Week 34: Why EA Sports sucks

I’m disappointed this week.  Every year around this time a video game called Madden Football comes out.  And every year, like so many other millions of people, I buy it.  I wanted to have the game the day it came out and Amazon.com will usually make sure you get it the day it comes out if you pre-order a video game.  So I did pre-order it.

No one seemed to be sure of the release date, though.  Was it Tuesday, Friday, Saturday?  I was watching other people play the game on YouTube, but hadn’t received my copy yet.  But maybe those were just special copies for people on YouTube?  I didn’t know.  Apparently nobody knew.  And so I waited.  I was told I would receive my game on a Tuesday.  Then I was told I would get it on Saturday.  They the game didn’t show up and I was sent a message from Amazon that said they had attempted to deliver the game, but couldn’t.  Why couldn’t they deliver it?  What the hell?

I immediately emailed Amazon and they made sure the game was delivered that day.  Amazon always takes care of complaints, I think they’re a stellar company and have no complaints with them! 

So I finally had the game!  A lot of times people consider the Madden games just a “roster update”, but the football fans still buy them anyway.  I was looking forward to seeing how different the game was from last year’s game.  I “loaded” up the game, but couldn’t really play.  I used quotes there because the game never really seemed to load.  I couldn’t change the settings, or play anything accept a “play now” thing with the Falcons and the Patriots in the Super bowl.  Nothing else would work.  Every other game option said “installing”.  I began looking around and people said you just have to wait a bit for the other features to install.  I waited about five hours.  Nothing.  The game isn’t playable.

And so I went back and looked at some of the reviews on Amazon for Madden 18.  A lot of people weren’t happy.  Some of them were having the same problem I was having!  Others had paid for a download of the game instead of getting a hard disk like I did.  Their downloads didn’t work!  People were angry!

60% of reviews for the Playstation 4 version of the game are 1 star.  That’s pretty bad.  Now I’ve seen some companies that watch their reviews on Amazon and if a customer wasn’t satisfied, they were ready to send another product, or try and rectify the situation.  So far EA Sports hasn’t done anything.  No replies on Amazon, no offers to fix anything, nothing.  I’m very unhappy today!

We’ll see if things get fixed in the future with a patch or something.  Or maybe I’ll just have a worthless game?  Who knows?  Until next week, I’m sitting here asking myself why I paid money for this piece of crap!  Keep asking why!

Week 23: Why my niece is fun!

I have a niece named Tiffany.  I really love Tiffany and she’s fun for me to spend time with.  Tiffany is also a genius law school student.  So she’s learning to argue as a profession.  I argue as a hobby and always enjoy having discussions with her.

I’m not always the most cooperative with her, though.  In a way, that’s fun for me.  She doesn’t think it’s as fun as I do.  Right now she’s learning about “negotiation”.  I think she’s even taking a class in this.  She doesn’t have such an easy time negotiating with me.  *chuckle*  This weekend she asked for suggestions if she has to “negotiate” with someone who is like me.  I don’t know what to tell her.  I frustrate her when she asks questions and I only give her limited answers.

Tiffany:  Did you go see a movie earlier?

Me: Yes.

Tiffany:  What movie did you see?

Me:  Yes, I saw a movie.

Tiffany:  What was the title?

Me:  The title of what?

Tiffany:  The movie!  What was the title of the movie you saw earlier?

Me:  It wasn’t as good as I thought it would be.

Sometimes I give a bit of information, but she knows there’s more.  She wants the additional information, but I just don’t give it out!

Tiffany:  Do you know where the nearest gas station is?

Me: Yes.

Tiffany:  Well, where is it?

Me: Down the street nearby.

Now don’t think I just hassle my niece all the time, because it’s not like that.  We actually have quite a bit in common.  We do have chats where I give her all the information she wants occasionally.  And we do laugh at a lot of the same things.  And she does occasionally hassle me back.

