The Weekly Cat Nip

It wasn’t long ago, only about 9 months, that I became inspired by the Gamebreaker.tv network and thought to myself that if I could become a part of this network it would be a real opportunity for me to bring media and my love of video games into a professional part of my life.

Back then I never would have believed that in less than a year I would have the opportunity to produce and co-host a new console related show for them and I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity. It’s every gamer’s dream to grow up and be a voice for the community and I really hope that this is the start of bigger and greater things.

Starting tomorrow, Monday’s at 2pm PST you can now catch me at my new home on GBTV hosting a show called Xbox Unlocked talking about, what else, Xbox related news and game speculation. So please come and support a great network and I hope to grow into the hearts of gamers everywhere. And be on the lookout for another show coming soon that is PS3 related!

Jul 04

Jun 27

Firelands, Uncharted, and Gundam oh my!

What’s up guys, yet again another week gone by and it went by super quick. Had some awesome lunch on Tuesday with Gary Gannon from Gamebreaker.tv and can only hope that connection leads into something bigger and better down the road. He run’s this amazing website that streams talk shows about MMO’s and video games, so of course it was an awesome lunch.
Not much else happened the rest of the week, I had returned to a new work demand of hitting 50+ videos in 1 week, as opposed to the 35 previously, and due to this increase in weekly quota the gaming team unfortunately wasn’t able to make any really awesome special videos and didn’t really get an opportunity to play anything besides quick games.
But needless to say, this next week that is coming up is going to be HUGE! I’ve go so much on my plate come Tuesday that I don’t know where I am going to start. The super big new raid on WoW is released which I regretably wont get to raid on Tuesday because I am going to an early showing of Transformers 3. But I guess that isn’t all bad and my guild will still be there on Wednesday.
Also on Tuesday the Uncharted 3 multiplayer beta is released and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. This game series has been a HUGE success and it’s super exciting to see where the innovations into its competition are going to be. I’m really excited and be sure to look for us on Tuesday the moment this goes live!
The final thing I will be dealing with on Tuesday is the new Dynasty Warrior Gundam which as a major Gundam Wing fan I’m excited for, but knowing that Dynasty Warrior has sucked lately I’m concerned. But as long as I get to play as Wing Zero at some point I won’t care.
So that’s it, I know, really short blog, but this new system we are on really doesn’t give us much to talk about on a weekly basis. I’m sure there are big and amazing things coming, like a 24 hour streaming channel, but that’s about all the details I can give out. Until next week gamers!

Jun 20

Father’s Day in the Midwest

Greetings gamers and MMO lovers from good ol IL in the Midwest. It was a very short week for me in sunny SoCal as I prepped to return to my roots and come home to the Midwest to celebrate the birth of my mother and say thank you to my father on Father’s Day. The flight went off without delay and I have been enjoying the grace of my family since Friday, which is always nice since I have been the farthest sibling from home since 2006.

My parents moved into a beautiful new log cabin with its very own lake and over 4 acres of land. Needless to say I found out where I plan on retiring.

However on the video game front I have finished a “Hero” playthrough of inFAMOUS 2 so be sure to be looking for those videos as they start to pop up over the next week. Here’s an early preview:

As for box office this week the big blockbuster was just that, a bust! Luckily I decided after being disgusted by Thor, and not as blown away by X-men First Class that I refused to see Green Lantern and boy from what I hear did I save myself the money. I would go on ranting about how awful I knew that movie was going to be and why, however, after this summer of “blockbusters” I don’t really think I need to explain myself. So everybody just go do yourself a favor, go watch Super 8, support and tell your friends to see it. If we can get Hollywood back on track with making QUALITY movies maybe we can finally get out of this cinematic slump.

However if you are absolutely an unwaivering Green Lantern fan, at least Kenny can break it down for you the best way to draw your very own Hal Jordan:

So thats all guys, again, sorry its a short week for me, but I’m enjoying the wonderful midwest. I fly home tomorrow so I will be seeing you all again on the streams very soon! Be sure to be looking for me on Saturday, and I’ll catch you guys next time.

