Happy Halloween!Well, this one is going to be odd!  We had our first snow yesterday, it's cold out there, the coronavirus is still looming, and Salem is closed for Halloween.  I guess it's going to be quiet today...Google's doodle this year is pretty fun.  You play a browser game as a little black cat who tries to rid the land of ghosts, only to inadvertently cast them off to sea. So,

It's been a while since the actual anniversary date of STO, but it's been busy, so this draft has been sitting in my...drafts...for a while.  This year Cryptic broke up the pieces of the infographic and released them a piece at a time on twitter, before putting the entire thing up on their website at the end.  I am not surprised that Tactical captains are first in the list, and I am also

One of my favorite seasonal STO events is here: Q's winter wonderland - where mischievous Q transports you to a...ermmm...winter wonderland...complete with winter events, winter clothing, and a new limited edition ship that you can claim.The Kramp'IhrThis year's addition to the game is the Kramp'Ihr - melding human winter-time monsters like the Krampus with Klingon undead (the Fekh'Ihr).  It

Continuing with my exploration of "the classics" (of two console generations ago), I've been playing Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. The game originally came out for the original xbox, and I've been playing it on backward compatibility.  I didn't really notice any hickups in the single player game.   The title comes from the main bad guy of the series, Sadono, who calls his sleeper cells

From last week's gamercat, a commentary on the stupid game (on mobile) of Magickarp jump... (yes, it's stupid - as stupid as Office Space: Idle Profits)

Finally! I've now become an old school temporal captain ;-)About five years ago when I first started playing Star Trek online what I really wanted was to fly around in a Wells Class temporal science vessel (and sport the 29th century uniform).  The problem?  The Wells was a lockbox ship, and before I knew the odds of getting one I ended up opening a whole lot of temporal lockboxes with nothing

With all of the social media sites doing year-in-review infographics from the data that they've collected from you over the period of the year, I thought I would check out xbox to see what sort of year-in-review they have in store. This year, along with the statistics that they provided me with, I got my own - customized and customizable gamer crest (presumably based on the games that I play). 

Nintendo's new gaming console seems like a mix of mobile and at-home console gaming.  Seems pretty interesting, and it reminds me of the stuff that OQO tried to do with computing. Let's see how it goes :)

I was not convinced that I would be starting up a new character for this expansion, but after this trailer I am pumped!  I may just create a new UFP character, do the faction specific missions, and then just use DOFF missions to level up to level 60.  I might even skip most missions that I've done (at least) 4 times already. I guess this character falls into the tertiary category because

Seems like I haven't really found many friends and colleagues on Miitomo yet (maybe I am not the right demographic?)  So, if you're reading this, try it out and connect ;-)

I wasn't quite sure if I should write this post in English or in Greek.  I've been focusing my #metanastis posts in Greek as I have been recalling my experiences as a reverse immigrant back to the US.  Most things deal with acculturation, school, things that were different, new, or peculiar to me at the time.  One of the things that I really liked was gadgets...however I tend to write

Well,  one more game completed before 2015 is done! I started playing Watchdogs on the xbox back in August, before the semester started, and it's taken me well into the end of the semester (almost the end of the year) to complete it.  I ended up doing many side-missions in the game, but I think after six months of slowly picking away at it, I just wanted to make sure I finished the main

Well lookie here! Seems like Microsoft has also put out a "year in review" for people who play games on xbox (I wonder if it also counts xbox live on Windows).  Seems like I spent a lot of time playing games in 2015 (to balance out the hard work of studying for my doctorate no doubt).  It does seem like my friends (the 3 that I have on xbox live) don't play a ton of games.    Maybe

While we still have a few more weeks left in 2015, and I probably will finish one more book (the one I have in progress and listening to during my commutes these days), this is a mostly accurate view of my 2015 reading list.  One year I made my goal to read 30 books in a year - failed it.  Since then I've decided to keep it simple and focus on reading a book a month.  If I go over that

The other day I finished (finally) watching the Yahoo Screen sponsored (produced?) season of community.  I am not sure if this is the series finale, but the little bit at the end was hilarious :-)I don't think there is a spoiler, but if there is, you've been warned:

I was meaning for that to sound a bit like the iconic "khaaaaaan" yell, but oh well - fell flat a bit.  Not talking about Nim Chimpsky here, the famous chimp from the language study at Columbia, but rather Num Shandu, the Castithan general who lead the charge on Defiance (and lost).  Seems like he needed some cybernetics in order to get him back to working order again.  In any case,

