Bugs and Glitches from Resort

Getting more into it...

14th day was pretty nice day. Although it was my final day-off from monday - wednesday timeline, it didn't matter so much, 'cause I got hold on my copy of Dead Island (PC)! This was pretty big surprise for me - usually it takes about week from release day for game been posted from UK to Finland.

Taking a ride (backseat) in the Jungle

As I told previous post that I loved this game. Love hasn't faded away at all. Me and my friend had little troubles with voice overs and ended up using Ventrilo at the end from Skype. You can blame the game for not having mute button or disable option for mic. But if you have microphone or headset where you can mute it via hardware, you have no trouble with this - or just unplug the mic.

After saving a guy and getting item reward

Some of you might say that this game is horrendous for all the bugs and glitches. But I think you just have to take it all with some humor. Some situations are just hilarious with good friends and some are there to find out what you can do. I found myself finding some bugs at some points and took screenshots of them.
Well, some of these bugs were kinda annoying and just evil, like the one with items stuck in air and you couldn't take them at all - even if I didn't need them anyways.

Matchmaking in this game works in someways. You can join other peoples games, if they are almost at the same chapter. But one thing the game doesn't show up which is not nice for new players: If the game you are about to join in has a player who has already finished it and started new one with old character. With this there is only one problem (can be routed, but takes time or patience): zombies are at the same level as the player who started the game. So if you are starting the game first time with level one character, you may stomp on zombies you can't kill easily (unless you have stomp skill - you can kick them on ground and smash the heads, one hit kills - but for that you need more then 4 levels to get the skill). You can hide or go with the higher level guy, but must be really careful, even if you don't lose as much of cash as at higher levels and with more zombies around you.

Oh yeah, one well known problem is on console (on PC too, but not as radical): save games. Sometimes they get deleted for no reason. My friend accidentally got this problem on (or so I believe) after some sort of glitch. He did join the game with different character with no problem, but his high level character data was almost wiped out. He started new game with same character and got some of his levels back as his skill points, but weapons and items were gone. I believe this is low chance to happen to anybody, but still the chances are too high.

But if you aren't that worried about funny bugs, glitches and other stuff and want some good time killing zombies, I recommend playing with friends who have same level character(s) as you do.

And lucky enough, even Australians can play this!

There is already newest patches for PS3 and Xbox 360, but not for PC version. It has been patched at the time of release, but after that they have only been working on next one. I can wait for the patch, but it better be coming soon before I'm starting to finish the game with other three main character.

Randomism - Little changes

Little thinking and consideration, I'm going to shorten the title and slogan of this blog. At the start of the blog, I had my doubt about the title (or header) what it should say, because my hobbies can go quite different ways and interests are quite vast, it's kind of hard to think fitting title. And I have yet to use humor in my blog, I'm going to let that go...I ain't no comedian on internet.

As the beginning I was trying to make something that is abbreviation or word "efin" in a way (I like to use my username on anything, like in my old website), but in a long run it kind of failed to my opinion. Couple words fits; I like experience everything that seems to be in point that falls in my category of interested or want to find more about the subject or object. Fandomism is the word I was struggling with a bit. In some way I hate talking about things I'm fan of, but in the end, I have no other subjects to write of.

Slogan was the hardest which was kinda odd for I like to play with words, so this is one thing I have to rethink again in the future.

Games, platforms and communes

PC gamers know very well about Valve's Steam and EA's Origin, game community and gaming platforms. Although Origin is pretty new as gaming platform, it still has the same purpose as Steam. There are several other platforms, like Xfire and Windows Live. Many PC gamers use them to show friends what games they are playing at the time or have been playing in general and same time they are able to communicate with each other. Some platforms show unlocked achievements and some are just for the gameplay.

Steam and Origin logos

I have been using Steam from 2009 when I got Left 4 Dead 2. I didn't know what to expect from this platform, but it ran quite easily. After some time, there were problems with downloading updates that didn't come in as easily as they should have. And there were some little issues with the interface.

