Category: Games

My Elder Scrolls Online addiction vs. EverQuest

On By Michel McDonaldIn EverQuest, Games, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I have had this game on my PlayStation 4 for probably 5 or more years, and I played it here and there over the years, but I never really got into it because I didn’t really understand the mechanics of the game.

Last month they introduced the 10 year anniversary of Skyrim and I bought it because I had played Elder Scrolls Online, and I wanted to see what Skyrim was like. It’s basically the same thing, but not an MMO.

The introduction of the 10 year anniversary of Skyrim made me decide that I wanted to at least try to play Elder Scrolls Online again to give it a chance, but my problem was I had too many quests going and I was kind of confused about what I was supposed to do. So I thought, let me go to Coldharbour and finish that quest which ended with me killing Molag Bal. Then it started Cadwell’s Silver, then Cadwell’s Gold which are basically the other factions. But I hadn’t finished my factions quests, so I went on a mission to finish that. It was all so confusing to me, but now I get it.

My necromancer character Ilren.

My website’s name Xanapus comes from a game very similar to Elder Scrolls Online called EverQuest, which I played for about 6 years. ESO is similar to EQ, but also very different. Like we had to download maps for EverQuest, Elder Scrolls Online have their own maps already in the game, and they have markers on the maps that tell you where everything is so you don’t have to guess. They also give you more information like what you have completed on that map, and it has a zone guide.

EverQuest didn’t really have a quest diary or journal like this when I was playing. You literally had to print the quests out and write on the paper to check things off on the quest list to keep track of your progress. I literally have a notebook with hundreds of pages in it lol. Elder Scrolls Online keeps track of everything for you, and even tells you what to do next. And they mark things on your compass which gives you the direction of the person you need to speak to or the item you have to loot or the direction of the place you need to go to.

One thing that I really love about Elder Scrolls online is that I can use a game controller. I wanted to use a game controller so bad with EverQuest, but I could never figure it out with game controllers that I bought for PC way back when. They just never worked for me and were a complete waste of money.

I still have EverQuest installed on my computer and I see that they have a quest Journal now. It’s a bit different from Elder Scrolls Online, but at least they have one. The map is pretty much the same as when I last played the game, but I did notice that they have more continents because they have so many more expansion packs than they used to.

Also the thing that really bothers me about EverQuest is that they disable most of your gear if you’re not paying a monthly fee. Elder Scrolls Online has a monthly fee service that allows you to play all of their expansions, but if you don’t pay for it, they don’t disable your gear. In order to play the expansions, you have to pay for them, which I honestly don’t mind. I’d rather not have a monthly fee. I bought 21000 Crowns which are normally $149.99 for $89.99 during their Christmas sale and I used the crowns to buy some expansions.

Another thing about EverQuest is that you had to buy spells, then memorize them to put them into your spell book, then you had to add the spell gems to the spell gems slots. With Elder Scrolls Online, you just buy your spells with skill points and those spells upgrade the more you add skill points to them.

And I love that I’m getting epic gear for rewards and I can upgrade those epic gear items to legendary with crafting if I had the components. In EverQuest you had to do so many quests and crafting for so many hours, days, even weeks or months to get 1 epic and it was a weapon. In ESO all my gear can be epic or legendary, not just my weapons.

Oh another thing is that the quests are always your level, no matter what level you are. In EverQuest if I went back to do a level 4 quest and I’m level 50, I don’t really get a good reward because the reward is a level 4 reward. Which makes it feel like you’ve wasted so much time. No matter what level I am in ESO, the rewards are always worth it, and if they’re not, then I can deconstruct the item to get the materials for crafting.

I’m not trying to mansplain, I’m just really excited about playing this game and I just wanted to talk about it. I don’t have anyone to talk about it because no one I know plays this game.

The Sims 4 for PS4

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, PS4, The SimsLeave a comment
The Sims™ 4 for PlayStation 4

I’ve been playing The Sims since they began in the late 1990’s on my very old and so long gone first computer that had less than a 1GB hard drive. I started with the original Sims, played The Sims 2 Pets on my PSP and have played The Sims 3 on my PC, then The Sims 4 on my PC and when it came out for the PlayStation 4, I couldn’t help but want to buy it because I spend most of my gaming time on my PS4. My current PC is only a couple of years old and has way more ram than my last PC, so I could play it on my computer, but I still prefer to play it with a game controller.

