PS3: Portal 2

*Language of an uncouth nature maybe present below*

portal2

I loved the first Portal game. So when Portal 2 came out I was pretty excited, but I never got around to playing it until now.

The moment the game started, I knew I would love Portal 2 more than Portal 1 because of the addition of Wheatley. It’s hard not to love a mechanical eyeball voiced by Stephen Merchant. GLaDOS and the turrets were great in Portal 1, and they are still awesome in this second installment.

The portal puzzles were fun as always and the addition of a small storyline made escaping more fun. I loved the addition of different gels you need to utilize to figure out the new puzzles. I also liked that you get a bit more background information about Aperture Science and GLaDOS. The single-player campaign portion of Portal 2 is twice the length of the first game which the first time took me about 5 hours since I got stuck a few times. But after trying to get all the single player Steam achievements and playing through the co-op campaign I logged about 30 hours of game play. Not bad for a game I got as a birthday gift.

The main difference of Portal 2 is addition of a co-op campaign. I’m not someone who does a lot of co-op campaigns because I don’t have many friends who wait years later to play games, and Zippy doesn’t really do much. He only plays Plant vs. Zombies. Even then, all he does is just watch the the zombies lumber towards the house and gets miffed when the peashooter causes a zombie’s heads to pop off.

Anyhow I managed to find a “Derpy” co-op buddy to play the co-op campaign with me via Steam. The first time we met up I was on the PS3, while my friend was on Steam. It was a bit interesting since I could hear him speak on the mic, but I was stuck having to put my controller down and responding to him on the PC. I don’t think my sharp wit came across very well when there was a typing delay.

Everyone who played the co-op campaign said it was very fun. They were right. It was especially fun when we trolled each other and got each other killed while GLaDOS continued insulting our “testing” skills. When they said co-op was required for this game, they meant it. There are several times when the puzzle requires both players to do something simultaneously in order to solve a puzzle. So it made for “fun” gaming when someone (me) zoned out and realized we needed to do something together to move on.

Some of the puzzles were pretty confusing, but I think that was mostly due to the fact that we were over thinking some of the simpler puzzles. Most of the puzzles of the main co-op were not too difficult, it took some brain work and some good timing. I found the harder puzzles to be part of the DLC, which we accidentally did as our “second” course. We were a bit baffled to why the skill level of the puzzles increase so dramatically from the 10 minute puzzles we played the first time around.

There isn’t really much to say about Portal 2 other than that it’s fun! And more fun with a friend! If you liked Portal 1, you’ll love Portal 2. With that said, I am going to hug my companion cube since it only had a cameo appearance in Portal 2 and GLaDOS wouldn’t let me take it with me. She so mean sometimes.

I also want to make a comment about Steam Support. The PS3 copy of Portal 2 included a Steam copy. When I tried to activate my Steam copy, I ran into a problem where it stated that the code had already been activated in another account, which was impossible. I received the game in a sealed box as a gift. So I made an account at Steam Support and told Steam about the problem. When I told them that I did not have the purchase receipt because it was a gift, I was told to take a picture of the activation code with the ticket number handwritten on the stub and to send it to them. The process took about 3 days since I always had to reply after I got home from work. But the Steam support rep I had always replied to me within 24 hours. It might be a bit frustrating to get a separate Steam support account just to ask a question, but they helped me out pretty quickly. By my next co-op play date, I had a Steam copy so we could actually talk to each other during game play. Also when I replied with a thanks to Steam, they replied to say “your welcome!” This interaction I had with Steam support made me love Steam a little bit more. So when is the next Steam sale because I want you take more of my money!

Frustrated Comments: “Fucking Hell! I forgot how to jump!” (This was to the amusement of my co-op buddy.) “Goddammit!” “Do’h!” “NOOOO IT WASN’T SUPPOSE TO END THIS WAY!” “OW OW OW OW OW OW” (Turrets shooting at Chell hurts me too.)

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by on May 3, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by AthenaKTT on May 3, 2013

http://athenaktt.com/2013/05/03/ps3-portal-2/

New Month, New Site!

