Honest geek reviews of geek media and geek products by a 30+ year old geek.

Got my first Fallout Mystery Mini!

2015-10-12T15:19:00.001+02:00

I got the Male Vault Dweller figurine.

To be honest I was hoping for a Brotherhood of Steel power armor one but I am very happy with this one as well.

The detail is decent and I like the quality of the paint job. I didn’t notice and areas with paint from one area sneaking onto a surface it was not meant to be on.
The only design/manufacturing fault I saw in this figurine were these:

Yes, apparently my Male Vault Dweller had scars running on each side of his face all the way up his ears (and possibly under the hair). My guess is he crossed some Tunnel Snakes in his youth and they gave him those scars as a lesson.

More pics of the figure below.
I got my Fallout Mystery Mini at GameStop for $6.95+tax

Fallout Mystery Minis coming in September

2015-07-20T02:41:00.001+02:00

Anyone else excited about the Fallout Mystery Minis coming in September? I think you’d be able to get these at Game Stop and Walmart among other places.

My bedroom smells like Apple Cobbler

2015-07-20T02:36:00.001+02:00

Awesome gift from the wife! Makes me want to play some Brutal Legend and listen to power metal.

Entire bedroom smells amazing.

Trivia Box–The Big Bang Theory

2015-07-20T01:07:00.001+02:00

Just pictures. I liked the design of the box and the card design so I thought I’d share some pictures on the site.

The box opens on the top.

Back design on the back of the trivia cards.

Character cards.

Front and back of a character card.

Awesome set well worth the money like here on Amazon for just a little over $10 .

Thanks to my amazing wife for spoiling me

Batman: Arkham Asylum

2015-07-05T19:24:00.001+02:00

Let me begin by saying that this review is written from a perspective of a comic book version of “Batman geek”. I like the new movies but I’ve always enjoyed the “Detective Batman” a lot more than super martial artists champion, almost super hero strength Batman. Why? Because the villains are NOT a sad caricature of themselves!

The villains in Batman Arkham Asylum were so two dimensional that the Batman Universe background info you collected seemed more interesting to me than the story of this game. I will finish it someday but for now I’m stuck right after taking care of Poison Ivy.

The best thing about this game in my opinion? The fantastic performance by brilliant voice actor (and actor who played Luke Skywalker, applaud kids )Mark Hamill, my FAVORITE Joker by far better than the movie Jokers!

For Japan Geeks

2015-06-22T23:35:00.001+02:00

Japanese candy bars, the taste was like Oreos in good chocolate. Cruncy and chocolatey.

Also in the package arrived a “Roast snack”. This was like a pork jerky with slight tariyaki aftertaste. I enjoyed it.

2015-05-22T01:17:00.001+02:00

Mighty Switch Force!

2014-11-13T01:17:00.001+01:00

"Mighty Switch Force Logo" by
http://www.wayforward.com/games/.
Licensed under Fair use of
copyrighted material in the context
of Mighty Switch Force via Wikipedia - Original Link

Prepare to strap on the shoes of Patricia Wagon, an anime inspired heroin attempting to gather and put away many hot, cute girls who escaped from your custody.

This game has some pretty decent platforming elements. You can control the environment making panels appear (or disappear), you have your classics like jump and shoot although I didn't have much use for shooting in this game. It feels a bit like a forced gameplay element that was not meant to be in a game but only added before release with some crappy, super easy enemies so it would seem like there is more content.

The game is cute and you can tell it was inspired by anime and manga and otaku culture in general. This is definitely a casual platformer but sometimes when I only have a minute or two to do a level it really works out well for me.

Mighty Switch Force! is on sale now on the Nintendo 3DS e-shop for $5.99 (click here to see more).
Cute and fun game with platforming elements simple enough to keep someone new to platformers occupied and difficult enough to give a decent challenge to more experienced platformer players.

4.5 cute anime convicts out of 5 for this cheap and casual but very fun title from WayForward (the company that is responsible for the amazing remake of Duck Tales in 2013.

Super Mario 3D Land

2014-11-03T03:37:00.002+01:00

What's with the transparency layer?

So I skipped the entire Super Mario 3D generation of Mario games... until now.

It's true though. I've even skipped Super Mario 64 on N64 back in a day, those games just didn't feel like true Mario games to me. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed 3D platforming for a while now. I remember totally falling in love with Crash Bandicoot on my PlayStation (my guilty pleasure of 3D platforming is the 5th Element game for PS1).

I've just finished a bunch of platformers on my 3DS XL (currently without my gaming PC to play all my Steam games and don't feel like using my wife's) and after completing New Super Mario Bros 2, New Donkey Kong Country 3D I was left still hungry for some more platforming action.