I can’t recall when The Sims 4 came to the PS4, but I had pre-ordered it and I played it a lot, but then I kind of got bored, which happens with The Sims games. I mean, it does get boring and I can only take small doses of it before I have to take a break from it, but I get bored easily, and it’s not just this game, it’s pretty much every game I’ve ever played. Although, I did play EverQuest for 6 years straight, every day for 12 to 14 hours a day. Every. Day! But that’s not a single player game, so I was playing with other people which made it less boring.

But when I bought the PS4 version, I only bought the Vampires game pack because I couldn’t really afford to buy any of the other expansions, game and stuff packs. I eventually bought some when they were on sale, but I can only afford to buy so many. I have pretty much stayed away from the game until there was a sale and then I played for a bit with the new content. The Sims have been on sale recently and I couldn’t pass up some of the savings.

The Sims™ 4

As you can see only expansions are 50% on the PS4, while they are all 50% on PC. I did get a better deal with the bundles though. One bundle had an expansion included and 3 stuff packs, the other was an expansion with a stuff pack and then I also bought an additional expansion for 50% off and a game pack at 25% off.

Update: Since I posted this, I have bought even more expansion packs, game packs and stuff packs, so I’ve updated the image. I will keep updating the image as I buy new packs. Ok another update, I bought everything because they were on sale again on September 4th. I am just missing Eco, but I will wait for the day that is on sale. I am going to buy the Star Wars game pack when that comes out on September 8th.

My character (seen in the top) is based off of me, but not totally because he looks like me from a well, a skinnier time, and I still made him fat, but he is still skinnier than me lol. I gave him glasses, but for some reason when I changed all of his outfits, his glasses disappeared and I can’t seem to find them. But his looks and no glasses aren’t that big of a deal.

He was a vampire, because I wanted to play him that way, but when I bought these expansions, I wanted to take away that curse and just make him human again. The first week of not being a vampire was really difficult. I couldn’t get him to sleep in the bed for more than 6 minutes at a time (6 seconds real time) because of the restlessness from being a vampire, or whatever the term was. But he’s all better now. I really wanted him to be human again so I could take him on vacations to the islands and not have him burst into flames and die lol. I thought being a vampire was fun, but it was very restricting to my game play.

Anyway, we’ll see how long this lasts until I get bored again, and then wait for the next sale where I will probably end up buying all the rest of what I missed this time around. Who knows, maybe I’ll get my character a mate and we will raise kids. Maybe. MAYBE!

Fallout Shelter

On By Michel McDonaldIn GamesLeave a comment

logo

I have been addicted to Fallout Shelter lately. I played it several years ago on my Android cell phone, but I couldn’t keep my vault dwellers alive, and I was frustrated by the amount of caps it was costing me every time I had to bring them back to life, so I literally saved my game to the cloud and uninstalled the game from my phone. I figured when I felt like I could play the game better, then I would come back.

Recently I discovered they brought Fallout Shelter to the PlayStation 4 and I decided I would try the game out again on the bigger screen where I was playing with a game controller and not my fingers. The first couple of days I was doing pretty good, but then just like on the mobile version I started having a bit of a problem with not enough water and power being generated and my dwellers started dying from the radiation, I guess from lack of water. I don’t know how they got radiation, but OK. But, I just kept playing and suddenly they stopped dying and I was actually doing better than I did on the mobile version.

I’ve gotten a lot better at the game and I watched some videos here and there telling you how you should do your layout for your vault, and they showed me some things I didn’t know about the game, and so I went from there. Here is a screenshot of just the top of my vault.

Fallout Shelter Top Floors Layout

I decided to place 4 power plant rooms side by side on 2 floors, and then on the right side of both floors are the strength centers where the dwellers train their strength for working in the power plants. Below the power plant rooms are the water treatment rooms with the weapons center rooms which train their perception for working in the water treatment rooms.