Like Steam, Xfire is one quite popular platform too. At the time I registered using their program back in 2007 they didn't have game store, but as times go by, they are getting along with every platform. At first it was pretty nice to use it to keep tracking friends to join their gameplay sessions, if they were playing online games, like Maple Story long time ago. Using this program had little issues, like using custom skins with different feature windows. Sometimes they worked correctly and sometimes not at all. And now as they have updated their software, to my opinion they have WAY too many different features which can be opened with different hotkeys. I had little trouble with this, but now that I only use the program to track my game statistics, I don't have to use the hotkeys so much.

I like these platforms for the sole purpose to statistics tracking and friend tracking, it's more easier to join games nowadays without asking for IP address of a server etc.. And without doubt, the most best thing is no CD/DVD usage (Steam and Origin). After installing the game, you can put the case back to shelf and play never opening the case anymore. Even if there is some games discs that has DRM system with them. I don't mind myself that much, but in the long run it's more of annoying.


Even if they are popular, there are things people don't like or just hate.
Steam had its own problems, customer service (responsing to customers and resolving) and use of program, etc.. I have to admit that I don't really care about these things (too optimistic if you ask why), as long they are resolved within couple months and isn't affected to my gameplay, but still it's not nice to let customers wait.

Origin is another platform I have used, not for long though. As I got into Battlefield 3 alpha test, I had to download this platform in order to install game. It was no problem for me as I wanted to test it out anyways. There was one idiotic way to start the game, but I'll reveal that later (so I don't have any chances to get banned from the beta test period, EA is that strict).

Comics and Kimonos Part 2

Part one covered my love for anime, this part will cover second type of art: manga, which I'm kind fond of these days. I have always wanted to have quite big collection of manga in my bookshelf, but in a long run it takes quite a lot of money, and waiting for new is always something I curse (publishers deadlines for upcoming releases etc.). I had over 100 mangas, but now I may have less; got rid of finnish releases which I bought few years back because they were too easy to get and little cheap and I have gotten used to reading english translated comics basicly. And there are so many odd translations if compared to original text, or they just don't fit in at all.

At this moment I should have nearly the amount of copies of manga I had back then (or slighty over). And more is coming as I'm writing this.

Like with anime, I do have favourites among manga. The most liked series are Berserk and Claymore (their anime counterparts are nothing like them). Many of those who have read them at least one book or few pages, knows that these are very much alike. Blood, Gore, Horror and little thrill, big swords and bigger enemies. And the characters get in real troubles, not like in mangas for teenagers, where characters just hit in the head and keep saying "get stronger" or whatnot.

Other series I have which I like too are Fairy Tail, Samurai Deeper Kyo, Togari and Dragon Sisters! Well, after 20 volumes of Samurai Deeper Kyo, the story is just barely keeping up. Substory after substory, event after event they just keep adding more of these, never really explaining why and how. First 5-6 volumes were just fine with everybody looking out if Kyo, the main character might have been the guy who slaughtered hundreds or people at some point, but now it's more like their friendship...why?
Fairy Tail in this manner is handled little different and little better to my opinion, even if it relies more and more to some class as Dragon Ball with character development. As I am little fan with Koei's games, Dragon Sisters! rely on the story of The Three Kingdoms (with little twist) is quite funny, but yet again, I haven't read much to tell more about it. Same with Togari.

Artwork is pretty stunning - beware of the revealing stuff though

There is one another awesome serie, in anime and manga: Highschool of the Dead. Schoolgirls with...*ahem*, guns and zombies, you can't go wrong. And the art style, just breath taking to my opinion. Anime with same art style speeks for the serie itself.

Having fun at resort with Zombies

I got hold of Dead Island little earlier than I expected. Order depatched from UK 7.9 and I got it 14.9. Unlike with Deus Ex Human Revolution what took over a week to get in for some reason.
It was quite surprising moment, when it was dropped from my letterbox. First I thought my cat Maju had done something "nice" again, but lucky enough, it was one nicely brown letterbox.