 

MovedIt’s May Day and to keep to my self-imposed deadlines, here is the official “I’ve moved!” post.

New address. New title. Sort of new design.

Anyone who was following me over at athenaktt.wordpress.com should be transferred over to this site’s mailing list.

And it looks like all link redirects are working properly.

Now that this is all set… I have no excuse to not start posting new content.

Upcoming posts include, but not limited to…

Portal 2

Dead Island

The Walking Dead Season 3

And everything else in my long backlog of posts…

2 Comments
by on May 1, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by AthenaKTT on May 1, 2013

http://athenaktt.com/2013/05/01/new-month-new-site/

Shiver Me Tumblr Tweets!

So much for posting more than once a month. This is what happens when I don’t give myself self-imposed deadlines.

However, I’ve mostly been delaying posting new content because I’ve finally been working on moving this wordpress blog over to a self-hosted site. You guessed it, it’s http://athenaktt.com/. The site isn’t quite done yet, but you can start following me there if you like. I still need to work with the WordPress Staff to get my present followers transferred over. Hopefully, that will be easy and painless. WordPress managed to transfer all my followers in less then 10 minutes. That was easy!

The site is mostly done, but I’m still making tweaks to the layout and plug-ins and reorganizing the pages. It will basically have the same look as this blog, but with a bit more bells and whistles since I’ve recently discovered the world of Tumblr.

I’m not abandoning WordPress for the world of “micro-blogging”, but I have found tumblr a good way to organize certain subject matters a bit better. With a self-hosted blog I can integrate both mediums easily.

Zippy now has is own little photo blog.

http://zippytzombie.tumblr.com/

I also started “Four-Eyed Flaws” a blog dedicated to those of us with sub-par vision and the problems we encounter being “four-eyed”.

http://foureyedflaws.tumblr.com/

I’ve also been contributing posts to Novel Travelist a blog that mashes up traveling and writing!

http://noveltravelist.com/

This brings my number of blog writing to four. How did this happen?! It’s all right, there is nothing that not sleeping won’t fix!

I’m also on Twitter now. Follow me there for any inanities you want to hear from me.

 https://twitter.com/AthenaKTT

Last but not least, my Misadventures in Counterfeit Shopping got featured at the Counterfeit Report:

https://thecounterfeitreport.com/product/340/Juicy-Couture-EDP.html

Since I’m terrible at getting things done, I’m going to say May 1, 2013 is when I will make the move from this blog to http://athenaktt.com/.

I promise to make an official. “I’m moving” post. So stay tuned!

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by on April 25, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by AthenaKTT on April 25, 2013

http://athenaktt.com/2013/04/25/shiver-me-tumblr-tweets/

PS3: L.A. Noire

**Disclaimer: Rated R language below**

Note: Sorry for the lack of postings lately. The last flu virus got me for a good couple months, but I’m back and trying to post more regularly than, you know, once a month.

LA Noire cover

After playing two fast-paced adrenaline pumping games, I decided to try out L.A. Noire. It was a nice change of pace, but it felt a bit weird to be walking down a street and not have to worry about a zombie or an alien trying to rip my head off.

I think everyone has said it, but the attention to detail in this game is AMAZING, especially when it comes to the actors’ facial expressions. They did such an excellent job in capturing the facial renderings of each actor that the moment I started playing the game, I started having Mad Men flashbacks. Naturally, I hopped onto Wikipedia and I found out why. Half of the cast of Mad Men was in this game. Main character, Cole Phelps, is played by Aaron Staton, but in my head I kept calling him Ken Cosgrove. Playing this game is like watching a movie and when a new character shows up the first thing you say is “Hey, it’s that guy from [insert movie/show]”. A lot of people compare L.A. Noire to L.A. Confidential. I’ve never seen the film, so I can’t make any comparisons.

Since they spent all the attention on the facial expressions, the bodies were very obviously neglected. After a while you can pretty much predict what robotic hand and arm gestures the characters were going to make during evidence inspections and interviews.