Do you see a trend? See, the vault dwellers have SPECIAL which stand for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. So on the right side I have 2 training rooms for each of those SPECIAL’s and on the left side of the training rooms are the actual rooms that use those abilities. Here, you can see the map I created in Open Office for building my vault. The little rooms with the numbers are elevators. I numbered the ones on the left so I would know how many floors I used. I’ve actually just made an 18th floor for my PS4 vault because I needed more storage.

2018-08-20

There is a good reason I put in the elevators between the rooms. If you put rooms close together, and later you decide you need to get rid of one, and it has a room beside it, the game won’t let you remove the room because there are 2 rooms touching. You can get rid of the room on the end, but that might be the room you want to keep, and you’ll have to get rid of that room too just to get rid of the room you wanted to get rid of to begin with. You can remove a room if it is between 2 elevators.

Anyway, use it, or don’t, it’s entirely up to you. It is your vault after all. I just thought I would share how I created mine.

Fallout

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, PS4Leave a comment

I watch a LOT of videos on YouTube. I mean I will sit here the entire day watching YouTube on my PlayStation 4 from when I wake up until my shows come on, then again before I go to bed. I’ve pretty much stopped playing video games to focus my attention on watching YouTube.

Most of the videos that I watch are recommended based on my viewing habits which are from searching for specific videos. I do search occasionally for video game gameplay videos, try saying that 3 times fast. I’m sure you could do it.

So one of the videos that was recommended to me a few days ago was the video I posted at the top of this blog post that was about Fallout 76. I haven’t actually searched for any Fallout gameplay videos, but I think because I do search for gameplay videos, they probably automatically recommend anything video game related to me anyway.

I watched the video and discovered that they had released Fallout Shelter on the PlayStation 4. I had no idea they did that, so naturally when I finished watching the video I downloaded the game and have been playing it a lot. I actually had Fallout Shelter on my Android cell phone when it originally came out, but I became frustrated with it because my characters kept dying and I couldn’t control the situation, so I gave up. Well, I tried again and after the 3rd day things started going bad for me, but luckily they started getting better and my Fallout Shelter is doing quite well.

Fallout Shelter PS4

Yesterday I was playing for a bit and I thought, you know, I didn’t give Fallout 4 enough of a chance, so let me search for some Fallout 4 videos, and I found a series from theRadBrad. I watched the first 2 videos and decided to go ahead and download the game and all the expansions I had purchased as well. I actually bought the season pass which entitled me to all expansions, so that was a good idea. While that downloaded last night I watched more videos and it helped me figure out what I was actually supposed to do in the game. Today I started playing it and thankfully I started right where I originally left off last year and thankfully so because I did not want to have to go through that all over again. And I had some gear that I was finally able to equip. I didn’t understand how to do that the last time for some odd reason. See, I didn’t even give it a chance, and now my character is fully clothed lol.

Falloput 4 gas mask

I don’t know why, but I couldn’t get a picture of him in the center of the screen, but that’s fine. Oh and theRadBrad also taught me something I didn’t know before, that there is a game inside the shelter that is a Fallout replica of Donkey Kong and it’s called Red Menace. It’s hilarious, but I only saw 2 levels of the game, so it’s not as exciting lol.

Fallout 4 Red Menace

Anyway, I do look forward to playing Fallout 76 when it comes out and I want to actually finish Fallout 4 before that happens. I have all the expansions they ever came out with, so it’s probably gonna take awhile, but I’ll do my best. Wish me luck!

Gamer for Life

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer, Games, PS Vita, PS4, PSPLeave a comment

Video Games over the years

When I was going through the garage in December to bring the Christmas boxes in the house, I came across our old Atari 2600, so I brought it in and sat it on our dining room table. I brought it in because I wanted to see if it actually worked, and naturally, I couldn’t find the power plug, so that’s a no. So I dusted it off so I could take a picture so I could tell you this story.

I was born in 1970, and the Atari 2600 came out in the late 70’s. My step father bought one, but kept it attached to the living room TV and wouldn’t let anyone play with it, so it sat there doing nothing. We would go to our cousins who had an Atari 5200, which in my opinion was way superior. Eventually in 1983 my step father put it in my bedroom, which was a walk in closet. Being “in the closet” took on a whole new literal meaning.