Jun 13

E3ject this year, but I still got my opinions

So as most of you guys know the amazing, world renowned E3 was this year, and while being a massive step closer to the actual event, I wasn’t able to attend this year. (Insert Sad Face) I intently watched each major developer conference and was royal let down by most of what everyone had to say. The week started off is an incredibly lackluster performance from Microsoft, who was so busy trying to plug the Kinect into peoples homes that 90% of the content seemed to be forced into utilizing it in some fashion. What made the entire conference a massive letdown was their ace in the whole announcement of their “new” trilogy coming out. Halo 4:

This announcement probably wouldn’t have disgusted me so bad if it wasn’t for the way it was saved, and even “marketed” by being a “new” trilogy, because lets face it. Halo isn’t new.

The next conference was Sony and honestly again I was pretty let down. The only big thing that I got excited for at the conference was the announcement of a 24” 3D HDTV which wasn’t even a head turner until they said you would be able to play co-op split screen without splitting the screen. Thats right, the glasses will communicate with the TV and eliminate the need to run a split screen and finally allow both players to fully utilize the entire TV while playing in the same room. AWESOME!

Finally was the big Nintendo conference. They has claimed they would be coming out with a next gen console this year and I think it was safe to say no one was expecting what they came out with. Now while the WiiU will in fact have updated graphics and catch up to being on par with PS3 and 360 what they really marketed was the new “tablet” style controller for it. It’s hard to say what we can expect from this new type of gaming innovation, but needless to say I believe its going to HEAVILY rely on the developers to come up with what will make or break this into being the next level of video game playing.

But not going wasn’t all bad, because that opened the doors for me to pick up one of my favorite game series at work and begin making walkthroughs on it. Infamous 2 is the continuation about Cole and his growing superhero abilities and this game is nothing but an improvement from the 10/10 that I felt Infamous 1 was. I’m greatly looking forward to exploring this game and really getting to experience what twists and turns this game has in store. For a quick 10 minute recap of the game and get a feel of if its worth $60 (which hands down this game is) check out my new walkthrough series I started:

Well thats all for this week, today was a long day of streaming so I have to get to bed, but I’ll be sure to post some videos soon of the community stuff we did today. Until next weekend! Peace n meows!

Jun 05

The 4 Things Learned About LA

I’ve found that living in Los Angeles comes with the territory of a few things:

1) Cost of living is expensive

2) You exist in a world of film critiques and film makers who will never agree

3) Conventions Galore

4) I suck at puzzle games

1) I did it! I finally move up and have a place/area to rest my head! I am no longer crashing on a couch. Well, sort of… you see the friends that I was staying with have been looking for a new place to live and while doing so they have included me in the search. So for the time being, to keep me around as an option I have gained my own sectioned off area of the house where I finally have a bed and dresser. Sure it’s not my own room, but it beats the heck out of living from a suitcase.

2) There will never be a case where everyone is happy… ever. I don’t know why it’s something I still try to even do, because everyone has their own opinion and expectations and will never agree. Here are two examples. Thursday night I gladly joined the Mahalo team for the midnight screening of X-Men First Class and was at the very least entertained. It by no stretch of the imagination in my mind was a cinematic success, however it’s blasphemy in the eyes of the comic book fans I went to see it with. To me the movie lacked overall depth and character development or drive to feel connected to any of these mutants. Characters besides Xavier and Magneto were shallow and dry on character depth. What I wanted to experience with X-Men First Class was more rhyme and reason as to why the secondary mutants were associated with each faction and why and how they developed in their abilities. Instead I feel the film greatly relies on existing lore to fill those holes and complete the story in a greater aspect instead of taking the time to tell you in the movie. So if your looking for more of a backstory you are stuck researching the X-Men universe and what better way than playing some of the best games in the series? If you need help picking out which one’s are the best Wall-E will give you his opinion on which ones to check out.