Sure, Windows 10 isn't "new" any more, and there are enough people out there that upgraded so that they could get that annoying popup to go away, but as an enterprise user I am happy to not have had to deal with that "do you want to upgrade now?" (they should have used Clippy to make those announcements) :-)With work done at my home, and my work computers resting for now, it seemed like a good time

I came across this movie trailer the other day for a Warcaft movie.  I've never been much into World of Warcraft the MMORPG, I have an aversion to paying montly fees for playing games (which is why I like free-to-play games like Defiance).  The last time I played warcraft, it was WarCraft 2 on my Performa 635 and it looked like this:Watching the trailer I got vibes of Avatar and Lord of

Jackleg JoeIt's been a while since I wrote about Defiance.  At last writing I was at an EGO rating of about 200, which apparently was a little problematic for beating Jackleg Joe, the boss of the last mission or Marin called Bullet for a Badman (which apparently is a Western movie title). In this mission I was stuck by not having enough capability to inflict damage on the enemies, so off I went

I came across this video introducing Star Trek Timelines.  This seems like a pretty interesting game, which is also developed locally in Massachusetts. This seems to be a mobile game (and from the graphics it looks pretty great!).  Wonder if my aging iPad 2 will run it ;-)

  Well, the end of the Iconian War is upon us!  The story arc that started with New Romulus a couple of years ago is now seeing its conclusion.  During this arc we've explored ruins under New Romulus, we've discovered Dyson Spheres (two of them, in-fact) we've fought the Elachi, the Hirogen, the Undine, the Voth,... and the Iconians (wow, that's a lot of people to fight), and we've

It seems like it took a while to finish this game, but it was a pretty good game (so no complaints here).  Last I left Agent 47 he was being laid to rest as and the FBI director was pretty pleased with himself that he got Dianna to turn and get 47 captured (or killed).  The game ended with a faint heartbeat that kicked in once Dianna placed his two signature weapons (his Ballers) in his hands.I

Eris EzriI just completed Delta Rising again, this time on my Delta Recruit (Fleet Admiral Eris Ezri).  I wasn't quite sure I'd make it all the way here with Eris Ezri, but somehow having a character this close to the current story-line and not being there seemed like a waste.For those curious, I was going to make Eris Ezris be a half Vorta, half Trill, liberated Bork (hence the name), but that

This week's Sev Trek: Enterforaprize comic tackles the topic of Andorians and their Antennae.  Andorians were actually one of my favorite species, as is evident from my Star Trek Online character who is also an Andorian.I forgot to mention last week that the punchline for all of the Sev comics (from what I remember) was always outsourced. There was a competition each week (or was it every 2 weeks?)

RaidersI've been geeking out a bit on Defiance these past couple of weeks and focusing on getting the main missions completed before moving onto more episode-based missions.  I am currently at an EGO rating of 292; pretty meager when you consider that the max EGO rating is around 6000, but anyway.Thus far I've completed the Mount Tam missions, where the main antagonists seem to be mutants of

Well, I've finished the last Xbox360 Assassin's Creed (that I know of):  Assassin's Creed: Rogue! From what I can see, Assassin's Creed: Unity, and Assassin's Creed: Syndicate are only on next-gen consoles (xbox one and PS4) and PC so it will be a while before I play those.  While I could play then now on a PC, I prefer to leave the PC for the two MMORPGs that I play (Star Trek: Online,

It's been a while since I've played a game on my PSP! A few months back I noticed that the price of Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines had dropped on Amazon, and I thought it would be a good idea to get it, as well as a few other games for the PSP I wanted to play (such as God of War) before these things start getting rare and more expensive on eBay.  I've been on the fence about getting, and playing,

With the storms that have hit over the past week came school closings, and with school closings came a little extra time on my hands.  I did spend a considerable amount of this extra time catching forward with my readings for my research methods course, but I guess I also used the time "wisely" to complete another game on the xbox. Over the Christmas break Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 was on

Just in time!  Right before my semester starts next week, and my gaming tanks until the summer, I was able to start playing, and finished, Dishonored.  This is one of those games that was a hand-me-down from a friend that moved away.  I tried playing it right after I had completed Bioshock Infinite, however the game styles were too similar and I wanted something else to buffer these

Just before 2014 is done I managed to make my way through Hitman: Blood Money, the last game in the Hitman HD Trilogy that I bought at the end of 2013. I think part of the reason that I really got through this game quickly was because I played it on Normal (7 saves, regular AI), but still I was mostly playing for the storyline and not the achievements which makes this sort of a speedrun for me. 

