judyonthenet

Video games and related goods purchased:
…

Well, that’s a first, huh? Last month was close, but I really did it this time. There’s nothing that’s coming out that catches my fancy, and watching the balance of my personal accounts slowly decrease turns me off from spending as well. We’ll see if I can avoid the temptation of the new Dragon Age: Origins expansion, Awakening, that comes out this month.

Games I beat:
Mass Effect (PC)
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3)

I already posted my impressions on Uncharted. I was going to do something similar for Mass Effect, but for some strange reason, all my screencaps from the last half of the game never saved to disk. Not sure what happened, but I’ve double-checked all my key bindings, and Fraps seems to work just fine now. Maybe I’ll play it again and get screenshots through a later playthrough (unlikely). For now, I’ll just say Mass Effect was alright. And that Kaidan isn’t the hotness that is Alistair.

I’m enjoying Uncharted 2. So far, it seems like they have fixed some of the things I bitched about (i.e. Nate actually opened a door without using his foot). Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t be playing it tonight due to some critical PS3-paralyzing clock bug nonsense. Nothing seemed to break too horribly last night (thankfully, Uncharted isn’t one of those games where you have to make your own saves often), so hopefully the bug hasn’t affect any of my data. I was wondering what was up with the 12/31/1999 timestamps and messed up clock.

New thing I learned today: There are several products actually called Omni-gel, including a photo transfer gel and a dental therapeutic gel.

Couldn’t find any that hacks electronic locks, though.

I didn’t realize any stores in this day and age only accept gift cards in-store and not on their website, but that’s what I get for not reading descriptions/fine print carefully and assuming a major retailer knows what decade we’re in.

Our apartment is in dire need of chairmats because our chairs are pulling fuzz bulls from the carpet our computer area. I have tons of points from my credit card, so I used it on a $100 gift card to Staples to purchase such chairmats. Chairmats, btw, are freaking expensive, so I bought a $25 off $75 online coupon off eBay for a couple bucks. I clicked referral links, applied for a Staples rewards card, and got ready to order my chairmat when I discovered there’s no place to put the gift card number under payment information. I looked in the FAQs, no info. At the Staples gift card page, you can check the balance online and buy gift cards no problem. I looked at the fine print on the card and it doesn’t say you can’t use it online… oh wait. “May be used only in Staples U.S. retail stores.”

I guess that means you can’t use it online? How can that be? In disbelief, I googled and found I’m not the first to find issue in this.

Why Can’t I Use Staples Gift Cards On Staples.com?
Staples Gift Card – that was easy
Staples.com Gift Cards Not Usable

But those were a while ago, so maybe they’ve fixed things by now? I called customer service. Maybe I could order with credit card, and then they could apply the gift card over the phone? Or maybe I could do an in-store delivery and pay with gift card there. In the past at other retailers, any features lacking on the website could be done over the phone through customer service. I called the number of the card. I’m guessing they get this sort of confusion a lot, because all the lady on the phone would tell me is that online doesn’t take gift cards and to call some number to complain. Any other question or suggestion resulted in the same repeated answer (and me getting increasingly pissy). Completely unhelpful.

I went back online to see if I could find which stores carry the chairmats I want. Looking at the website: “Delivery only.” *sigh* They have a chat customer service thing, so I used it to ask if there’s any way I can buy this damn chairmat with my gift card. Thankfully, this chat person was significantly more helpful and told me I can go an in-store kiosk and order the chairmat through them. I called the nearest store to verify this is true, and it is. I could even use my online coupon.

So, I did what the guy told me, and as it turns out, you CAN use gift cards for online orders… you just have to do your online order in an actual store. It makes NO sense. The “kiosk” is a desk with a computer on it, and you go through the exact same steps as you would ordering from your home computer. It’s the same website and everything. The only difference is that there’s an extra option to pay at the register. It takes online coupons and will ship directly to your home, just like it would if you ordered at home. When you finish your order, you get a print-out you take to the checkout register and pay there, with credit card, cash, or *dun dun dun* gift card. Service folks in store were nice and helpful, but I’m still overall miffed at Staples’ backwards attempt at getting people in their stores.

I couldn’t help but chuckle as I left the store reading the top of my receipt, which said “that was easy”.

Considering people have been complaining about this to them for years and I don’t know of a single store that still has this archaic gift card practice, Staples obviously doesn’t give a crap about making things easy, regardless of what their stupid button tries to tell me on TV. Outside of freebie gift cards, I’ll stick to Office Depot or Office Max for my future office supply needs. I can’t tell these stores apart anyway.

New thing I learned today: Staples is the world’s largest office supply retail chain. Also, Staples was going to merge with Office Depot in 1996, but the FTC wouldn’t allow it because of the potential for a monopoly.

I wonder if Staples and Office Depot had merged, if the new office supply supermonster would accept gift cards online. (Office Depot and OfficeMax both accept gift cards online.)