That was a decision I bet my parents would regret because I became unhealthily addicted to Pac-Man. Every level was the same exact level, the grid never changed. Here is how the game looked and sounded.

Moving right along…

We moved away from our apartment in 1984 to my aunts house in Simi Valley, and my beloved Atari was put in storage and I never saw it again. My cousins would eventually get a Nintendo Entertainment System, and they were 3 kids who all fought over it, and I wasn’t about to get into that fight because it was THEIR system, not mine. I decided that I didn’t really want to have anything more to do with video games until we were stable, so I didn’t want to play. They invited me to play Popeye, and I tried it once, but I didn’t care to invest my energy because I never knew if/when we would move away and I would have it taken away from me.

We did move away and into trailer parks where I played video games at their consoles in game rooms with quarters. I also had a little digital game that could fit into my pocket called Epoch Man that I enjoyed. I also had a Pac-Man watch with a joystick, so as far as I was concerned, I was set.

When I was 22 years old I got a Sega Game Gear with my 2nd boyfriend. We both bought them and we each had our own games. When he eventually broke up with me and I had to leave my apartment because I lost my job and didn’t even have money for food, I sold it at a pawn shop for a measly $20 for the entire package, including a case, several games and a TV tuner. That’s why I don’t have a picture.

When I was 24 years old I got a Nintendo Game Boy, which I still have with 1 game. We were always too broke for food and cigarettes for me, so every time we needed money, one game had to make a sacrifice, which is probably why I hoard games now lol. The Game Boy in its case along with a external battery that clips on to your belt as well as a cleaner disk is pictured above.

Some time in the early 2000’s, I had a website from a hosting company that gave me the option of selling web hosting to people. People would pay me the full price, and I would make a small profit every month. One of the hosting customers asked me if he could pay me for his hosting by selling me his Nintendo 64, and I said yes because I had always wanted one of those. I had a couple of games, but I did eventually sell it several years ago on eBay because I needed the money. It was fun playing it though.

I had played computer video games on my Apple //e in 1990-1992 when I had to sell that system. The one game I really had was King’s Quest 4 The Perils of Rosella. When I bought my computer in 1997, I found several Sierra game collections and bought them. I also played The Sims in 2000 and then in 2002 I started playing EverQuest and I played that for 6 years until 2008, which brings me to the PlayStation years.

In 2007 I bought a PlayStation Portable, aka PSP. I bought and still have 32 physical game UMD’s, and I don’t even know how many game downloads. I played that game so much that the power button barely turns it on anymore, and when it does turn on, the stick doesn’t work because when I try to go right, my character says “F you! I’m going left.”

In 2015 my partner bought me a PlayStation 4 for Christmas. I had asked for a PlayStation 3 because I thought it would be less expensive, but he insisted that if he was going to buy me a game system, he was going to buy brand new, not used, and it might as well be the most current system. Hey, I’m OK with pre-owned at Game Stop. Then I broke my leg in December 2016 and couldn’t play with my PS4  because I couldn’t sit straight up, so he took me to Game Stop in my wheelchair to buy me a PS Vita, which they had to order for me to be delivered to our house via UPS. I haven’t played with the PS Vita as much as I played with my PSP, but I do still play with it when I am not in my bedroom, which is where I play with my PS4 daily.

So that’s about it. That is my video game history. I have always been a gamer since I was a kid, and I will always be a gamer until the day I die.

By the way, the Atari 2600 you see in the picture above is NOT the same one from my childhood. My partner had that when we met.

Also note that I have also played video games on my smart phones over the years as well as my Nook HD+.

Terraria Android Cloud Issues Solved

On By Michel McDonaldIn Android, Games, GoogleLeave a comment

Terraria

I have a little addiction to a silly video game called Terraria. I found out about this game when I got my PS4 for Christmas in 2015 while playing Minecraft. It said Also try Terraria on the Minecraft logo, so I found it in the PlayStation store and bought it. I didn’t love it immediately because I wasn’t sure how to play it, and I kept getting killed at night and it was frustrating to keep burying myself whenever the zombies came out at night, much like Minecraft lol. But once I started to play it more, I became addicted and eventually over time I bought the PC version and the Android version.