So I was looking on the Nintendo e-shop for a new game in a $50 range and I was kind of torn between Super Mario 3D Land, Paper Mario Sticker Star and Luigi's Mansion. My wife and I decided to get a Wii Mini for ourselves for Christmas and I was curious if I'd enjoy 3D Mario games like Super Mario Galaxy games.

I found out Super Mario 3D Land is an excellent transition game from 2D Mario to 3D Mario games. The levels feel very 2D even though all environments are 3D. It's actually hard to explain. The general game mechanics just feel familiar. You feel like you can aim when jumping platforms naturally even with the third dimension added. The powers like Flower and Tanooki suit are familiar and their usage intuitive.

The game did seem slightly easy until World 7 and I heard World 8 makes up for the easiness of the earlier worlds. I'm curious to find out if that's true since I'm currently on level 1 of World 8. I won't hold the easiness of this game against it though. It could be just me, I'm finding games slightly easier these days. New Super Mario Bros 2 (thank you for the game hun), seemed to be incredibly easy to finish, even when going for a 100% completion.

Super Mario 3D Land is a perfect game for old school Mario fans like myself to get out of our old comfort shell and try a new generation of Mario games.

Super Mario 3D Land is one of the top shelf games recently reduced to $29.99 on the Nintendo
e-shop, so it's not a budget killer either.

4.5 Bowser Jr's out of 5

Waste your life online

2014-06-01T18:42:00.001+02:00

How to waste some of those precious seconds, minutes or even hours of your life online? Hang out at The Useless Web of course!

It will help you find gems such as OMFG DOGS website

Video game commercials.

2014-05-30T15:59:00.001+02:00

I wonder is it just nostalgia talking or were video game commercials in the States a lot more fun in the 90s? Maybe there was not as much actual game footage shown but the commercials actually got you hyped up to play. Sometimes I really miss the 90s.
Here are some N64 commercials as an example:

FIRST PEEK AT EPISODE VII !!!

2014-05-23T00:10:00.001+02:00

WOOOOOOOOT!!!

Glorious Leader!–The video game!

2014-05-15T23:03:00.001+02:00

Just found out about this, a studio called MONEYHORSE will be releasing an old school action platformer about the Kim Jong Un. You get to play as the “Glorious Leader” and it looks like Un’s best buddy Dennis Rodman will be making an appearance in the game as well.
Below you’ll find some footage from the game itself and even below that will be my favorite cartoon show about the glorious leader.
I feel like the novelty of this game would wear out after 5 minutes or so, so they better make it actually fun to play if they hope people will buy it.

Looks funny as hell!

… and here are the promised cartoons:

^__^

… and part 2

Demolition City

2014-05-15T19:01:00.001+02:00

So I discovered a fun browser game today called Demolition City by Joey Betz, produced by Armor Games.
The game is short and sweet and is basically a physics demolition puzzle game. I feel like it’s a one time play but playing a game one time for 10 minutes is better than not playing it.

Online Physics Games

AKIRA Live Action Fan Trailer

2014-05-13T19:35:00.001+02:00

I found this on EpicStream website here.

This looks FANTASTIC! I would LOVE if this got made into a full movie.

Tim Schafer plays DotT

2014-05-13T19:28:00.001+02:00

This is a video of gaming God Tim Schafer playing Day of the Tentacle basically doing commentary on the game.

I’ve recently played Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders on SCUMM VM and the next game I’m planning to play on it was Day of the Tentacle. I was very happy to come across this video on PCGamer website because now I get to listen to and watch what is basically a commentary for the game by Tim Schafer himself before I replay the game.
Ah, nostalgia. Your name is LucasArts Classic Adventures.

Tim Schafer plays DotT

Click on this text for the original PCGamer article.

Nothing some duct tape wouldn’t fix…

2013-08-03T15:02:00.001+02:00

There! It’s fixed! Seriously though, I have fixed my main gaming PC and just in time for the Steam’s Big Summer Sale 2013 too! My old video card HD5770 got upgraded to HD6670 and games look beautiful!

This Summer Sale I got Just Cause 2, System Shock 2 (yeah, about time I finally caught up on this classic), Warhammer 40k Dawn of War II, Shadowrun Returns, FTL (amaaaazing game, especially for an old Trekkie like myself), Dollar Dash (anyone wants to play?), DLC Quest (a very cute although short game) and last but not least – Deus Ex Human Revolution Augmented Edition.

I have a 102 games on Steam at the time of writing this post, 2 on UPlay and at least 10 I own outside of Steam and I have the worst of “First World Problems”, what to play. Currently I’ve decided to play Alan Wake (and American Nightmare) since they were on top of my Steam library list and I must admit that initially I was a little disappointed… but I’ll tell that story in the upcoming review.