Well, that didn't take long!  I guess it was a combination of having the holidays, and playing this game on normal mode that made it seem like a breeze.  Hitman: Contracts is the second game in the Hitman Trilogy HD collection, and the third in the series as a whole. It still follows Agent 47 around his contracted killings work. I think this game was a bit of an improvement over Hitman 2

[spoiler alert] It's been a few weeks since I finished Gears of War: Judgement, but with the end of the semester, and other stuff, it's been not easy to sit down and write a few thoughts about the game ;-)This game is a prequel to the Gears of War series of games that I've played before. This game takes place through flashbacks as each character is called upon to provide testimony for chargers of dereliction

It's been a couple of months since the release of Delta Rising, the second expansion to Star Trek Online, and I've been playing, slowly but surely, through the content and the reputation XP (while still keeping track of my research reputation).  I'm seeing that this week will see the release of Q's winter wonderland, so before that hits, and I start fighting snowmen, I think it's an opportunity

[spoilers] Over the weekend I had the opportunity to complete Diablo III on my xbox, yay!  I've been looking forward to this game since I heard about it last year, however I only bought the thing this past August when it came out for xbox, the price was right, and it included the Reaper of Souls expansion.  I've been playing it over the weekend ever since I came back from my doctoral orientation

A couple of weekends ago I finished Bioshock Infinite (woot!).  I had begun the game a little before I went off on summer vacation (so there was a big lag between when I started and when I finished), but it wasn't all that difficult to get back back in the groove once I got back from Greece. I have to say that the original Bioshock games left me with a sense of wonder whereas  this game's

Last week I came across a parody for something called World of Peacecraft, where instead of blowing your enemies to smithereens, you make peace with them through bilateral and multilateral agreements.  As I already said, this is a parody, this game does not exist, but it does reminds me a lot of bad edutainment games. The funny thing is that I could see some misguided  company trying to make

With regular spring cleaning happening around here, I thought it would be a good opportunity to clean out the old shipyard of ships that I either rarely use in Star Trek Online, such as some free C-Store ships that I got as a promotion, or ships that I received earlier in the "career" of my captain that are just underpowered at the moment and can't really compete with end-game content.U.S.S. KouroutaFrom

I have to say, I am not a huge pokemon fan, but I think this is cool!  Too bad this is just an April Fool's joke.  Then again, knowing that Google has Niantic Labs and Ingress, what's there to stop them from creating something like this?  I say go for it :)  Create an augmented reality pokemon game using google maps ;-)

Right before classes started a few weeks ago I decided to start playing Halo 4. Given the amount of games I ended up getting on Black Friday last year it was a bit tough to decide what to play next, but I thought that since the next Halo isn't coming for a while (and probably will only be on xbox one), this seemed like a good game to play for the story.This was the first Halo game I've played on the

Just in time to end my holiday break and get back work, I completed Assassin's Creed 4!  I ended up getting AC4, like my previous 2 AC games, on Amazon.com's Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals for a reduced price.  I could have waited a few more months to get the game at less than half the price (factoring in a used cost), but I got it new for $30. Not too bad!I liked this game quite a lot both

U.S.S. Amaliada A week ago season 8 of Star Trek online was released. Of course it was released on on Tuesday which meant that I wouldn't get to it until the weekend. Oh well, it was worth the wait. Over the weekend I spent some time trying out the new areas on the Solenae Dyson Sphere with my main character (federation tactical captain) to get a bearing. Before the season was released I was really

It's here! Finally out of beta :)Now, if only it were available yesterday when I had a day off... I guess I will have to wait until the weekend.

Last spring when Microsoft had sales on their xbox live store, one of the daily deals was Modern Warfare. All three were on for sale, but th first two we're $10 a piece while the third one was more like $25 or $39. Not a sufficient drop in price for my liking, and I did not know if I'd like the series enough to play three games in a series. So, I ended up just grabbing the first two. This ended up

Big Boss I've been meaning to writ a quick recap of metal gear: peacewalker for a few weeks now, but something always seems to come up. I guess it's good that I have some commuting time to prepare a draft blog post ;-). In any case, a few weeks ago I was going through trying to complete peacewalker, and after an "aha" moment I was able to get through to the end. The game was pretty interesting, the

R.R.W. KroganHaving cleaned up my Federattion Admiral last week (at least a bit) , I decided to clean up the Klingon General (Del'Aurian) and my Romulan Admiral (D'Nel) before things got too messy with my ships inventory.  Thus, I ended up decommissioning two more Ships from my arsenal.First was a T'Liss Warbird from D'Nel's inventory, the R.R.W. Krogan (names after a species in the video game