Installation and other stuff went as usual, no problems. Before I called one of my IRC/Steam pal to play the game with, I went ahead and checked the gameplay and how the game looked graphically. I had little trouble with mouse sensitivity but got it working in no time. Game itself looked pretty nice, but some effects with random objects, like beach ball, were off. And you could not even kick chairs or anything else really...well, you can kick zombies, but nothing else. But every else works pretty well.

And after my friend got in the game and after few minutes we ran into sound problems. Because Dead Island isn't directly a Steam game, it (presumed after we both tried to change Steams voice setting to push-to-talk) uses its own voice over. My friend didn't like it as much, but I didn't care. Then we tried voice over with Skype, but ran problems with echo. I don't remember what settings and stuff my friend tried, but after while I remembered that my webcam - which I bought few months ago - had build-in mic. Disabled it, but problem still existed. That took about half an hour or whole hour. Then we tried Ventrilo, but problem existed still, but we had enough and started playing even if the sounds were echoing.

And because we played this on co-op, I don't really know what is it like in single player. I believe it may be pretty hard with all the zombies, but some of you may still beat it. Still I would recommend to play with friends.

Otherwise I'd say, this is damn good game and recommend playing with friends. Graphics may differ a bit regarding your computer specs, but if you have pretty high end, you should have no problems. With medium end computers you may wanna tweet couple settings.

I have only played this for about half a day, so I don't know too much yet. But as this is possible to play in multiplayer, I'll propably end it before Deus Ex - yes, I haven't played it through yet either.

Random Video Glance Vol1

It's funny to think about, when somebody (familiar face or random guy) posts a link in IRC channel and it's Youtube link. And after seeing what is that all about, you see some random video; funny, awesome or just odd/bizarre. Mostly they are hilarious or awesome stuff that people want to share with others. And yes, sometimes something from the wonderful land of Japan. Some think japanese youtube videos are odd or bizarre, but to me they are normal, as I have seen and heard lots of things so I'm kind of used to it.

But now I'm going to tease YOU with these clips! Mwah!

From Youtube:
First video what comes to mind is Portal: No Escape. This is a short film which is...you guessed, based on hit game, Portal

Second video is from Kaskade and Deadmau5 - Move on me
I had to find the original song, because one flash animation, Rina-chan and the Brawl Boyz had couple minutes of this song added to it

And the third flick is from Afroman. One anime music video had like few seconds of his song "Because I Got High", with Welcome to NHK clip in it

 More will come up, but for now, take some rest from the nice and funny flick for now...

For Stable versions!

As I have mentioned in my Miners ahoy! randomism post I play Minecraft once a week/two weeks/month, but now that there are more people nowdays (I'm amazed myself, but my server is only runned by simpleserver, with few simple mods) I'm starting to get interested to play it again.
And with 1.8 version coming up (well, it's pre-released, but not stable), lots of people are excited and waiting eagerly.

As I tried to load the minecraft.net

This reminds as I was trying to check minecrafts website at morning, but had this odd page thrown at me. I don't remember that the text said, but it was pretty weird, and in the right of my browser was login section. Tried couple times after that and now that I tried again, I had no permissions. Luckily Notch's (creator of MC, IF you didn't have any clues...) twitted "...we ran a huge query on the database, and minecraft.net is suffering now...". At this point I knew I was about right on my first suggest for what has happened. Some people are just little bit too excited about the 1.8 update to fail the site. And because of this I blame YOU! Nah, just kidding...or am I?

One of my friends asked me, if I have updated my MC server to this 1.8v. I would like to update it to newest version, but there is no rush for me. And I don't even like to update something, which isn't even stable yet. There might no be any harm to me or to my server (well, it might crash for some big unseen bug, but thats highly unlike), but I don't see any reason to do this yet.

I have newer really wanted to use beta version of programs (games on beta test are different thing, because I love to test them, when really my testing is...not really testing...heh) for I don't like to wait for patches or fixes for bugs, because I want to use programs with their full potential when they are updated to stable versions. And if I'm using unstable programs on my server that my friends use daily or weekly, it's pretty much MUST to have stable version for not to have messages from people coming in, like in example"why is this" or "fix this nao!"