3) Conventions! I am pleased to announce that after much anticipation I am indeed going to be attending BlizzCon this year and bringing up to the minute release news and videos for all of you who intern can’t make it yourself. It’s going to be a great experience for me and a huge event as I strongly believe there will be news on not just 1 but all 3 major release titles that Blizzard has to offer. From Diablo 3 finally being unveiled, to the new Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft expansions being talked about, this is going to be a astronomical event to be at and I am greatly looking for to it this October.

However if Blizzard isn’t your cup of tea I’m sure all of us as gamers can get excited about the super bowl of gaming conventions next week! That right E3 starts up next week and the Mahalo team has been invited to each major press conference from Nintendo to Sony. So be expecting some great news to surface as we talk about the next generation Nintendo system and all the greatest game releases and trailers. If you want a quick sneak peak at what we can expect from this years E3, Sleebs and Sohinki break down the top 10 most anticipated games.

4) This more comes as an after thought from my 1st time streaming on our main channel on Saturday. While this doesn’t directly have anything to do with living in Los Angeles I don’t think I could have had the time to sit down with my car pool buddy Justin and try to take on Portal 2 Co-op for the first time. Needless to say I was in way over my head. Having never played any portal game ever, I had no idea the amount of brain teasery it would take grasp the concepts of this crazy little puzzle. For about an hour we both sat racking our brains of one of the very first puzzles upon eventually getting frustrated and turning off the system all together. Clearly I’m never going to make it through Portal 2 on my own so I might as well just find a way to hear the story without being stuck for hours on end. Good thing our buddy Lazercorn put together an amazing video of Portal 2 in 2 minutes.

So thats about all, I had a wonderful time over the weekend with everyone while I was streaming, we did an amazing accomplishment and got a raid of about 10 level 1’s to go kill Hogger. Sadly I forgot to take a screenshot, so maybe we will have to do it again when I stream next week. Thanks again for all who stopped by with me during my live streaming on Saturday and I hope to see some of you again for my live raids Mon-Wed at about 7:30pm Central.

Until next weekend gamers!

Jun 02

Couldn’t Afford Portal 2? Got your solution!

For those of you who haven’t gotten around to getting one of the best games of the year, Portal 2, (ie: myself) and just feel that it’s too far in the past now to go and spend your hard earned $60 on. The simple solution is to just go watch Portal 2 in 2 Minutes!
http://bit.ly/portal2in2

May 31

My own little space

This is it, I have done it! I now have moved on up and into my own residence within Los Angeles… well kinda of. It been almost exactly two months now since I first came down here and I finally have a place I can rest my head. My own little sectioned off portion of the house. Yes, my “room” is the back portion of the living room sectioned off by a chinese rice wall. But when it comes down to it a bed, is a bed, is a bed… is a gig. (Scott Pilgrim reference for anyone who didn’t get that) While on the topic of references the guys in the video game team department did a great job picking out all of the gaming references that can be found in Goldfish’s new music video “We Come Together”. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you take a look.

In related gaming news I had an opportunity to sit down with the guild leader of Blood Legion. For those of you who don’t know these guys are the ones who were first in the world to kill the Lich King in World of Warcraft and are currently the 5th best guild in the world. (Number 1 in the US). Needless to say it was very exciting to sit down with him and talk about possibly starting up a new live streaming show that breaks down the weekly changes that are going on in WoW. It should be really fun, and he’s gonna bring a lot of expertise to the table. However, if World of Warcraft isn’t your thing and you need an expert opinion on some of the latest titles, be sure to check out some of our latest reviews.

Well that about all I have to check in for this week! Be sure to head on over to MahaloMMORPG on Ustream at 8-10pm Central for my live World of Warcraft raiding stream. And if you have any WoW related questions you can find me over on @Krelumian. Catch you guys next weekend.