As I said earlier, my nice is a law school genius.  She told me her mind is like a file cabinet and she stores and sorts through all the information she learns there.  I like to try and disorganize her files.  *chuckle*  While other 22 year old girls are asking for phone numbers, my niece asks me for my social security number so she can memorize it.  What the hell does she need that for?  Who knows?  She just said she’d like to have it “just in case”.  Right.  So I gave this smart girl my social.  Then while she’s trying to memorize it, I kept repeating other numbers trying to confuse her.  Sadly, that didn’t work at all and as I write this she can probably still spout those numbers off.  (Don’t be posting that number as a comment on facebook or my blog!)  Yes, she reads my blogs.  *chuckle*

On another note, last week I noticed a game was released called Elder Scrolls Online Morrowind.  At first I thought it was a remake of the old Morrowind video game I had played on my original Xbox.  That’s an old game!  A remake?  Meh, why would I want a remake?  But looking into things a bit deeper, I found out that this is an expansion for an online role playing game.  It looked interesting.  So you can run around and play by yourself with other players around you, or you can decide to team up with other characters.  Why not take a chance on this?  I figured I could order and receive the game for my Playstation 4 by last Thursday, and then have it all installed and updated by the weekend so I could play it then.  Sadly, that’s not what happened.

I did get the game Thursday morning (Fantastic delivery time by Amazon.com!) and slid the CD into my Playstation 4.  Checking the back of the case I find out the basic game takes up 85 gigabytes of space.  85 GBS!  Holy cow!  Well hopefully the graphics should be fantastic.  That’s the largest file I’ve ever installed anywhere on any kind of electronic devise!  Damn!  But that’s not the end of it!  Once it was installed on my Playstation, there is now over a 46 GB download to go along with it!  46 GB?  That’s going to take me almost a damn week to get downloaded, and that’s if I stay off the internet!  What the hell?  This had best be the greatest game in the history of games!

So I started the download slog.  Every so often I pause the download so I can watch YouTube, or Netflix, or just surf the web.  I end up watching other people on YouTube playing the Morrowind game!  It actually DOES look pretty good!  Now I can’t wait to play it!  As I write this, I have an approximate 33 hours left of downloading to do to complete the game so I can play it.  Sheesh, talk about anticipation!

Well, back to letting my 33 hour download continue.  I’ll probably pause it a few times to do a few other things so this will probably take me the rest of the week to finish.  Ah well, more time to text vague things to my niece.  *chuckle*

So why is my niece fun?  She just is!  And hopefully Morrowind will be fun too, if I ever get to play it.  So while I’m finishing up my download and annoying Tiffany, keep asking why!

Week 8: Why is this a thing?

What the hell is going in with the world now?  There are some things that I’m seeing that I don’t even understand.  Things that I just look at and wonder to myself why it’s a thing.  Why is it even here?  Take for example the Magic Mountains.  No, I’m not talking about the fantastic theme park in California, I’m talking about this:

What the hell is this?  Who the hell does this kind of thing?  This is about 45 miles outside of Las Vegas I think.  I thought about driving out to see it in person this week, but then began wondering why the hell I would make a 90 mile round trip to the middle of nowhere just to see some painted rocks.  Someone apparently had too much time on their hands.

I had no idea this was even here until I saw it on YouTube.  A guy named Justin Scarred drove out there and did a video with the painted rocks.  He’s into bizarre things like that.  Please, feel free to watch his trip:

Justin Scarred

This was not my only surprise this week.  I love video games and I came across a video game where you play as a 911 emergency dispatcher.  Now while I don’t dispatch for 911, I do dispatch for a casino/hotel for a living.  While the job does have amusing moments, I never thought it would become a video game!

Is this something I would possibly want?  Dispatch all night and then come home to dispatch some more in a video game?  Why the hell is this a thing?  If you watch a video of the game, you receive phone calls from people calling for help.  Ok, send the police.  Now another emergency, send more police.  Ok, now you’re out of police units and you get a call for another fight.  Now what?  Bleagh!  I get enough of this shit at work!

This isn’t even the beginning.  You can buy a video game where you play as a bus driver.  Join the excitement as you drive a bus around town and pick up and drop off people!

There is a game called Papers Please where you work in a border booth checking passports.  You can be a video truck driver! How about driving trains?  Yes, all those things are video games!  We’ve now come to the point where we’re not only spray painting rocks florescent colors out in the middle of the desert, we’re also making video games for mundane jobs in the world!  What the hell’s next, a janitor video game?

This one is called Viscera Cleanup Detail.  You play as a janitor cleaning up after some horror movie thing.  Let’s simulate picking up body pieces and mopping up blood!  What a fantastic game idea!  I have no words for this.  All I can do is ask why.  Why? Why? Why?

Until next week, keep asking why with me.  Question everything.