Captain Zoli's Review Blog

Early Reviews are in for the Pizza Hut Big Dipper Pizza

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:13:25 -0600

Recently, actually Saturday night to be specific, I ordered some pizzas from Pizza Hut, although not the Big Dipper they are currently trying to push. Seems to me it just an overpice gimmick, and since that is what I believe it to be, I passed on it for a couple of large pies with pan crust, which I usually don't get when it's just myself either. I pretty much am a thin crust, light on the cheese kinda guy most of the time. Well, it depends reall, but now days with the diet in full force, it's better to have less calories on my pizza. Granted that's not what happened Saturday night, but I digress.

Anyway, the folks over at the Slashfood blog jumped in and reviewed this thing, saving me time and money so if you are interested in what they think about it, head over and have a look. As for me, I find it hard to believe pizza hut would roll out a new crust for this thing, so I'm sticking with the slightly different form, higher price, not worth it theory. Your mileage may vary of course, and I may very well try it down the road if I get the idea that it may be different. Anyway.

Check out the review.

Harvest Festival Finally Comes Through for Me

Mon, 8 Nov 2010 15:37:40 -0600

So, after days of trying opening the ridiculous hidden chest with each of my five characters, last night I finally got the rare skeleton horse/pony that I had been looking for. Not only one, but two of my characters hit it big all within a few minutes of each other. Luckily, they are the two characters I have been using the most recently, so at least that worked out. Would still like to get one for my main though. Not going to hold my breath just in case. Anyway, the picture is of my Dwarf, Loghorn, a level 21 guardian. My Rune Keeper also pulled down the rare drop as well. Good times. Really though, it was about time. I know I haven't farmed that chest as much as some people have on the official forums, but it's still nice to get a rare drop like this from time to time, especially since it's one of the cooler looking mounts available in the game, in my opinion at least. LOTRO doesn't usually get into the strange and exotic mounts that are sometimes found in other games.

Vindictus Out the Door

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:54:43 -0600

Well, looks like the boys and girls over at Nexon have gotten their newest, blood soaked MMORPG out the door in the guise of Vindictus. Granted, beta keys have been floating around for a while, and granted, I know very little about the game despite having had a said beta key for some time, mainly because I simply haven't played it, but that shouldn't stop anyone who is interested from going on over and trying it out. Never can tell, one may find they enjoy Vindictus and its free to play stylings. Might even give it a shot myself, since I've been meaning to anyway.

Champions Online Follows the Crowd to Free to Play, Surprises No One

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:16:53 -0600

Or at least it should come as no surprise that another struggling "AAA" monthly subscription MMORPG is working on moving to a free to play model, especially after the success that titles like Dungeons & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online, and to a lesser extend Everquest 2, have seen to the bottom line. The people at Cryptic had to see all this transpire and know that was pretty much the only path to trying to bring in a respectable amount of subscribers to their much maligned, but actually quite fun superhero themed game.

I'm not going to pretend to be impartial here on this one. I'm a lifetime subscriber and have been playing the game since beta. I have and do love the game, played the pen and paper RPG prior to that way back in the day, and have a strong affinity for the licence in general. Having achieved full disclosure regarding that, I find the move to a free to play model unfortunate, but I understand as well that games must make money and that in terms of viability over the long haul, this was probably the only decision that could be made.

I still think it is ridiculous for companies to have a cash store to sell things to subscribers that are already paying a monthly subscription, but that seems to be the wave of the future. It is disturbing though that companies seem to think it is ok to screw over their paying customers, and make no mistake, that is exactly what is going on, no matter what the apologists would like you to believe. But I digress.

Here's the link to more information on the plans for the change over, should it be of interest to you. If you haven't tried the game out, it's certainly worth a download for free.

Trying to Decide

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 09:52:18 -0600

Irony is a thing that has been fuller in effect in my life this year than in previous, do to more real life situations than I care to remember currently. Nothing really can be done about that. An interesting, so not that interesting depending on your point of view, side effect of all of this chaos is that for quite some time my gaming pretty much ground to a complete halt, for no better reason than I just didn't feel like playing. Too much turmoil can have that affect, I'm afraid. Doesn't matter anymore though.

At this point though, with more time on my hands, I've noticed that lots of things have changed, especially in the course of MMORPGs that I used to play periodically and I don't really know which ones I feel like revisiting. So far, I've stopped in on Lord of the Rings Online, Guild Wars, Champions Online, Everquest 2, Age of Conan, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and various and sundry others for brief stints or betas. That's been the way of things so far.

All have their benefits and drawbacks, charms and frustrations so the choice isn't as straight forward as it might seem. Many I've played off and on since launch, going for long stretches without logging in, then putting in hours upon hours for long stretches. I'm leaning towards Guild Wars, just because the sequel isn't that far away, and I believe I have all of the expansions to it, which I've only recently even bothered to look at. Maybe with the exception of Factions. Don't remember if I have that one or not. Probably old age sneaking up on me, or at least it's been so long since I purchased it that I just flat out can't remember if I'm thinking about Factions or Nightfall again. Either way, it isn't on my account currently.