Video games and related goods purchased:
X-COM: Complete Pack (PC) – $2.00 from Steam
Total: $2.00

Almost got through the month without buying anything, but then Steam had to have an X-COM deal in the middle of the last week of January. The complete pack has X-COM: UFO Defense, X-COM: Terror from the Deep, X-COM: Apocalypse, X-COM: Interceptor, and X-COM: Enforcer. The first two games are considered classics, while I’ve never even heard of the last three. I own a physical copy of Terror from the Deep (probably sitting in a box in a closet somewhere in my mom’s house), but $2 for easy access to all five games seemed worth it. I never beat Terror from the Deep because that game is frickin’ hard. I’m hoping when I give it another shot or maybe play UFO Defense first, I’ll have an easier time.

Games I beat:
…

Along with not doing much game shopping, I haven’t done much playing either. I got some TF2 playing in, and for a couple days, I was devoted to Mass Effect. I had hoped to beat Mass Effect in time for the release of Mass Effect 2, but I got distracted with birthdays, Vegas, and our relocation. No biggie; I wasn’t all that interested in Mass Effect 2 anyway and will wait for a deal on it. In the meantime, I should be able to beat Mass Effect in February.

New thing I learned today: Though X-COM: Interceptor was released after X-COM: Apocalypse, Interceptor is set chronologically before Apocalypse.

I just came to the realization that I have to go back to all my old video game tab posts and add the year to the titles. I guess I don’t really think of things over a year in advance.

Video games and related goods purchased:
Metroid Prime Trilogy (Wii) – $11.84 from Best Buy ($21.84 minus $10 Best Buy credit)
Final Fantasy IV (DS) – $9.78 from Amazon
Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter – Extremely late wedding gift from Eubin
1600 Xbox Live pts – Won from some Doritos texting promotion
Total: $21.62

I found a $10 Best Buy gift card in my purse, and I have no idea where I got it from. Did someone give it to me? Did I get it from doing a survey? Was it from a sale? *shrug* I’m just stoked I only paid $12 to get all three Metroid Prime games in a nice shiny tin.

The Live points were from a Doritos promotion where you text a message to a number, and it texts back a redeemable code. I did the texting back in November, but our router stopped liking our hacky way of wirelessly connecting our 360, so we were offline and I never put in the code. Our 360 is online again thanks to Eubin (who actually bought the adapter for us the March before our wedding, lol), but it turns out you can redeem codes using any browser at the Xbox webpage. Reading the threads online, the winnings seems to range from 100 to 1600 points, with most people getting 100 or 200 points. So it seems I scored the jackpot, woohoo!

Looking back on my posts, I’ve noticed I didn’t document my Xbox Live purchases very well, even though I recorded all the times I purchased Xbox Live point cards. For example, in August, I bought Marvel vs. Capcom 2 through Xbox Live, but it’s not in the tab for the month. Ah well, maybe I’ll be better about it next this year. After the Endless Setlist, I got an itching for more songs, so I bought around 10 songs. This was before I even put in that Doritos code; I have sooo many Live points from all the deals this last year. Notable additions to my song collection include “New” by No Doubt (the only song mysteriously missing from the No Doubt singles album DLC), “Gay Bar” by Electric Six (I know it’s old, but Kelvin only just showed it to me last month and it was stuck in my head), and “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey (damn you Glee!).

Games I beat:
Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS)

Okay, I kind of cheated this month the same way I cheated last month… I beat this game right before 2AM on New Year’s Day. Aside from early month ambitions to finish Mass Effect (hah, I’m not even a Spectre yet), I didn’t plan on beating any games this month. However, a couple days ago while I was upgrading my computer to Windows 7 (which is running awesome, btw), I picked up Mario & Luigi 3 again. I looked up the FAQ for the game and saw that I was almost at the final area, so I decided that moment that would be my game for the month and final beaten game for the year. Spent most of that evening, yesterday, and all of today playing it. Last section was A LOT longer than I anticipated, especially since it took me an hour to figure out what the trick to the final boss was. And an hour after I figured it out, I died, so I had to do it over again. And the 3-hour TF2 distraction yesterday probably didn’t help either. So I barely beat the game before 2010… in Hawaii time. That counts, right?

I tried to beat this game in October, but I lost interest. Not sure what happened this time around, but I regained interest enough to finish it, and I don’t think it was just because I was close to the end. I wasted some time doing optional things, so I must have gotten over the drab environments, which is still a major complaint for me. Most of the last section doesn’t involve running around Bowser’s boring insides.

Playing as Bowser was the best thing about playing this game. Seeing things through his point of view and watching him interact with others, especially his minions, make it easy to see why he’s a king despite him being a dense fire-breathing blockhead. I hope they make more games with Bowser as the main character.

New thing I learned today: “Koopa”, Bowser’s Japanese name, is derived from the Korean dish gukpab, which is a rice soup.

