms near you! This new beast boasts a Tegra X1 Processor with a 256 core Maxwell GPU as well as 3GB of ram and 16GB of internal storage which can be upgraded via MicroSD. When it comes to set top boxes it easily beats out the likes of Apple TV, Roku, fire TV, etc, many have been going as far as saying that the Shield will be a competitor for the Xbox One & PS4 consoles.  I won’t bore you with flops, but the Shield is said to be 2x more powerful than the Xbox 360 & PS3 and is currently said to be able to put out half the power of the Xbone & PS4.

So what & what don’t I like about this promising new device? Well it runs on android so you know it will have a nice and open OS, with such powerful hardware to back it up it already has a list of console tier games ready to be released to stream on it. This brings me to the first point that I don’t like, streaming. In order to get the most out of it you must have internet capable of streaming the content to your device, if you want to be able to play games at 1080p 60FPS through the grid streaming service your internet is going to have to be able to handle it or else that feature will be out of the question for you.

The 3GB of RAM & 16GB of built in storage are also a point of complaint for me, I currently have the Samsung Galaxy Tab S which has those same specs. 3GB of RAM may be limiting for a device that is capable of so much and we all know that 16GB of storage is small in this day and age. I can’t complain too much as the Shield only costs $199 USD (so it will be a bit more for us Canadians *Sigh*) but at that price point if it can keep up with this generation of consoles, well let’s just say Microsoft and Sony might be in a bit of trouble. (To be honest, I don’t think they have much to worry about)

Now something I haven’t seen people talking about, later this year the Steam machines will be rolling out & considering the integration the Shield will have with Steam, individuals should be considering if this will put a damper on the sales of those devices, or maybe people will hold out on buying this and opt for the more powerful Steam machines? I guess we’ll have to wait and see what will happen. Even though this device intrigues me, I will be opting to buy a PS4 (for the exclusives of course) and the newly announced Steam Link streaming box for my room so that I can finally put my gaming rig to use without people staring at what I’m doing in my living room. 

JUST LOOK HOW THIN IT IS!

Dragon Ball Xenoverse Review!

After beating the main story and reaching level 80 within 2 days, putting hours of my life into a game created from one my favorite series in existence, It’s time for my review of Dragon Ball Xenoverse!

So for those of you who may not know, in Xenoverse you can create your own character based on one of the races from the series (Saiyan, Human, Namekian, Majin & Frieza clan). You can go through the iconic story of Dragon Ball Z with a few twists that keep the story mode fresh unlike most Dragon Ball games in the past. The story mode can be completed within a few hours if you’re somehow really good at the game and never stop to grind on parallel quest! To complete all the parallel quests is gonna take some time, with their being over 50 of them in the game and most likely more to come with the 3 DLC packs that are going to be released this year, you’re going to have a lot to do in the game. In my opinion it’s a fantastic game and I definitely recommend it if you’re a Dragon Ball fan.

For the most part gameplay is smooth, playing on PC with an Xbox 360 controller feels nice, its visually stunning and runs at 60FPS @ 1080P. There are a few instances where the game feels slow & clunky especially in TokiToki city, considering that the combat is mostly smooth I wished they had put a bit more effort into the hub world allowing people to fly around or even run around, hopefully those will be options if they decide to make a sequel to the game which would be nice but I honestly can’t think about where they would be able to take the story mode.

Certain parallel quests bring time patrol officers who sometimes drop Dragon Balls, the Dragon Balls can be used for a variety of things like wishing for money, characters, rare armor, the power pole, techniques or stuff like changing your characters looks, resetting attributes, etc.

Now for what I didn’t like, the fact that there is content already in the game that is being pushed as DLC, and the fact that we’re having DLC in the first place. I don’t want to have to pay an extra $30 for DLC when the game already costs $50. Also there are a few voice syncing inssues  for the english dub, sometimes the characters lips dont move at all and other times there sync is as a bad as an old godzilla movie

If you’re a Dragon Ball Z fan, I’m sure you’re excited for the upcoming Fukatsu No F movie. Stay up to date on here to check out my review of the movie when it comes out.

Check out some screens from the game & my characters below!

The future of torrents?!

The future of technology can be an interesting thing when thought about, when I was in high school and 3-d printers were all the rage my friends and I started to wonder about torrenting might become a tool used to obtain physical things illegally.

Now those of you who follow news on technology might recall a time when a few people were using 3-d printers to print guns, granted at that time the guns could only be fired once before they fell a part, more recently I’ve heard that people have become closer to printing fully functional weapons.

So if we could print guns at home now, it should be possible to also print things like cars or kitchen appliances right? No, we aren’t that advanced. No yet at least, 50 – 100 years from now not many of us will still be around but I’m assuming that at that time people will have found a way to use 3-d printing for a more mischievous purpose.

Remember that torrenting is tormenting, you may not think that you are contributing to the downfall of the music or film industry, but you are. It's all your fault. Stop.