Author: Shmee

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The Sea Of Thieves Beta Is Miles Wide And Inches Deep!

It is hard to explain how amazing it feels to be out on Sea of Thieves’ ocean waves, and it looks incredible in motion.  Screenshots do not do it justice.  It makes me feel like I was born centuries to late, and that I should have been a scurvy sea dog, but so far besides that feeling there is not a whole lot to do just yet.  Right now you can go get chests and turn in chests for money.  Then buy stuff, and maybe fight with other pirates.  Pirates who will murder you.

Now Rare has said that there will be at least three other mission types: Trapping, Fighting Boss Skeletons, and carrying merchant goods between outposts.  Any variety would be nice, but that doesn’t sound like a lot.  Data miners have found references to Krakens and ship customizations in the code, so there looks to be some more places to spend your money, and a few monsters to take out.  Still, that doesn’t seem like a lot of content.

I understand that Sea of Thieves is supposed to be one of those games where you find your own fun, and I am sure there will be those people who want little more than to be out on the waves with the virtual sea foam splashing on their avatar’s faces.  For me however, I would like to be sure that I have not experienced everything after a couple of hours.  I want to dive to deep in to the ocean, not splash around in wide puddle.

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Another Trip Around The Track With Forza Motorsport 7!

It has hard to find something new to say about the Forza Motorsport franchise.  It is Microsoft’s premier racing game, and it always looks gorgeous.  Even when you think it can’t look any better, they always find a way to amp up the visuals.  With Forza Motorsport 7, Turn 10 had some help because the Xbox One X came out and let them go crazy with the graphical fidelity.  Though there are some new things for standard Xbox One users, namely dynamic weather and greater freedom in race selection.

As for what Forza 7 offers, it has more of everything.  More cars, more tracks, more outfits, more weather variation, and more crazy car customization.  Seriously what guys can do with random squares and circles is crazy.  I think every popular anime character has been accounted for.  It is hard to argue with the package Turn 10 has put together, if you think it is missing something, I think you are looking for a completely different game.

All of that is great, but there is one flaw, the progression system, or I should say systems.  There are three.  SP is what you earn during different ‘cups’ or sections of the game.  For every race you earn SP, and if you race enough you earn that section’s cup.  Then you are off to the next section (if you want).  What is nice is that you can pick which races to do, with a good variety of car choices.  Not as flexible as Forza Horizon 3‘s any car you want, but pretty close.

The only problem is that some races are stuck behind a ‘Collector’ level.  You up your Collector level with every car you get.  Different cars have different values, so you will want to get cars that help up your Collector level the fastest.  The problem is that you are picking cars based off point value instead of, “That car is awesome! I want that one!”, but cars are stuck behind the Collector level too, so you will be getting low level cars at first (and lot of them) just to get that level up.   Also since you can buy car packs as DLC with real money that are then ‘free’ in the game.  It adds a pay to win element.

The third system is XP.  Get enough XP and you level up, but that doesn’t mean much anymore.  All it really does is give you more money and then let you choose from three other rewards: more money, a free or discounted car, or a new Drivatar outfit.  Obviously with the Collector system outlined above, you should always pick the car, unless you have the Car Pass and are already juicing your Collector level.

Next is everyone’s favorite system ‘Prize Crates’.  There are different ‘Prize Crates’.  Some crates have cards in them called ‘mods’ that usually give you more money for racing on harder difficulties, like turning off traction control, or turning off the Forza racing line and just having the braking line.  Other, more expensive crates, have cars in them, but since you are saving your money for cars that help your Collector level, they seem like a bad investment.  The mods on the other hand pay you back quickly thanks to their money modifiers.  For now you can’t buy these crates with real money, but the fear is that you will be able to eventually, adding yet another pay to win mechanic.  Though after the Battlefront II fiasco, maybe not.

All of this and I haven’t even got to the racing!  How is it? It is Forza, it is awesome.  Not as arcade-y as Horizon, but not the super hard sim of Grand Turismo either.  It is right in the middle somewhere.  With seven games out now all I can say is that Forza 7 plays like a Forza Motorsport game.  One that now has dynamic weather to mess you up.  Which is great.

I like Forza Motorsport 7.  It continues the progression of the franchise.  It is not a huge leap forward, but it looks and plays great.  It is just a shame the Collector level just sits there in the way.  If they got rid of that, it would be the open game fans have been wanting.  Still, if you like racing games, and you want something to show off your Xbox One X, it is worth picking up.

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Fixing Microsoft’s Mistake With Solder!