Over the weekend I finished off Mass Effect, which I had gotten as part of the Mass Effect Trilogy a while back.  As you might remember, I started playing other games on my Xbox while I was trying to complete Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops on my PSP. This is the second game I've finished on the xbox...and I have barely made a dent on Portable Ops. I am not at one of the Bosses (Python)

This isn't new news, but while I was blogging about other things, I decided to mention this as well ;-)A short while back I finished off Fable II.  While I was playing MGS Portable Ops, I didn't want to start the next metal gear our of chronological sequence.  That said, I finished fable II pretty quickly, all things considered, and I am  still stuck on MGS Portable Ops.In any case,

Πριν κάτι χρόνια, που δούλευα στην βιβλιοθήκη τα πράγματα ώρες ώρες ήταν βαρετά γιατί περίμενες να έρθει ο πελάτης και δεν ερχόταν (ίδια όταν τελείωνε το τρίμηνο και όλοι οι φοιτητές πήγαιναν σπίτια τους).Εκει λοιπόν, δεν

Well, this one crept up on me. OpenFeint, a cross-platform social network for gaming is closing its doors in a few weeks.  It started life on iOS, as far as I know, and later on got onto Android and Windows Phone.  Initially the pitch was global leaderboards for games, something that I really didn't care for much in my iPod touch days...but then came the achievement badges for games and that

With the release of Halo 4 everyone seems to be talking about it.  In one of the video game podcasts that I listen to there was mention of the Anniversary edition of Halo which contains hidden terminals that augment to story (give you some background) and if you've watched all of the terminal videos (supposedly) your enjoyment of Halo 4 will be greater. I did, just by accident, find one of

I know MacHeist 4 is over, and it was an incredible deal ($29 for a boatload of apps AND 1 year of premium evernote!). I have to say that this time around I did not buy the MacHeist bundle, despite its awesomeness, because I didn't have much use for most of the apps.  Now if Parallels or VM Ware were part of the deal, or if RapidWeaver 5 were there, that would have been a different discussion

Well, this past weekend I slogged through stranglehold, and in all honesty it was just to get it done! I had some pretty high expectations for the game, it being a John Woo game with Chao Yun Fat as the lead character (Tequilla).That said, the first couple of hours of the game really tainted it for me, mostly because I was getting Alone in the Dark vibes from this game: in other words, nice concept,

A couple of days ago I went through and I completed Gears of War 3. After completing the Gears of War triple pack, which I got last Christmas, I decided to just buy the limited edition of Gears of War 3. I was playing Stranglehold at the time Gears arrive in the mail, but I put it down like a hot potato in order to start this third one. In all honesty, I am not sure how many achievements I got, probably

I came across this live action launch trailer for Halo 4 the other day.  It's pretty interesting, and it makes me wonder if, as part of Halo 4, we will see more flashbacks from the Master Chief's past.  Having read all Halo novels up to this point, I know what has transpired (at least from a novelization point of view) up to this point and how Master Chief became Master Chief.  As with

This weekend, through some bizarre confluence of spare time and family visits, I spend (what seems to be) a crazy amount of time with Star Trek Online.  I now can appreciate the addiction nature of MMORPGs.  While I have not joined any guilds (or fleets, as they are called in STO), and I have elected to continue to play solo, it is really easy to just go for one more mission, and then realize

I've been playing Star Trek Online now (tempted to go for lifetime membership, but not sure I want to spend the money), and this weekend I made it up one more rank to Commander (level 20 character) which not only gives me a new ship (went with an Akira class escort this time), but also unlocks the Klingon missions too!  I think I will leave the Klingon missions alone for now until I level up to

Last weekend I spent some time playing Star Trek Online with the intent of getting promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and getting a new ship.  I had my eyes set on a new Excelsior class starship, but through bad clicking (and maybe some glitchyness?) I was given a Constitution class starship. OK, not a big deal, the main thing is that I now have an additional photon torpedo tube that I can use

Well, that didn't take long ;-) 20 days after I started Gears of War 2, it's now complete! I got Gears of War 2 as part of the Gears of War Triple Pack last Christmas (I've been working my way through other games first), and upon completing the original, this one was next in my xbox play queue.The game picks up at the end of the first Gears of War, where Delta squad comes back to deal some more punishment

After a very, very long time, I was able to get back into the Castlevania groove and complete Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for the xbox. One of the reasons that I really got back to it is that Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is supposed to be coming out later on this year, and I wanted to be able to continue the series having completed the original.  If you are reading this I assume you've played