Before we even get started, I just wanted to mention this was a bad month…
Video games and other gaming related purchases:
Mass Effect (PC) – $9.99 from Steam
Dragon Age: Origins (PC) – $39.99 from Amazon
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (360) – $59.99 from Amazon (comes with $20 Amazon video game credit)
Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) – $21.84 from Gamestop.com
Borderlands (PC) x 2 – $19.98 from Amazon ($19.99 each for two copies, minus the above mentioned $20 video game credit)
Left 4 Dead 2 (PC) x 2 – $59.98 from Amazon
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) – $38.00 from Amazon (after 5% Gold Box discount)
Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3) – $26.99 from Amazon (comes with $20 Amazon PSN store credit)
Rhythm Heaven (DS) – $9.98 from Amazon
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (PSP) – $14.98 from Amazon
Total: $323.56

Black Friday was brutal. More specifically, Amazon’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Sunday/whatever was brutal. There was some decent deals over several brick & mortar stores, and Amazon kept matching all of those deals. With free 2-day shipping (from Prime), no tax, 3% points on my Amazon card, awesome customer service, and the convenience of shopping at my computer, Amazon is pretty much always my preferred store. Every time Amazon matched a deal on a game I was even a little bit interested in, I couldn’t help myself and would bite. Ugh, need to get a job soon.

I’ve been seeing my Steam friends play lots of Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2, so I had been waiting for deals on those. I had told myself I wasn’t going to get L4D2, because I was one of those people who thought Valve was milking us by having a sequel so soon after the first one. I also wasn’t going to get Borderlands since I heard the online multiplayer was still wonky. And now I have both. Two copies each. Sigh. I can’t even explain it to myself, so I doubt I can explain it in words here.

I heard a lot of good things about Uncharted, but I wasn’t impressed with the demo when I tried it a while back. Then Uncharted 2 got nonstop raves to the point where Kelvin was showing interest in playing it. I’m the type a person that won’t play a sequel until I played the games before, so I was iffy on getting Uncharted 2 without finding an decent priced copy of Uncharted 1, preferably without the Greatest Hits logo (cuz I’m one of those anal retentive collectors). But then Uncharted 2 went on sale AND was in my Gold Box, so I bit. I needed to find a deal on Uncharted 1 ASAP, and the PSN deal was pretty decent since I had been planning to get Flower for a while anyway. So yeah, I bit on the first Uncharted as well, even though it’s Greatest Hits. I’m gonna try and swap for a non-Greatest Hits copy if I can find one at a local store; if I can’t, well, at least the PS3 Greatest Hits design is pretty non-offensive.

Rhythm Heaven is a game I’ve wanted for a while, but eventually decided to wait until it hit a $10 price point, which it did this weekend. Valkyria Chronicles and Persona were impulse buys because of their prices. I’ve heard good things about Valkyria Chronicles from my friends who own it already, plus I like strategy RPGs. Persona, I’ve been curious about the series since Persona 3 & 4 are highly-reviewed, and to have it on a portable platform makes it very appealing to me.

The first 3 games in my list are impulse buys from my return from Hawaii (and 8-day withdrawal from gaming). I probably should have waited on Mass Effect for a deal on the hard copy, since I went straight into the black hole of my universe that is Dragon Age: Origins as soon as I got it. Loved the first Modern Warfare, so I bought the second one in case I needed a break from all the the RPG-ness of my current PC gaming. I hear that game is doing okay in sales.

Infinity Ward? More like Infinity Money!

Games I beat:
Dragon Age: Origins (PC)

So, technically, I did not beat this game in November. I beat it at around 2AM on December 1st, but I was trying really, really hard to beat it within November. But DAMN those loading times towards the end of the game! I wonder if I had some memory leak or something, because the game crashed right after the ending and I didn’t get to see the credits.

According to my save file, I clocked a touch over 78 hours, but I don’t know if that includes all the reloads. I imagine the actual time spent is somewhere over 80 hours. My blog is also indicative of how much of a life sink this game was: there’s only one post in between this month’s and last month’s video game tab… and it was about Dragon Age. I’m glad it’s FINALLY over. I like long games, but man, this one was a bit rough with the length. It’s not open-world, so the slow travel times coupled with some of the loading times made it tedious at times. I bitch about this, but overall, it was a really good game. It reaffirmed to me that Western RPGs are probably my favorite video game genre. I’m SO looking forward to a sequel, and this game seems very likely to have one.

I’m also glad it wasn’t as addicting to me like Fallout 3 was, so I can stop, REALLY stop, and do more productive things. I doubt I’m going to be doing another playthrough anytime soon. Actually, I take that back. In the ending I got, I didn’t get to live happily ever after with my favorite boy-toy, Alistair, so I might go back through the last fifth of the game to see if I can remedy that. I <3 Alistair.

Is it really weird of me to be excited about playing Uncharted 2 because Alistair and Morrigan (well, their voice actors) are in the game?

New thing I learned today: Poultices are soft, mushy masses that are spread on cloth over wounded skin. The word is derived from the Latin word for porridge.

In Dragon Age, poultices look like potions, so I always assumed you drink poultices, not wipe them on you.