Then again, I have probably six months worth of Age of Conan game time cards laying around the house. And I do enjoy the game, especially not that they've actually polished it up a bit and made it playable. True is after so long in beta, I was surprised the launch of the retail game wasn't an even bigger disaster than it way. God knows there weren't many beta testers that thought it was ready, and most believed it was going to need a year or more time in development before launch. Granted, they launched it anyway, and it was a disaster, but if you had seen the last beta version of the game, you'd know it could have been much, much worse.

So, I don't know, guess I'll play some Guild Wars, maybe try out the fall festival in Lord of the Rings Online again, save the day for a bit in Champions Online, maybe I will just dibble and dabble a bit in each one until I get too bored to even speak. I don't know. I do know I'll be around a bit here and there. Maybe I'll try out the Free to Play mode of Pirates of the Burning Sea when it finally goes live. Been a while since I've been there.

A Bit of a Blur

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:18:10 -0600

I picked up Blur a couple of days ago, not out of really any desire to play the game honestly, but because I had found a decent sale and ended up paying only $20.00 for it at my local Best Buy after coupon It's not to say that I thout it would be horrible or anything along those lines, but after playing the last couple of Project Gotham Racing games, I will admit I thought Bizzare had lost their touch. Truth is, I don't care for them at all. Despite the hype and great reviews, the truth is the last couple of PGR games were poor handling messes. Sure they looked great, but the racing action and gameplay were simply sub-par. So far, this one has beeen pretty good fun. I think the best part is that the Kart Racing aspects of the game have so far kept my mind off the fact that it doesn't seem to handle quite right. Oh, well, will update later as I move further through the game. Right now, I think it was worth my twenty bucks.

Review: City Diner

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 10:09:02 -0600

So, lunchtime comes and every man must find something to dine upon or face the afternoon hungry, and hungry just will not do, so I made my way over to City Diner, a local diner style eatery featuring the classic foods one would expect from an establishment so named. Also a benefit is that it is located at 622 N. Water Street in downtown Corpus Christi, just a couple of blocks from my office, so it makes it all that much easier to just walk down there at lunch without having to hassle with getting the truck out of the parking garage and so forth. And convenience is certainly king around these parts with an hour to have lunch in. Sounds like a long time, but it can go by faster than one would expect and next thing you know lunch is coming back to the office in a doggy bag. It's not a huge deal since I could eat at my desk, but it's hardly as nice as sitting and having a leisurely lunch out and about.

The main reason I bring up lunchtime time constraints is about to become evident, but it is pretty much common knowledge to downtown establishments and eateries that these constraints do exist and it is important to get people seated and served as quickly as possible. Generally speaking, with a few exceptions, they downtown food service industry is very good at making lunchtime happen for all us paper pushers, so we can make a timely return to our afternoon paper pushing in a timely manner. Generally speaking.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I should have noticed the red flags that lunch was not going to be smooth as soon as I arrived at city diner a minute or two after noon. It wasn't particularly packed by downtown lunchtime standards. I've seen them much busier in the past, and that is really what makes today's experience there all the much more disappointing. The first tip off is that when I walked in, it wasn't all that busy, but the guy in line in front of me and I ended up waiting ten minutes to be seated. On top of this, the hostess apparently couldn't find enough menus for my party of two. Really? Not enough menus? You can't be serious. But they were indeed serious, and it didn't stop there.

What followed was a parade of errors by our waitress and some of the absolute worst service I have ever gotten and still paid for a meal. She was quick to take our drink order, but then disappeared for quite some time. Finally, she returned, took our appetizer order and meal order at the same time, because things were looking like they were going to be close time wise because of the poor service to that point. We ordered fried cheese sticks and the Southwestern Rolls as appetizers, and I had the special, a three cheese burger and my companion had the chicken strip meal which she not only had to order, but also tell the waitress it came with a salad, and then waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, my companion noticed the cook had brought out our cheese sticks to the waitress for delivery because they had been done, but she hadn't been back to check for them. Great. On top of it, between our table and the kitchen, she had forgotten that we also ordered the Southwestern Rolls, so those had not been made.

Finally, the Southwestern Rolls made their appearance only a minute prior to the meal proper arriving. At this point, enough of our time had been wasted that we were just happy to be able to eat some of our meal at the establishment rather than having to take it all back to work untouched, although my companion did end up taking a great deal of her meal with her in a doggy bag. Truth is, when the food did finally arrive, it was fine. The cheese sticks were competent if not spectacular, and the marinara dipping sauce was very good. Which reminds me of our other issue with the waitress. My companion ordered ranch dressing with the cheese sticks, which of course did not make it out with them. The waitress went back to the kitchen ostensibly to get the forgotten ranch, but some minutes later emerged from the kitchen, not only without ranch, but she wandered off to a different part of the diner to do whatever. Finally when she returned to our section, we asked for the ranch again, to which she rolled her eyes at us like we were troubling her and went off to the kitchen again to emerge several minutes later, finally with the requested ranch.