I have it installed on my Nook HD+, but recently I decided to install it on my cell phone so that I could play it anywhere. I uploaded my world to the cloud from my Nook so I could use some of the items I had gotten before on my phone. I created a new world, because it’s always fun to start over and build a new house, even though I build the same exact house every time lol. Anyway, I uploaded the world a couple more times and eventually it wouldn’t allow me to access the cloud. Every time I would click the cloud save, the game would freeze up for about 10 seconds before crashing. I’m sure anyone would understand just how frustrating that can be. I tried accessing the cloud worlds from my Nook, but no go. I even installed the game on my old android phone and still couldn’t access the cloud worlds.

My only alternative was to go to Google Play for help. Their help sent me to my email app to send an email to them. I got an email to sign up on their website so I can submit a ticket, which I did late on Friday. Today is Monday and I finally got a reply. They sent me a link to a fix, which I didn’t read right away, but they sent me the link again and I read it and apparently when you save your game to the cloud, your worlds and characters go directly to your Google Drive into a folder called Terraria. I had no idea lol. I didn’t have any special world that I needed anything from. Everything was basically just backup, so I deleted all the files and went to the game and it took a minute, but it cleared up the issue and now I am able to use the cloud again.

Here’s a little cheat tip. If you back up your world on the cloud, then access the back up, then go into one of your bags and grab things, like for example ore, you can exit out and go back into the cloud world and it will still be there as if you never touched it. Use this tip only if you must. Don’t use this tip if you think it might ruin the game for you. I actually did that so that I could duplicate the hearts so I could get the max amount of hit points without having to search for more hearts. I know it’s bad, but I just can’t stand dying so fast, but now I have to deal with the Eye of Cthulhu before I’m ready, so that’s on me.

Anyway, I hope you found this cloud fix and my cheat tip useful.

Play PC Games with an Xbox One controller

On By Michel McDonaldIn EverQuest, Games, MinecraftLeave a comment

XpadderMinecraft

Ok so I’ve been struggling for years with PC games and not being able to play them with a game controller. I think that’s why I love my PlayStation 4 so much, because it has a game controller. I bought a game controller many years ago, I think back when I still had Windows 98, and never could figure out how to get it to work. It didn’t work with any of the games I had, and the program it came with didn’t seem to help.

I played EverQuest with a keyboard for 6 or 7 years and got used to it because I didn’t have much of a choice. I hated that I couldn’t use a game controller, but I learned to live with the arrows for moving my character and pressing the Q button to auto attack, I for inventory, and many more buttons and button combinations.

Last year I bought Minecraft after I bought my Xbox One game controller since I figured it would work since Microsoft now owns Minecraft, but apparently that doesn’t matter since it didn’t work. It actually started to piss me off that I wasn’t able to play a simple game with a simple game controller. It’s like why don’t these things go together like Peanut butter and Jelly, or Macaroni and Cheese for crying out loud? You would think they would automatically just work, right? Microsoft Windows… Microsoft owns Xbox and Minecraft… Hello?

Ok so finally today I searched and found Xpadder. It was $10 and I just happened to have $20 in PayPal, so I used that to buy it. I’m broke and that $10 could’ve been a couple items for groceries, but that lasts 5 minutes, this lasts a lifetime. Then again so does the food, am I right?

So you will notice in the image above that I had to make the up arrow down and the down arrow up, and the reason is simple. If I use the right stick to look up, my screen looks at the ground and if I use the right stick to look down, you get the sky. I also bought the Windows 10 version of Minecraft (before I bought it from Mojang) and it looks at the sky if you use the right stick to look up. I don’t know why it doesn’t work right in one but not the other.

XpadderEQ

Here is Xpadder for EverQuest. I’m not sure if these buttons will work for me yet. The Alt 2-4 are the spell gems and I is inventory, Q for auto attack. Ctrl X I believe is camping and Ctrl S is sit/stand. I forget what C is lol. The left stick moves my character and the right stick actually controls the cursor/mouse. I will change Ctrl X to the space bar for jumping since I probably jump more often than I camp out of the game lol. I tried running around in the Plane of Knowledge, and it was a bit tricky because I’m not used to it, but I can see me starting to play EverQuest again now that I can play it with a game controller. And any time I need to change a button to something else, I can just put EQ in windowed mode and change it, then go back to the game. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

I feel like Xpadder was well worth the $10 I paid. Sometimes I regret things I buy, but I do not regret this at all. It’s wonderful.