When it came to the interviews, you have three choices: truth, lie, or doubt. If you suspect a character of lying, you need to have some sort of evidence to back up your accusation. This is pretty straightforward, but I did find that sometimes when I picked the “doubt” selection, it felt as if Cole thought I was accusing the person of lying anyway. Because he would basically fly off the handle and accuse the suspect of lying when all I wanted was to subtly imply my doubt. So every time Cole went berserk I would go “WTF?! That’s not what I wanted to do!” Of course, then the suspect would clam up, and I’d have to either start again or continue the investigation with less evidence. There were times I felt the “doubt but not really doubt, but flat out lie” option was just a way to tell you that you need to stop being a wuss and either pick “truth” or “lie”. It got annoying when you didn’t really know how Cole would respond even though you supposedly have control of his decisions.

Clue hunting was pretty easy since every time I walked by a possible clue I would feel my PS3 controller rumble and hear a piano music cue as I passed something. Though Cole has a habit of wanting to inspect inane times like bottles and cigarette butts.

I generally enjoyed L.A. Noire. I mostly enjoyed the “Street Crimes” side quests.  I had fun when there were shootouts, but I didn’t like it when there were foot chases especially when Cole needed to climb up or down something. I especially hated it when there were car chases. I despise driving in real life. This might be due to the fact I live in present day Los Angeles where road rage is the norm. But when I had to drive in 1947 Los Angeles in a clunky car, it was even more annoying. I found that there was too much driving in the game, and that it also induced road rage because the old cars were clunky and impossible to maneuver. Also the A.I. cars would stop for no reason, wait forever to make a turn, and pretty much drive like drivers in modern day Los Angeles. My only consolation was that I could hit everyone and everything with no consequences. Half the time I would hit someone because they stopped in the middle of the road for no reason, and trying to break in this game was ridiculous since I would hold the “reverse” button to stop, but before I knew it, I was moving in reverse and hitting the car behind me. The game warns you about damaging people and property, but I never saw any consequences appear in my ranking or experience points. With no consequences, I drove at the highest speed I could get away with and put the siren on so most of the cars would get outta my way while I sped down Hollywood Blvd. It’s quite funny watching pedestrians reach the curb, hear the siren, and start bolting away from my approaching car.

I understood the reasoning for having all the in-game driving. The scenery and the map of 1947 LA was amazing. You could drive down alleyways, go into parking lots, and loiter to your heart’s content. In fact, there were side quests to discover 30 L.A. landmarks to increase ranking experience points quicker, but I didn’t bother with it. I guess when you’re a local, you take things like the Mann Chinese or Pantages theater for granted. But since I was sort of familiar with downtown L.A.’s present day map (I avoid driving in downtown LA at all costs.), I would pick routes to crime scenes that would get me to pass by the landmarks. Just by doing this passive searching, I managed to find 25 of the 30 landmarks. However, I did find it interesting to see how much space there used to be around the La Brea Tar Pits. Nowadays you can see the trapped elephant just driving down the Wilshire Blvd. Also seeing some landmarks that didn’t exist anymore was also cool.

After doing all the side quests and the main quests, it took me about 25 hours. I might have finished faster if I had realized that I could get my partner do to most of the driving as long as I had a destination selected on the map, but I realized this little “cheat” near the end of the game. So I wasted a lot of time trying to driving all over the map to get to my destinations.

L.A. Noire was a nice change of pace from all the shooters I’ve been playing. I thought the storyline was a bit flimsy. but the storyline wasn’t really the focus, but the individual cases.  I only continued playing because the various cases given were interesting. My favorite was when they incorporated the Black Dahlia murder into the game. It was also nice that they tried to incorporate some L.A. landmarks into some of the cases.