Microsoft recently stopped making Kinects.  Since it was never a loved product, this decision made total sense.  Why keep making something no one is buying.  However, they also stopped making the Kinect Adapter for the Xbox One S and X.  This was a dumb decision.  The Xbox One X just came out, and a lot of the people buying an Xbox One X are upgrading from the original Xbox One, meaning they have a Kinect.  A Kinect that they are going to want to hook up to their new console.

I mean if you go and look on eBay the Kinect Adapter for Xbox One S and X is going for well over $100.  That is insane for what amounts to be a power adapter and a USB cable.  However, you will also notice there are ads for modding your Kinect for around $50.  Well I figured if someone can do it for $50, I can do it for cheaper, and I did.  All I had to do was watch a couple of YouTube videos.  The one below was the most useful:

If you have the tools, you can make your Kinect work with you new Xbox or PC for less then $20, and if you need to buy the tools, you have probably still spent less than $40.  Better yet, if you click through to the YouTube page of the video above he has links to Amazon for the stuff to get this mod working in the video description.  It took me a couple of times to get the solder on right, and the mic on my Kinect is a little finicky now, but hey, I can play Dance Central again and tell Cortana to turn on and off my Xbox. Which I couldn’t do before, and I wasn’t willing to pay $300 to make happen.

Listen, obviously doing all this voids warranties, and you are damaging a power cord, so I can’t actually recommend that you do this.  However, I did it, and It is working great.  The shot on the top of the page is a shot of my success.  Plus it was a lot of fun to pretend that I am some sort of electrical engineer.  So to Microsoft who screwed over all their fans, I guess it is up to us to fix your problem with a little solder.

P.S. I am also going to include a link to site that has a better shot of what the soldering should look like when you are done, here.

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Black Mirror Gives Us Our Twilight Zone Fix!

Do you like strange stories with kind of a horror bent to them?  Black Mirror might be just what you are looking for.  Technically it is a series, but every episode is different and has different actors, though there are Easter Eggs and references to other episodes if you are looking for them.  If this is sounding like The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, you would not be far off.

The biggest difference between Black Mirror and those other shows is that Black Mirror’s episodes all deal with technology gone wrong, or pushed to its limits.  Usually social media, but cell phones, surveillance, and other tech are all represented as well.  You will question how much you like all your devices by the end of each episode.

For the most part these episodes mostly just make you think about the state of technology in our lives, but some can be hard to watch.  The very first episode is famously graphic.  It is about a Prime Minister who has to do something unthinkable to save the life of a royal princess.  While it never actually shows anything, it is a rough watch.  It was kind of like the producers were saying, “If you can get through this, the rest will be a cake walk.”

Not all of Black Mirror’s episodes are great, but most do make you reconsider posting that picture of your bagel, and we are at a time when considering how much we let technology in to our lives is a hot topic for a lot of us, so if you need some ammo for why you think social media is bad, or you just miss The Twilight Zone, give Black Mirror a try.

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Shmee Rides With 12 Strong!

Post 9-11 Afghanistan war movies generally fall in to two categories, critiques on America’s wars in the Middle East, or super patriotic action flicks.  12 Strong is definitely the latter, but it tells a compelling story about the first boots on the ground after The World Trade Center attacks, and their stunning victory.  I am not sure how much of Jerry Bruckheimer’s war tale is true, but it shines a light on some of America’s recent forgotten history.

12 Strong starts on September 11th with Captain Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth) settling in to his new home.  The towers fall and he is in to his military base getting ready to head out.  The job he and his eleven squad-mates are tasked with is aiding the Afghanistan Northern Alliance by calling in air strikes on the Taliban.  They are riding horseback against heavy odds in extreme conditions, but they get the job done.

12 Strong never lets you doubt these men are going to succeed, which ruins some of the tension, but it is amazing to catch a glimpse of what they had to go through to destabilize the Taliban so soon after the attacks.  It is a shame that so much of what these guys did was classified for so long, but I guess aiding a rebel group against former allies probably needed to be handled with some discretion.

They got a great group of actors for this movie: Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, and Michael Peña just to name a few.  They were all believable in their roles, even if Hemsworth did seem too pretty to have spent three weeks in the dessert, but this is a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, so everyone has to look great all the time.

My biggest critique of 12 Strong is that it is about thirty minutes too long.  Some of the movie felt a little redundant, so they could have done some editing to make this a much tighter and better movie.  Still, as it is, it is pretty enjoyable.

For a movie that was dumped in to the January wasteland of feature films.  12 Strong is a decent war movie.  It is not overly stirring, and it will not make you think about the complex politics about what is going on while these guys are riding their horses against overwhelming odds, but not all films need to.  Some movies, 12 Strong included, just need to show our military out there doing their job, or at least a Jerry Bruckheimer-ed super-explode-y approximation of it.