Computer Hell

2013-07-03T18:12:00.003+02:00

What a month this has been. First, my main/gaming PC went. First I had a problem with on of the top fans. Exchanged the fan and then for some reason I started messing with the other power supply I had and long story short: all of a sudden there was a small fire on my video card.

I couldn't fix it right away because my wife and I just had to do some major spending but I didn't mind too much because I got to mess around with my MacBook Pro which is still a pretty decent machine and just when I had everything set up perfectly - the graphic chipset on the motherboard went out again. It's a very common problem with this stupid model of this Mac but I just fixed it around Christmas 2012 so I figured it'd take a year or two before it gave out again. No such luck. The service warranty was only for 3 months too.

So now, as I wait for my main/gaming PC to be fixed I'm on my very old LG laptop who I lent to somebody and I got back with so much crapware, adware, malware etc. that I didn't even know where to begin fixing/cleaning it. Word of advice: never go on polish, russian or any eastern european websites. Avoid like the plague, the water is filthy. Even though I speak fluent polish it's been many years since I voluntarily went to ANY polish website.

Anyway, I couldn't even re-install Windows 7 on that machine because the DVD drive wasn't working. I had two choices: 1) Do a crapload of work I didn't feel like doing and re-install windows from a USB drive or 2) Install Linux.

So now I'm running a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and I gotta tell ya, it feels good playing around with it. I tried Linux OSs before including a couple different versions of Ubuntu but only now I really, really got into it. I'm even considering running it as my main OS on my main PC when it comes back from being serviced. Good driver support compared to what it used to be, incredible level of customization and very efficient and fast running.

Anyway, I hope to be properly back on the intertubes soon. Geek on.

Borderlands GoTY

2013-06-14T19:53:00.001+02:00

Ahhh Borderlands. I got some history with this game. I originally got the GoTY edition for the 360 way back when. Since then, I’ve started playing the game 10 times or so. It was always something, didn’t play for a while due to real life obligations and didn’t remember stuff from the beginning, save crashes and corruptions and finally my 360 hard drive died.

Finally I decided to play and finish the game so I got another GoTY copy on Steam and I finally finished it. Now that I’ve finally found the vault on Pandora and finished the main campaign it made me think what the heck took so long. I know I had to restart the game a couple of times due to technical issues but I also remember a couple of times just leaving the game for a while until all of a sudden an urge to play returned. I like the game’s theme, overall design and humor so I did want to play more but I think what put me off with this game were some basic gameplay and interface mechanics that just didn’t work for me.

First of all – the navigation system in this game sucked for me. The tiny compass on the bottom of the screen didn’t work for me due to the fact that a little of areas (especially rust commons where you spend a major part of the campaign) have a lot of canyon passages with dead ends and the navigation system does not work well for helping to navigate you to your quest objective. A small circular compass with a mini map in the top right section of the screen would have done wonders to help navigate a path to the quest objectives.

Speaking of quest objectives, with so many quests you can accept, tracking just ONE AT A TIME was a huge mistake! I often got frustrated because instead of playing and doing something fun I would have to go to my quests screen, choose tracking for each quest and keep switching to the main map back and forth to see where the quest objective in that zone is on the map! This is frustrating cause no one wants to waste time driving back and forth while one of the quests object is right along the way! If the game at least allowed me to track all the quests for the zone I was questing in (Rust Commons East for example) it would have made my life much easier, questing and moving between objectives more fun and less frustrating.

Now, one might argue that while getting lost you would encounter more trash mobs and collect more loot. Well, the trash mobs would just re-spawn after a short time anyway, meaning every time I got lost in an area I would have to fight the same group of bandits over and over again, second the loot was simply putting it – crap! Throughout the game I’ve had in my possession hundreds if not thousands of guns, gadgets, grenade upgrades, etc. and I have used MAYBE 20 of them throughout the main campaign. Usually the upgrades were so nominal I didn’t even bother swapping them out. The upgrade trees for the character talents were the only ones that I actually put any thought to and the choices seemed to affect how my character performed (I finished the game as the Siren named after my wife – JennyChan).

I’ve just recently started playing the DLCs and so far I seem to be enjoying the gameplay aspect of them much better then the main campaign. Again, remember that I enjoyed the theme, stories and humor of the game a lot, it was the gameplay and interface that bugged me. I am currently playing the Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot in which I completed part 1. Incredible adrenaline rush of fast paced challenging and surprising (you never know what upgrades or downgrades you or your enemies will get) gameplay. I’ve also started The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned (not to be confused with Dr. Zed ;p ) and I am really enjoying the overall theme of this expansion. I like all kinds of zombie stuff so I was looking forward to this DLC to begin with and the cool, creepy Halloween style graphic design of the level was just an icing on the cake. Due to simpler level design and amount of quests per zone I am not nearly as frustrated with this DLC as I was playing the main campaign (I had an epiphany here that I mostly got annoyed driving the fast vehicles in game while feeling kind of blind and being forced to switch to the map all the time).