Frustrated Comments: (A lot of these comments are the same ones I make when I am actually driving. Minus actually crashing into other cars, of course.)  “WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD?!” “Where the fuck are you going, Cole?!” “Run down the damn stairs not up!” “GET OUTTA MY WAY, PEDESTRIAN!” “I have the fucking siren on! Why are you in the middle of the road?!” “Duck, Cole! Duck! I said fucking cover!” “Shoot, dammit! Shoot, why are you taking cover?! SHOOT!” (This happened a lot because I had gotten used to controls from other games and tried to apply those controls to this game where shoot became cover and cover became shoot.)”STFU, [insert AI Partner]. Why don’t you drive then?!” (I am fully aware that yelling at an AI partner does not sound sane, but it made me feel better.)

4 Comments
by on March 21, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by AthenaKTT on March 21, 2013

http://athenaktt.com/2013/03/21/ps3-l-a-noire/

PS3: Resident Evil 6

*Disclaimer: Zombie rage induced language at the end*

Resident Evil 6 box art

I am going to start out by saying, I love the Resident Evil franchise. I love everything about the franchise from its flawed steroided out characters to its ridiculously convoluted storylines. So when I heard that Resident Evil 6 would have Leon S. Kennedy and Chris Redfield finally meeting. I was really excited. Also since RE6 had Leon, it was guaranteed there would be Ada Wong. My favorite female character of all time.

In Resident Evil 6, instead of one long campaign, there are 4 short campaign each consisting of 5 chapters. Total game play for me was about 25 hours since I got stuck for some boss fights and didn’t know what the heck I was supposed to do. When the game was first released, the 4th campaign was unlockable after the first three were completed. Recently, there was a patch added and Ada’s campaign did not need to be unlocked anymore, which was great for me since I couldn’t wait to play Ada again.

The four campaigns follow Leon S. Kennedy, Chris Redfield, Jake Muller, and Ada Wong. For the three “main” campaigns you have a companion Helena Harper (Leon), Piers Nivans (Chris), and Sherry Birkin (Jake). If you play on co-op, Ada gets a mystery agent companion, but on single player, Ada doesn’t need an AI companion, she is just that much of a badass.

Resident Evil 6 is more of an third person action shooter again than horror survival like the first couple games, but I’m okay with it. Sometimes I do miss the survival horror element, but the beginning of Leon’s campaign was probably the closest of the 4 campaigns that was reminiscent to the survival horror especially when you’re wandering through the zombie infested campus. Chris and Jake’s’ campaign deals with J’avo, a new type of mutated baddie. While Ada gets to play with everything.

I don’t know how they do it, but it seems that with each Resident Evil game, the mutated bad guys look more and more ridiculous each time, especially for the main boss for Leon’s campaign. This boss went from one mutated animal to the next. At one point in time, he morphed into a T-Rex! I’m starting to think that the Resident Evil developers have an animal chart dartboard and wherever the darts land they “mutate” the animal Resident Evil style and make it into a boss… A boss that apparently keeps coming back.

My main issues with this game is that the bosses don’t die. You spend each campaign fighting one particular boss throughout each chapter. You think he’s dead, but surprise! He’s back! Only this time, he’s stronger and uglier. This gets tiresome pretty quickly, especially when you run out of bullets. There have been instances during a boss fight, I was running around with only a dinky knife. Obviously, I didn’t get very far. At least the melee is ridiculously powerful, especially for Chris. So I spent a fair amount of time melee-ing a lot of the enemies, but that isn’t really possible when it comes to boss battles, and your AI companion isn’t really helpful at all.

However, there have been some improvements since the last game. The AI’s inventory doesn’t affect yours anymore. Also the AI is pretty much invincible, so I don’t really have to worry about keeping them alive since most of the time I find it hard enough keeping myself alive. It took some getting used to, but health is now restored one block at a time with pills. I didn’t like it at first because I was used to taking a red/green herb combination and getting full health immediately. With the tablet system, you can restore restore your half bar of health with 3 tablets instead of using a all all 6. Though it does get dicey when you’re low on health and you have to press the button 6 times to fill up your health bar during a fight.

I was a bit disappointed that opening up your inventory doesn’t pause the game anymore. I know it makes it more “real”, but it was always nice to be able to pause, take a mini-break, go through my inventory, mix some herbs, reload my gun, then kick some mutant zombie ass. But no more, you better go through your inventory fast or you’re going to get a hurtin’.

