Monthly Archives: August 2010

Microsoft Bumps Xbox Live Gold to $59.99

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Oh Microsoft, does your lust for our wallets know no bounds? Sony fanboys will likely be foaming at the mouth, ready to blast us for not having access to free online play, but I’ll tolerate it. Do you know why? Because it’s still the best online service available for gamers. Say what you will about our greedy, capitalistic overlords, but if the service weren’t worth the price of admission we wouldn’t already have a legion of 10 million gamers heartily enjoying it.

A lot of people are up in arms about the price hike and while I’m not a huge fan of shelling out more dough for the service, I suppose it’s less irritating than it would have been 5 years ago before Live offered the kind of services it does today.

It wasn’t too long ago that being on Xbox Live meant merely that you had the ability to play online with your friends. The cost served only as the means by which the pearly gates of online play would be opened. Now, however, a whole wealth of features dominate the Live landscape from Facebook and Twitter support to a complete online marketplace of multimedia content.

Do I like paying an extra $10? No, but I’m not about to abandon my love of the service either. On the contrary- I’ll be stocking up on as many of these as I can to counteract it.

My First Article at Wrecked Gamer

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Recently I began writing a bit for Wrecked Gamer.  My debut article, ‘Why Halo Reach will be Bungie’s Crowning Achievement’ is now available for your reading pleasure.  An excerpt is below, but be sure to read the rest at Wrecked Gamer and check out their awesome site!  While Nicole and I tend to write about geek things from both ends of the spectrum (i.e. bacon and robots), Wrecked Gamer focuses on gaming exclusively.  Anyways, here’s a short sample:

While Halo: ODST was viewed by some as more of an expansion than a true sequel within the Halo universe, the means by which the story was progressed was inventive and fresh.  The tale of the Rookie as he looks for the rest of his squad through a dark and derelict New Mombasa was a stark contrast to the lush environments of the rest of your squad’s missions.  Seeing the story from multiple perspectives while ping ponging back and forth between a calculated, tactical environment and traditional balls-to-the-wall firefights made for some excellent pacing.  It was a bold creative decision and for most of us, it paid off quite nicely.

Read the rest here!

Studies into Standard – Budget Decks

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Greetings to everyone out there reading this, and welcome to another exciting episode of Studies into Standard. During the entirety of this article, it is my mission to give a few standard decklists that don’t break the bank. Now, (and I know this is obvious) I want to mention that these decks are not the best decks in standard, nor can they beat the popular decks in standard, and in fact might not even include the best cards that do the things you are trying to accomplish. My goal is to give you, the reader, a few decklists that you can take to your local FNM, participate, have fun, and maybe, maybe win with.

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Painting Complete

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It only took a year and five months, but after much hard work and agitation about the walls being stark white, Joshua and I finished painting all the rooms in the house (…minus the bathrooms. But those don’t really count). Our last big project was the master bedroom. We knew we wanted soothing yet contemporary colors, so we went with “avocado green” for 3/4 of the walls and “hops brown” (a pale tan) for the tallest wall. Yours truly majored in interior design at Ohio State for one quarter so I reserved the right to pick the colors. ;)

So now the theme is: silvery gray, plum, tan, chocolate brown, and avocado green. Hope you think it looks as good as we do!

P.S. If you liked our bedroom, perhaps you’ll like the style of our office!

Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

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Odds are if you’re a gamer, at some point or another you’ve fantasized about some of your favorite moments in gaming come to life.  Maybe you had a mental image about firing off a hadouken at the guy in line at the supermarket who took too many items into the express lane, or wished when you found that $20 you forgot about in a winter coat pocket that Final Fantasy’s victory fanfare would accompany it.  If you’ve ever had a moment like that, Scott Pilgrim’s hyper-realistic interpretation of those kinds of daydreams will keep you sucked in throughout its entirety, chuckling all along the way.

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Studies into Standard: U/W Control

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The following is a guest post by JB Martin, a friend I met at my most recent Friday Night Magic event.  Aside from just being a great guy, his knowledge of Magic makes mine look laughable by comparison so I was overjoyed to have him bring his experience to GeeksPodcast and give us some sound wisdom on how to step up our games in MTG.  Welcome, JB!
-Josh

Greetings and welcome to my first of what I hope to be many posts here at GeeksPodcast. While posting here aboard this wonderful website, I hope to help everyone who reads these in the ways of standard and limited as best I can. For my starting off week, I plan to delve into my personal favorite deck in standard right now: U/W control; But first a little about myself!

I am 19 years old, live in Columbus, Ohio, and have been playing magic since Mirrodin block (2003). I have loved magic since the first moment I started playing, but have only gotten competitive recently. I have been to 2 PTQ’s (Pro Tour Qualifiers), doing fairly well in both. Standard and Limited are the only formats I play currently, not because I don’t like the other formats, but because time and money are major issues.

I work full time 3rd shift at a warehouse fixing and recycling computers. I enjoy my job greatly, and it gives me time to think. A lot of that time is spent thinking about Magic the Gathering and League of Legends, which is a great, free online game for the PC that I highly suggest you check out! And if you do, be sure to send a referral to helidead09 (my in-game name) so I can get some cool rewards. Anyways, since I have so much free time to think about magic, the overflow of ideas will no doubt creep into these posts. Now that you know a little about me, onward!

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Review: Inception

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I won’t mince words with you.  Inception is a triumph that you should go see immediately.  Normally I’d build up to that kind of a statement, but I care so much that you go see it that if you don’t have the patience or inclination to read the rest of this review, no hard feelings.  However, if you’d like to see why I’m positively gushing about this film, please read on…

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Columbus Hotspots: Indian Run Falls

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Nicole wanted to go for a walk together the other night and while I was just coming off a delightful nap.  Unknown to me she didn’t just mean a stroll around the neighborhood, but rather she wanted to drive to someplace special as a surprise.  After groggily hopping in the car with her and stopping for gas, we ended up over at Indian Run Falls, a nice little 3 and 1/2 acre nature trail in the woods right off of Corbins Mill Drive in Dublin.

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What is Icarus? Find out Today!

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I have absolutely no idea what’s in store for us, but Bioshock developer Irrational Games is content to tease us until 1:45PM today.  Prior to a few days ago, the site WhatIsIcarus.com revealed only a black screen, some fog, and a white blob of questionable origins.  However, today it can be seen that some announcement is dropping at 1:45 EDT and a swirling infinity symbol hovers above.

Is it a new IP?  Bioshock 3?  Who knows, but one thing’s for sure- I’ll be watching at 1:45 to see what gets revealed.

Perfect Summer Music

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Summer is officially halfway over making it crucial that the rest of it is spent accordingly. Water, sunshine, driving, outdoors; whatever it is that you are doing, I am providing you with the perfect music to groove to. I know we may not have similar tastes, but if yours is immaculate like mine then you’ll approve. ;)

P.S. Because I love you, my dear readers, you can listen to any of these songs at the almighty Grooveshark. I made the playlist for you. Muah.

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