Xbox One Controller for Minecraft PC

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Minecraft PC.png

I was feeling good about this Xbox One controller to play games on my Windows 10 PC. I was able to play Terraria with no problem, I played Lego World’s, both from Steam, and I was even able to play Minecraft Windows 10 Edition Beta with no problem. Well, I was having one problem, the problem was getting Minecraft Windows 10 Edition Beta to load. The darn game just wouldn’t load properly.

So I thought ok, what now? I mean, I do have Minecraft PS4 and Minecraft PS Vita, and I even have Minecraft Pocket Edition on my Nook HD+. Now I have Minecraft Windows 10 edition, which is basically a mobile version of Minecraft, but I couldn’t play it, so I thought screw it, I wanted to buy the PC edition anyway, so I bought it and wouldn’t you know the Xbox One game controller wouldn’t work. How frustrating is that?

joy to keyI went to Google and asked how I can play Minecraft PC with a Xbox One controller and the first couple things that came up were videos. One said to install the Xbox One drivers, which I don’t need to do since my computer recognizes the controller immediately. I have yet to feel a rumble, so perhaps I will need to install that anyway. Next they said to downloaded JoyToKey and the guy had all the commands in the description for his video. It didn’t have every key correct though, so I was able to find the keyboard/mouse command so I could fix that problem. Now the Xbox controller works perfectly, except for the inventory. I can go into the inventory, I just have to use the mouse to craft with, but that’s fine. My only concern was that I was able to use the game controller to play the game.

Now, the only other problem is how slow this game is on my computer. Minecraft Windows 10 Edition Beta is much faster to load and gameplay is a fast as on my PS4 and PS Vita. I’ve already adjusted some of the settings so some of the graphics aren’t too high of a quality, but it’s still slow as hell. Perhaps one of these days I will reformat my computer (ugh) so I can reinstall games again so my computer will be faster. One of these days…

UPDATE: Ok so installing the Xbox One driver was an extremely bad idea. I think the driver is specifically for people who want to use bluetooth. The Xbox One logo on the controller is normally lit, but after I installed the driver, that light turned off. It’s a button, so I pressed the button and the light would blink on and off for probably a minute, then it would shut off. I loaded Terraria and the controller was non-responsive. I went into the Device Manager and uninstalled the driver, then rebooted my computer, and waited with anticipation for that light to come on. I actually started to panic when it didn’t come on because I thought great, now I have to reformat this thing, but then the light came on and I played Terraria and it was fine. WHEW!

Xbox One Game Controller for Windows

On By Michel McDonaldIn EverQuest, GamesLeave a comment

Xbox One Controller for Windows

I’ve been playing computer games on my Windows PC since the late 90’s using keyboard and mouse with pretty much success. I bought a game controller some time in the late 90’s that never really worked right. I’m sure it worked, I just couldn’t figure out how to make it work for the games I was trying to play.

In 2002 I was reunited with my aunt in Simi Valley after more than a decade of no contact, and my cousin introduced me to a new style of gaming that I wasn’t even aware existed. MMORPG which stands for massively multiplayer online role playing game. This was literally the first time I’d ever played a game where there were other people also playing. Mind blowing! That game was called EverQuest. I tried using the game controller for EverQuest, but I could never get it to work.

So recently I bought a game called Terraria from Steam which I already own on my PS4 and PS Vita, but I bought it on my PC because I wanted to see how it is to play on another format. Playing EverQuest with the keyboard and mouse were easy, but playing Terraria with the keyboard and mouse was difficult. I would place blocks in places I didn’t want to place them, and then when I tried to break them with the pick axe, I would end up breaking the pieces I actually wanted to keep.

I received this awesome Xbox One game controller for Windows that I bought on Amazon and got in the mail 2 days later with Amazon Prime shipping. I can actually place blocks in the place I want them to be, and I can remove blocks I want to remove without breaking blocks I want to keep. It’s so weird that I’m super excited to play a game with a game controller lol.