I was also disappointed that there were no longer treasure to find and sell to buy weapon upgrades. I found the skill points harder to earn and accumulate for upgrades. Because of this I basically played through the whole game with very basic skills. Maybe having all the upgraded skills may have broken the game, but I really miss The Merchant from RE4.

I like that fact that all of these campaigns have each character’s storyline intersect with each others. I guess that’s how the creators wanted to have the two leading male characters meet but still have their own storylines since both characters always have different mission objectives. Jake Muller is the new kid on the block, and so far I like him. I wouldn’t mind if they decide to add him into the Resident Evil family. I guess it would only make sense for a series like this to evolve by adding more characters since a lot of the main characters are pushing 40. Eventually, they are going to have to retire, unless they find the anti-aging virus and live forever.

If I ranked the campaigns it would be: Leon, Ada, Jake, and Chris. Chris being the worse because it was the one campaign that I had the most frustrations with especially at the end with the final boss and running across platforms. Though the second chapter of Jake’s campaign was giving me motion sickness because of all the “whiteout” from snow storm.

Like the previous two games the Mercenaries mini-game is also included. Depending on your ranking in each stage you get to unlock new characters and costumes for the game. I haven’t gotten around to unlocking anything yet, but the mini-game is always fun when you just want to go around shooting things under a short amount of time.

Generally, I liked RE6 a lot more than RE5. Having an AI companion has its perks, but it also had its disadvantages. The perk is that I end up depending on the AI to revive me when I get swamped. Although this “perk” takes the difficulty down a notch. Because when I played Ada’s campaign in single player, I realized that I couldn’t just melee my way out of everything. I actually had to think things through since I didn’t have a “partner” to save me from my stupidity.

Many people have complained about RE6 being the “worse” of the Resident Evil games, but I had fun playing it and like it. I definitely had a lot more fun with RE6 than RE5 that’s for sure.

Frustrated comments: “Fuckwad!”;”You Fucktard”; “You bitch!’; “GET OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY!” (Yelled at the AI constantly, namely Piers Nivans); “WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!” (Yelled after running around shooting everything under the sun.)

2 Comments
by on February 12, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by AthenaKTT on February 12, 2013

http://athenaktt.com/2013/02/12/ps3-resident-evil-6/

PS3: Duke Nukem Forever

*Potty Mouth Ahead! You have been warned!**

Duke Nukem Forever Cover
I vaguely remember Duke Nukem from in the 1990s, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever played any of the games, but I do remember watching my cousins playing the game. The only reason I even bought Duke Nukem Forever was because I was curious and it was ridiculously cheap. I went into this game knowing it would be filled with chauvinistic and crude humor. I’m not the most feminine or feminist girl out there, so a lot of the jokes didn’t bother me considering the context and the character. It is Duke Nukem, you’re supposed to expect lots of bare breasts and really crude bad jokes.

The opening scene of the game starts out in front of a urinal, and the first thing I made Duke do was grab a turd from a toilet and throw it on the wall. Why would I do that? Because I could. I guess that shows I went into the game with the right mentality, right? But having the right mentality going into this game wasn’t going to make this game any better.

Duke Nukem Forever is just your usual First Person Shooter (FPS) game. At least, that is what I thought. Then the mini-Duke segments appeared. I noticed that during these segments when Duke gets shrunken into action figure sized there is a lot of platforming. In fact, there is too much! There should be a rule that platforming should not be allowed in FPS games. Half of the time I had look down at Duke’s feet then jump only to miss the next jump because I got impatient and didn’t looked down at his feet before jumping again.

The puzzles are pretty simple which mostly involve moving things around so you can do more platforming or you just run around destroying things so you can destroy more things.

There were also quite a few driving segments. There are about four chapters of driving around in a car in the desert. Each time the monster truck runs out of gas, you need to find more gasoline, but before you can get the gas refill, you have to fight a bunch of aliens. This got repetitive really fast.