Overall though, the food was good. The three-cheese burger was tasty, although the bun was a tad stale and broke up quicker than I'd like. The rolls were good. I don't care overly much for the way the fries are battered, but that is personal preference more than anything, and the fries were golden and crispy. Didn't try the chicken strips, but my companion said that they were good and that the gravy was also tasty. I do like the Southwestern rolls as well, although they arrived contemporaneously with the meal instead of as an appetizer. Passed on the pie due to time constraints though.

In the final accounting, while I will be going back to City Diner because it is close to work and easy to get in and out of for lunch (usually), I will be hoping not to have a repeat of the service disaster that I was a part of this time around. The food was fine, but it's hard to enjoy lunch when the service that you receive, and pay for, is just that bad. It creates stress for people as they try to enjoy lunch and make it back on time for work, and due to their location and the type of food they serve, it should never be an issue.

MotorStorm: Pacific Rift

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:20:42 -0600

Although most of the weekend was taken up with things like barbecue, beach going and a night on the town, there was an amazing amount of gaming that was still done, and perhaps most amazingly of all, it all centered around the second MotorStorm game. True, it is a fine game and great fun to play. Also true, it is a great multiplayer game offering four person split screen play and online play as well. Although we never did dig out those other two controllers. Things to remember for next time. The most interesting thing about MotorStorm is its ability to not only entertain the person playing, but also those watching the game. Not many games can keep the interest of spectators, but the frantic speed and spectacular destruction seems to do the trick. Whether it's a monster truck and a school bus colliding in mid-air off a huge jump (That one I'm guilty of creating) or pieces of racing truck flying about like so much debris as it rolls off the side of a cliff, there's always something to see.

Also, it was nice to get someone else to work off some of my races. Ok, not really, except that one that I was really having trouble with. That's the very odd thing about the game: sometimes the speed and quality of the AI's racing can vary widely with little real reasoning behind it. For instance, I finished second with a time of 3:03 on one track that had a target time of 2:55. Next race I dropped my time to 2:47 and finished, second again. A few minutes later of friend of mine beat the race in question with a time of 2:54. Now, I'm not so much upset about him winning the race as I am the race having a target time to beat, destroying that time, and losing by two seconds. That kind pisses me off. If the track has a time to beat, you shouldn't lose the race after besting that time to beat by at least eight seconds and to come in second again after knocking over fifteen seconds off your time is just absolutely ridiculous to me. Let's get that AI working better there developers and have some consistency. I understand the game is predicated on keeping everyone bunched up and bashing into each other for extreme effect, but really, if you give a track a target, let's make sure the AI doesn't go stupid fast and win over and over again. It feels exactly like cheating and cheap AI, which it is.

Tags: Racing, Playstation 3, PS3, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, Motorstorm, pacific rift, offroad, mutliplayer

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AFK Of The Day - Glev of Bree-Land in Lord of the Rings Online

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:24:41 -0600

And so it was in my journeys that I came upon Glev of Bree-Land, obviously lost and bewildered. Glev, what is wrong? Are you a transplant from the backwaters of Bree-Land visiting the big city of Bree for the first time, transfixed by its fast-lane lifestyles and big city ways? Do you pine for the quiet days beside Lake Redneck, fishing your time away while dreaming of your hot cousin? One can only imagine the difficulties adjusting to civilization and the prospect of marriage outside your extended family.

Or perhaps you, having chosen a lifestyle of adventure, have just realized that entails danger as well and have wet your trousers at the prospect of that now dawning reality. Either way, bathe before going to the Prancing Pony for a pint. Reeking of body odor and urine will reduce your chances with all the ladies, even your cousin.

captainzoli

TorchedThreads

Tags: AFK of the Day, AFK, MMORPG, Fun, humor, Lord of the Rings Online, RPG, MMO, Fantasy

AFK Of The Day - ManPower in Lord of the Rings Online

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:53:45 -0600

Manpower, here you stand, alone and abandoned by the powers that control your destiny, without even the good sense to get out of the street. Yes, the streets of Bree can be tough, but they are even tougher when you stand right in the middle of them, as horse and rider after horse and rider phase through you.

Perhaps next time, you should step to the curb to avoid such indignities, in front of all the fine folks passing by, or perhaps you had just drank too much at the Prancing Pony to notice. Either way, good journey, Manpower, the "AA" meeting is down the hall and to your left.

captainzoli

TorchedThreads

Tags: AFK of the day, Lord of the Rings Online, LOTRO, humor, fun, mmorpg, rpg