Borderlands GoTY is worth the purchase when it’s on sale even if for just the DLCs because they are really fun. The game seems to be heavy on coop play but due to many features missing in a loot heavy game with strong coop play options like trading and possible auction house purchasing and selling the game fell short where it could have dominated. I own Borderlands 2 and I am looking forward to seeing if a lot of shortcomings and design errors that I’ve found with the original were addressed and corrected in the sequel.

System Shock 2 on Steam

2013-06-14T17:32:00.001+02:00

The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : System Shock 2

For all of us who missed the games that started the Shock series, System Shock 2 is now available on Steam… but is it worth the few bucks it costs to purchase it in this day and age?

Excellent and funny review by Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame, enjoy.

Retro City Rampage

2013-05-30T19:34:00.001+02:00

Retro City Rampage is to video games what Hot Shots was to movies. A parody of many video games and pop culture from the 80s as well as 90s. It doesn’t really feel like a new video game trying to imitate the old school stuff. The level, sound and graphic design of the game, all give a good retro feeling of playing old school games.

The game takes place in a retro sandbox type of environment city (think original GTA games) called Theftropolis. You – “The Player”, play through approximately 50 – 80 levels, depending whether you do the side missions or not. Many levels are set in a classic GTA from the top perspective, a lot of levels however, are almost like little mini-games using gameplay mechanics from many very popular and retro classic video games (the final level made me feel very nostalgic for example).

The game does not take long to finish. This is an indie video game that costs about 10 bucks. You know what though? It’s worth it. I felt like I got lots of entertainment out of this game and although I wish there was a little more I could do after finish the main story line I feel that the main playthrough was worth the game’s price. I doubt people born after 1999 will get nearly as much kick and fun as I did out of this game but I think the game’s designer didn’t have that generation in mind as target audience when designing this.

As of February 28th people who purchased this game for the PC (I have bought it on Steam) got a free update with a different version of the game called ROM City Rampage. This version shows exactly what this game would have looked like if it was released for the original NES. I think in a year or so I might go back to RCR to play that mode just to see what it was about

Getting married! <3

2012-05-21T15:08:00.001+02:00

by: QUIK

Yup folks, it’s true. Ol’ Quikhax is getting married to my awesome geeky fiancee. I’m letting anyone who follows this blog know that’s been kind of the reason why The Quikhax Show and this blog have been neglected for a bit, anyone who gets married will know how much planning, paperwork and many other thing go into such an enterprise so thank you for your patience and understanding. Until I have time again to pick up my geeky projects: “ Live long and prosper”.

Tenacious D - Rize of the Fenix

2012-05-21T15:03:00.001+02:00

Review by: QUIK

The D is back and their come back might be their best album yet! After the bomb album “Pick of Destiny” as they refer to it themselves in Rize of the Fenix, Tenacious D took four years to go back to their roots and release this album which reminds us of their sound from their original self titled album “Tenacious D”. I’ve been listening to this one for a couple of days now non-stop and it doesn’t sound like I will stop listening to it any time soon. “To be the best” track should soon be a theme song to a Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon style show and “Roadie” makes me want to play Brutal Legend again. I highly recommend picking this one up folks. Long live The D !

Gears of War

2012-03-09T19:26:00.001+01:00

Review by: QUIK

I had Gears of War since I got my Xbox 360 and I began playing it many times. Somehow I always managed to stop playing though and I could never finish it because next time I’d start playing I would start from the beginning. Finally, a few days ago I decided to give this game last and final chance… and I was fairly amazed why I never finished it before.
I think that playing Dead Space helped me to enjoy GoW. I learned to appreciate the style of gameplay present in both Dead Space and Gears and now I began to really enjoy it.
I really enjoyed the story although the premise is beginning to get slightly stale. You know the type, enemy X is attacking the Earth / humanity and one tough badass is it’s last hope. The voice acting is pretty great and I was surprised that John Di Maggio was the voice of Fenix. I could have sworn Peter Cullen voiced that character.
If you like Dead Space style of gameplay and Halo type of story Gears of War is definitely worthy of a purchase, especially since because of it’s age it should be extremely cheap wherever you buy it. I am actually kind of looking forward to playing Gears of War 2.

Quikhax Show–Episode 8

2012-03-09T19:07:00.001+01:00

by: QUIK

New episode!