How would you feel, if this blogspot site was under beta version, and you could not use one or two features which should be working?

Comics and Kimonos Part 1

It was around year 2000 when I first started watching animation with realizing that it was actually anime and it was from Japan. I have already seen some anime in the past, like Silver Fang: Shooting Star (Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin) and Crimson Pig (Porco Rosso). And of course those series shown on local channel, like Pokemon and Digimon etc.


First series I ever watched around that year were Excel Saga and Detective Loki (Matantei Loki Ragnarok) with my big brother. Third series was Star Ocean EX which was too romantic and dramatic for me, so I only remember about 2 scenes. Fourth and final serie after I got into the japanese animation was Puni Puni Poemi, from same creators as Excel Saga.

After these series I didn't have much chance to see more of them. Most notable series from local channels in between 2003 and 2006 were Dragon Ball Z (with english dub) and Magic Knight Rayearth. DBZ was kind of fun to watch and I even ran after school to home, because it was shown as soon as my last classes were finished. Oh the times...

My friends told me once that local channel called Subtv, showed Sailor Moon...with swedish dub. Luckily I didn't see that, but still to this day it sounds almost like horrible dream.

But now that I have "grown" with anime, I have seen more series and movies, even the newer ones. It was pretty difficult to buy or even get anime in Finland at my age. If you had even Visa Electron card, you could only do purchases at local stores and some webstores that accepted the card. But now as Electron is read as Visa at someplaces, it's too easy to get your money blown to bits.

If you are interested to see, what series I have watched and am watching at the time, belove is a link for Finnish site, but directly to the list. Some of the names may be translated to finnish, but maybe Google translator can help you out...heh.
http://www.animewatcher.net/user/65/anime (in Finnish)

Manga list will be shown on Part 2

Randomism - Stealth, RPG and FPS

You can get more than you think. Yes, I finally got my share of newest Deus Ex Human Revolution Augmented Edition (item packs, artbook and other stuff). And because I got it yesterday, I haven't played it so much yet. Steam showed over 5 hours of play time, but I had to put it on hold for lunch break though. Luckily it didn't need that much power as I believed, as my selfbuild PC run it quite smoothly

I'll post more info about the game, when I have gotten more throughout the plot, or half of it. And now as I play Deus Ex, same time should go waiting for upcoming Dead Island, which is in preorder too. Waiting for co-op sessions...!

Movies: Conan the Barbarian 3D

I have been wanting to make reviews on movies for too long, and now I'm getting tired of this wait, so here we go with my first one.

First movie to get attention is Conan the Barbarian. Me and my friend went to see this movie at Friday (2.9) late evening. We anticipated, that this wouldn't be as  awesome movie as the first Conan was and we even thought the second Conan movie was better than this.

The tale of Conan the Cimmerian and his adventures across the continent of Hyboria on a quest to avenge the murder of his father and the slaughter of his village

From IMdb

Our tickets

As I don't want to and too lazy to write plot in my own way (may change, you never know), copied one from IMdb.

But as you can see, it's the same plot from the original with little changes, like no wheels to push and growing to adult with it. And the evil guy who is behind this all, is just ordinary man with excellent warrior skills (with no abilities to turn into snake).
Violence and the naked women thought didn't change, they were kinda expected to be there, otherwise it wouldn't be the Conan film we wanted it to be.

But I think it was pretty good action flick, for having fight scenes and feasts and of course the women. But for it to be good Conan film, it sucked pretty hard. There were not enough masculinity, too many jokes on Conan characters part. It just didn't seem quite right. Even in IMdb ratings (4.5.2011, afternoon) were 5.3/10.

One more plus point I'm going to give: Jason Momoa, does pretty good job as Conan, even if anybody cannot surpass Arnold Schwarzenegger.

With this all, I'm going to give little higher points: 6/10
Nice action flick, but not enough to deserve name Conan