One of my other options was the Steam controller, but I read the reviews of those, which were terrible. I mean just terrible lol. Yes, it bears repeating. Many people said to just use a Xbox One controller. I wondered what about Xbox 360 controller, and many people said Xbox 360 controller works, but Xbox One controller is better. I don’t have the 360 controller to compare it to the Xbox One controller, so I’ll just have to take their word for it. I tried using my PS4 controller, but it didn’t work at all.

The Xbox One game controller for Windows that I bought came with a wire. There is an option to buy a USB , I’m just gonna say dongle. I don’t know if it’s the right word, but it sounds silly so I’m just gonna say dongle. There was an option to buy a USB dongle (LOL) to play wirelessly, but the Xbox One game controller doesn’t have a rechargeable battery, so you literally have to use 2 AA batteries that aren’t even included. LAME! I don’t care about playing wirelessly, and I’m not going to waste hundreds of dollars on batteries, so I can play with the wire.

The Xbox One game controller works with Minecraft as well as other Windows games. I considered if I bought a Steam controller, would it even work with the Xbox for Windows games? So I’m glad I bought the Xbox One controller. I haven’t tried EverQuest yet, but I would be interested to know if it works. I also used to play a game called Lord of the Rings Online, and I don’t know if it works there, but I’m sure it does. I have The Sims 3, and I tried loading that game, but it crashed after I waited literally for 10 minutes for it to load. I don’t have that much time to sit there wasting on a game to load. I have better things to do, like I don’t know, putting tape on my nose and attaching it to my forehead so I have a piggy nose.

I’m not going to switch over to Windows games because it annoys me how PC games crash all the time and how slow they are to play on my slow ass computer, I just wanted to have the option to play games on my computer with a game controller, and now I have the option.

PS Vita Not Properly Charging

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, PS VitaLeave a comment

psvita charger

Today I was faced with a problem that I was not mentally prepared for. My PS Vita refuses to charge.

Last night I turned my PS Vita on so I could see if the weekly sale was in the PS Store yet. Each week on Tuesday they have a sale on games. I knew I was early because it was Monday night, but it was after midnight so I thought I’d check. I noticed that the battery icon showed that it had about 50% battery. It doesn’t say 50%, but it was around there. I plugged it in and let it charge for about an hour and the light turned off. I assumed if the light turned off that it was fully charged, so I went to sleep.

This morning I turned it on to check for the weekly sales, and I noticed that the battery icon was still at that halfway point, so I plugged it in again and forgot about it for about an hour.

PS Vita Screen

After an hour, I thought this has to be at full charge by now, but as you can see, it was still at the 50% mark. I didn’t understand why it was doing that, and I was starting to panic, so I went to Google and searched for the problem. I searched “PS Vita not charging” and the first post that I came across said to just plug it in and start playing a game, so I did. I plugged it in and started playing Minecraft. I played for about 10-15 minutes. You would think that after being plugged in for 10-15 minutes it would have at least gone up to 75% or something, but it didn’t move at all.

I turned it off all the way off by pressing and holding the power button until I saw POWER OFF. I actually did that last night and before the Minecraft “fix” that didn’t exactly fix anything. You can usually solve any problem by turning it off then back on again. Usually.

I read another message board post that put me in a panic attack. It said if you have only had it for like say a couple of weeks or a month to go back to the store and return it for an exchange. Well, I’ve had mine for 5 months, so yeah I can’t exactly do that, now can I? I kept reading, and was getting more discouraged by the minute until I went to find the original box that the PS Vita came in, which yes, I had because I save things like that lol.

Inside the box I found a couple of things. I found that I have a 2 year warranty from Game Stop, thank goodness for my partner buying the warranty with my Christmas present. I also found something, it’s a little box that you plug the USB cable into and a plug. I never unpacked those because I figured if it can be charged via USB cable, why use that? So I took it out, took a picture (above) and plugged it in and guess what? It charged my PS Vita to 100%.

This is my fix for this issue, and it may or may not work for everyone else just like the plug it in and play a game fix didn’t work for me, but if you haven’t tried it, try it and see if it works. I sure am glad I figured that one out. Technology doesn’t love me as much as I love it.