BABY!

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay but last Thursday we introduced a new member of our family into the world. Elliana was born Thursday at 11:00 PM and was a tiny baby weighing only 6 lbs 7 oz. Once she was born all gaming pretty much came to an abrupt halt. Hopefully in a week or two we will be able to get a schedule set up and I can return to gaming, if only a portion of what I once played. 

Now, before she was born I did have the opportunity to play The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt for two and a half days. While playing for that short time I didn't progress very far into the story so don't spoil ANYTHING for me. The beginning is pretty secluded and keeps on the story. Once we get to our first town we are able to take reign and go about the world on our own. Once this happened the story halted almost immediately and running around collecting herbs was all I did. Even after the hours of herb collecting there were only a few things I was able to create so needless to say this area of the game is extremely vast and is it's own mini game.

I have an amazing wife and she knew I was getting anxious and that video games are stress relief for me and that I didn't want to push the issue so she gave me an hour to play. An hour may not be much to some people but after 4 days straight on only a handful hours of sleep, one hour was more than enough. The game that I chose to play was the Witcher because I didn't get enough playing out of it before our baby was born and for the first 30 minutes all I did was.... run around and collect herbs. Potions and crafting is huge in this game. In one fight I go through so much "edible" food that heals our hero so the more I get now the better off I will be later in the game. After the 30 minutes of being a gardener I decide it was time to do a little combat. Combat in this game is fluid and easy to understand but at some points, hard to execute. I hope I get to play this game soon because it is such a good game. Fantasy and role playing games has always been my favorite genre in video games because I can just get lost in a world the creators made and spend hours upon hours doing things I can't in other genre games... like gathering herbs or just riding a horse across the map.

Off the gaming subject and back to my wife and baby stuff. I am doing everything I can to keep my wife home but I haven't been very successful yet. We both started blogs to hopefully generate revenue at some point to give a supplement income. I know it takes time, patience and dedication to keep a blog going to the point that it creates enough money to call it a supplement income so I have had other ideas for her. We are currently trying (unsuccessfully doing Amazons Mturk) which is basically doing surveys to make money but the amount of time to make any money isn't what we are looking for. Our next little adventure I think can turn around my outlook on her staying home. Since she is amazing at crafts we are going to try buying clearance items and create unique items to sell at our local flee market. It is a lot of work but it would keep her occupied during the day/week and hopefully bring in some money during the weekend. Plus, she really likes to do crafts so it is a win win situation. 

Thanks for reading up to this point. Hopefully my next post will have game content in it from the week that my wife lets me play games :) Keep up with me on twitter and I will let you know when I game and stream. 

The Affordable Daddy Gamer

I am a guy who likes to find the most bang for my buck. Playing video games is a field where I can drop a large quantity of money without seeing much of my investment returned money wise. What I do get back is precious moments playing a video game where I get emotionally attached to a character, hate an NPC (non-player character), even have a good belly laugh that could last minutes.

As it stands we have next-generation consoles that are a little over a year old. I currently have an Xbox One and a Playstation 4 hooked up to my tv. I also have a Nintendo 3DS close by where ever I go for the quick gaming sessions. The Playstation 3 is also close by because a large amount of my games are on the PS3 and with the PS4 not being backwards compatible. That leaves me having to reconnect my PS3 to play the last-gen games I love.

PRICING

Lets talk about pricing.

Xbox One: $349.99 WITHOUT the Kinect Assassins Creed Xbox One Bundle

The Xbox One is my main console I play on when I get a few hours to play. It is where I stream mostly because my laptop does not like streaming with two graphics cards. This console is something I use for EVERYTHING. I have my media, video services (Netflix, Amazon TV, etc.), and of course, my gaming. This is the go-to console for all of my needs. There are a few glitches with party chat, but hopefully they will have a patch out to fix that soon. During the launch of the Xbox 360 and the PS3 I started out as a Xbox 360 fan but soon switched over to the PS3 due to free online play. Mainly because I was a kid/teen who didn't have any income and I didn't want to burden my parents with buying a console AND paying for a monthly subscription. With the next-generation launch I have a flexible income (for now until the baby is born) and can afford to pay a monthly subscription. Luckily, I have an amazing wife who bought me this bundle for Christmas WITH a year subscription to Xbox Live. For the price since they first came out, you can't get much better on pricing than here. For a little over $350 with tax it is still a little high for the affordable Dad but a must if you can swing it financially. This bundle also comes with Assassins Creed: Black Flag and Assassins Creed Unity. The series have been around for a while and this iteration has only been polished since their earlier games in the series.

Playstation 4: $399.00 WITHOUT the PS Eye The Last of Us Remasterd PS4 Bundle

At launch, Sony's Playstation 4 had the upper hand on pricing against Microsoft's Xbox One but after a year Playstation has fell behind with their least expensive bundle being $399. Playstation has always boasted being a gaming console more-so than Xbox One where they promote being an all-in-one entertainment system. In the category of just gaming, I would say that Playstation 4 comes away on top. The last generation for Playstation didn't see many exclusive games and privileges which was Microsoft's forte. This generation however we are seeing titles exclusive to Playstation and games like Destiny showing favor to the PS4 console with exclusive content. With this bundle, you are getting the remastered version of The Last of Us which is a great single player game, set to give your emotions a virtual roller coaster ride. For the affordable dad, the PS4 is still out of reach unless financially flexible.

Wii U: $269.99 Wii U Bundle with 3 Games

The Wii U, Nintendo's upgraded version of the Wii. Currently, I have a Wii and not a Wii U but it is a purchase that will be made in the future. For dads, this is a console you will want to look at when you play games with the kids. Nintendo has a good reputation for making decent kid friendly games.

Nintendo 3DS: $199.99 Nintendo 3DS XL with Mario Party

Next up is the Nintendo 3DS, a hand-held system that gets many hours of use for the price. It comes with Mario Party. Mario has been around for a very long time and Nintendo keep making ways to bring his endeavors to fruition every year. Almost all of the Mario games are enjoyable from Mario Tennis, to Mario Kart, and Mario Party. Other games I would recommend for this system include Pokemon, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and The Legend of Zelda. The current Pokemon games out are Omega Ruby and Alpha Saphire which are remakes of the 3rd generation Ruby and Sapphire. There has been no announcement if or when the next Pokemon game will be. Pokemon is family oriented with parts that can interest adults as well. Pokemon isn't just for kids but is a complex system of numbers and charts for people to do battle with one another. Priced at $39.99

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is a game that is more geared towards teens to adults as there is an extensive customization and heavy slope learning curve to the game. It brings a fantasy game to life without the magic but focuses on melee and ranged weapons. There is no player level or stats to upgrade like traditional RPG but relies heavily on the customization of weapons and armor. Priced at $39.99

The Nintendo 3DS is a system I would highly recommend for the fathers and daddies to be. It is priced at a point where it doesn't hurt as much as a TV console and can be taken anywhere. There are many versions of the system that if you chop around you can find a better priced system or a 2DS which doesn't offer 3D capabilities at a better price. Owning the original Silver DS for many years I was finally able to convince my wife to let me purchase the 3DS and it came at the perfect time. I snagged a limited edition Pokemon Red X version see below and love every minute I spend on it. For the money, I have recouped it with the amount of time I have spent on the 3DS.

Altogether, I am looking at $1,218.97 plus tax for JUST the console bundles without shelling out $60 a pop per game that releases in the future. That is a lot of diapers. I own all but the Wii U and was able to purchase them over time and with a loving wife who understands my passion for gaming.