So, I guess I can’t claim that I am not playing an MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) game any longer.  I must confess, it was all a matter of the right theme, and the right price in order to get me to play an MMO game.  World of Warcraft as a theme didn’t do it for me, and the subscription wasn’t really to my liking (considering that given my luck, whenever I pay for a subscription,

Wow! That was such a short game! This past weekend I had an opportunity to continue on with Too Human and compete the game. OK, "complete" may not be the word here (considering that people who "complete the game might go through every nook and crannie of the game to collected everything the game has to offer) but I did get to the end, beat the final boss and saw the final cinematic sequence.While I

Man, that was a lengthy game! I guess any open world game, such as L.A. Noire,  is bound to be lengthy since you have the ability to explore the world at your own leisure. This game was getting a lot of 5-star ratings, which is why I decided to play it (the star studded cast was also another major motivator).  Having played and finished the game I think that it is indeed a 5-star game! (now,

Or...maybe back to the past? Going Retro?  Hmmm... Perhaps going retro is a more appropriate title.In any case, having played Halo 3, Halo 3 ODST and Halo Reach and liked the, I decided to read to 4 Halo Books. I read (or rather listened to) Halo Evolutions I, and the first trio of Halo Books (Fall of Reach, The Flood and First Strike)  in audiobook format (thank you library!). I enjoyed

I never owned a Playstation 1, but I did have a friend who did back then. Back then I was also more into platform games like Super Mario, or beat-em-ups like Street Fighter, not so much into the survival horror game genre.  I did own Alone in the Dark for my Mac, which I now realize was a survival horror game ;-)In any case, having played the demo of Resident Evil 5 on my xbox, and having listened

This is a good find: Play Super Mario Brothers with your favorite character from Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Simon Belmont or that guy from Contra :-) Now of course some things just don't work like Samus' blaster  is kinda pathetic in the Mario World, and some things word great (like the Contra guy's gun).  It's a nice little NES nostalgia mashup for those of us who grew up with it

It's been a couple of weeks since I completed the single player missions on Splinter Cell: Conviction (I guess I have to find someone to do co-op missions with now, lol).   My overall impression of the game is fairly positive.  I really liked the game play, it was reminiscent of previous Splinter Cell games, but it did manage to push the envelope a tad bit further (in a good way).  The

Over the weekend I finished Splinter Cell: Double Agent for the XBox 360. It was quite an interesting game, and the first "real" Splinter Cell that I played since the original. There was a Splinter Cell: Essentials which I bought (played and finished) for the PSP, but that seemed to be more of a recap of the whole series in anticipation of Splinter Cell: Conviction.Most of the game was enjoyable,

A friend of mine emailed me a link to this game based on the hit UK series the IT Crowd.The game was pretty entertaining, but I think I wouldn't sit at my computer to play a browser game like this (who's got time?) I echo some of the responses left as comments: Do make an iPhone game out of this! :-)If you don't know what IT crowd is, catch up with it here: Seasons 1 through 3 (and Season 4 is

Goodbye to eRepublik!No, No, the site didn't go down, I just decided to stop playing the game! I started playing this game about a year ago (I think), I got several jobs, I participated in the liberation of e-Greece from e-Turkey (or is it e-Ottoman Empire?), I ran for elections (and lost), got a number of awards for being a hard worker and a super soldier and made the rank of General (woohoo!).

I don't own Little Big Planet (yet), but from the demo I played a few months back I can say that it's on my wish list ;-)I came across this video of level design for the game from a design competition- pretty darn cool!

Last week I came across this video of the iControl Pad, a peripheral for jailbroken iPhones that gives you a joypad for your iPhone. This enables you use emulators to play all the great games of yesteryear.Despite the clunkyness, the control pad seems quite usable, and it appears to have a built-in battery to keep your iPhone charged while you game away! I never really thought of playing old games

I've been playing with Ikariam (for free) for the past few months and it's a nice freemium game.Recently one of my colleagues showed me this image, probably photoshopped, of Pirate Ikariam.I am close to completing all of my research, I've been expanding my towns, and I'm close to a point where I will be asking "well, what's next?" Perhaps this would make a nice little expansion to the game :-)As a

Σήμερα κλείνω ένα μήνα στην νέα μου δουλειά (γιούπι!) Στην βιβλιοθήκη δεν είμαι κλεισμένος στο γραφείο όπως στην παλιά δουλειά, και έτσι ανεβαίνω και κατεβαίνω σκάλες, πάω σε μέρη που δεν πήγαινα συχνά και παρατηρώ πράγματα