Even the boss fights were annoying and repetitive. You are constantly getting bombarded at all sides by the boss and its minions. The only “cover” you are provide isn’t really cover since the bullets and missiles launched by the bosses sometimes goes through your cover. So I end up running around the whole map hoping my “Ego” life bar would regenerate quickly enough so I could return the favor with some RPGs to the face. Being strategic doesn’t seem to matter in this game because I think each time I managed to defeat a boss it was because I was getting frustrated and would just unload everything I had. The main key: keep strafing! Before I know it, the guy is down… for round 1.

Generally, the first round of the boss fight is frustrating enough, but having to do it twice using the same tactics was just annoying. Sure you have unlimited ammo since there are ammo crates available, but dodging missile to get replenish the first time around wasn’t fun, and it isn’t suddenly going to be fun the second time around.

The “power ups” of beer and steroids are a mixed bag. I avoided them since the side effect of beer is blurred vision. However, taking steroids not only makes Duke’s vision blurry, but it forces him into “berserk mode” and only lets you face punch everything. It’s kind of hard to face punch something that is flying over head and shooting electricity balls at you. Also Duke can’t jump for shit.

As if there weren’t enough annoyances, the loading times in this game were long. So long that I got bored and started doing squats, planks, or push ups during each load. Since I kept dying fairly quickly because of stupid platforming, in about an hour, I did about 50 body weight squats, 20 push ups, and 2 minutes of planks. I had to stop after a while since I was actually getting tired.

Overall, I can see why this game was ridiculously cheap, but if you keep your expectations low and for nostalgia’s sake, I guess it’s an okay game since there are a lot of pop culture and game references. The game is pretty short. I think I spent about 13 hours playing this game. But if you take out all the loading time, it was probably a lot less, and I died a lot, so there was a lot of loading time. But for a FPS there was definitely too much platforming, and the boss fights were just annoying. I surprised myself when I was able to finish the final battle after three tries, while I was stuck on the Octoking for a good hour. What gives?!

Conclusion: I didn’t care for Duke Nukem Forever, and I only finished playing this game because I was too lazy to change the disc out of the console. If it weren’t for my laziness, I would have never finished playing this game.

Frustrated comments: “God fucker”; “Enough with the goddamn platforming!”; “Duke, you can’t jump for shit”; “JUMP, DAMMIT! JUMP!”; “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, DUKE?!”, and “You little, fucks!”

7 Comments
by on January 28, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by AthenaKTT on January 28, 2013

http://athenaktt.com/2013/01/28/ps3-duke-nukem-forever/

Misadventures in Shopping: Counterfeit Perfumes

JC real vs fake

Everyone wants a good deal. When I saw that I could buy a $90 designer perfume at half the price, I got suckered in. I should have known better; the signs were all there. But the price was too good to be true at $37.99, so I ignored the fact that the eBay seller was new. However, I did wait to read her initial reviews and the 3 that came in for her recent sales of perfume were positive. None were negative or said her items were fake. So either people are unwittingly buying fake perfume or they know these are knock-offs and don’t care.

There are quite a few articles written about how to spot fake and counterfeit perfumes, but I’m going to focus on the perfume I bought since I actually have pictures of my expensive lesson, which is Juicy Couture’s Juicy Couture.

The moment I received the package I had a suspicion that this item was fake. When I removed the perfume box from the envelope, it was sealed and wrapped in cellophane wrap. But I noticed there was a pencil mark on the box inside the sealed cellophane wrap.

When I went to open the cellophane wrap, the top popped open really easily as if it was not glued on at all. I opened the box to find that the cardboard cutout that is supposed to hold the gem cap in place was torn, which might have occurred because the gem top had come loose from the cap either before or during shipping.

I pulled the bottle out of the box and my suspicions continued to mount when I saw that the terrier crest was bent on the top. I also noticed that the glue was done very poorly. The glue was oozing around the edges of the crest and when you look on the back you can see glue strings.

Aside from the broken cap and the poorly glued on crest, at first glance, the bottle looks to be the same shape as the original and the brown necklace with “J” gemstone and white crown is wrapped around the neck of the bottle cap like the real bottle.

This was when I noticed the bottle was not full and the color of the liquid did not look right. I have a small roll-on of the perfume that I received as a gift, and when compared to the counterfeit, the counterfeit liquid was a peach-pinkish color while the real was a golden yellow color.

As for the scent, the scent was similar, but the fake didn’t last long and had a different “after scent”. The after scent from the roll-on was sweet smelling, while the counterfeit smelled like too much alcohol and cheap perfume.

With my suspicions, I went straight to Sephora and purchased a bottle of the perfume at full price to make a comparison. Just at first glance, there are already quite a few discrepancies. Since there are quite a few discrepancies, I am just going to list everything in bullets.

R = Real/Authentic perfume
F = Fake/Counterfeit perfume
In pictures, the Real is on the left and the Fake is on the right.

Real / Fake

JC boxes

Cellophane wrap

  • R = The cellophane is thicker and to open the wrap, I had to cut it open.
  • F =  The cellophane is thinner than the R, and the top of the wrap opened very easily. It didn’t even looked like it was glued on.

Box colors are different.

  • R = Box is pink.
  • F = Box is a more of a flesh color.

Box texture is different.

  • R = All over the box you can easily see impressed textures.
  • F = There are impressed textures on the box, but they are not as prominent as in the R box.

Box logo print is different.

  • R = The terrier crest print is deeply embossed on the box.
  • F = The terrier crest print is slightly embossed on the box.

JC front text

Text on box is different.

  • R (Front) = 3 lines
    • Line 1: Eau de Parfum Spray
    • Line 2: Vaporisateur
    • Line 3: 3.4 FL OZ 100 ml e
  • F (Front) = 2 lines
    • Line 1: Eau de Parfum Spray/Vaporisateur.
    • Line 2: 3.4 FL OZ LIQ/ 100 mL e

JC back text

  • R (Back) = 31 lines
    • Line 1: CAUTION: FLAMMABLE
    • Line 2: ATTENTION: INFLAMMABLE
    • Line 3: VORSICHT: ENTFLAMMBAR
    • Line 4: ATTENZIONE: INFIAMMABILE
    • Line 5: PRECAUCION: INFLAMABLE
    • Line 6: ATENCAO: INFLAMAVEL
    • Line 7: INGREDIENTS: ALCOHOL DENAT.,
    • Line 8: PARFUM/FRAGRANCE, WATER/AQUA/EAU,
    • Line 9: PROPYLENE GLYCOL, ALPHA-ISOMETHYL
    • Line 10: IONONE, BENZYL ALCOHOL, BENZYL BENZOATE,
    • Line 11: BENZYL SALICYLATE, BUTYLPHENYL
    • Line 12: METHYLPROPIONAL, CITRONELLOL, EUGENOL,
    • Line 13: FARNESOL, GERANIOL, HYDROXYCITRONELLAL,
    • Line 14: HYDROXYISOHEXYL 3-CYCLOHEXENE
    • Line 15: CARBOXALDEHYDE, ISOEUGENOL, LIMONENE,
    • Line 16: LINALOOL, METHYL ANTHRANILATE,
    • Line 17: BUTYL METHOXYDIBENZOYLMETHANE,
    • Line 18: BLUE 1 (CI 42090), RED 4 (CI 14700),
    • Line 19: YELLOW 5 (CI 19140).
    • Line 20: Juicy Couture, the Juicy Couture crest
    • Line 21: design, and LOVE G&P are trademarks owned
    • Line 22: by Juicy Couture, Inc. and are used under license.
    • Line 23: Juicy Couture, l’ecusson Juicy Couture
    • Line 24: et Love G&P sont des marques commerciales de
    • Line 25: Juicy Couture, Inc. et sont utilises avec
    • Line 26: l’autorisation necessaire.
    • Line 27: Distributed in U.S.A. by
    • Line 28: (Copyright symbol) EA Fragrances Co.
    • LIne 29: New York, NY 10003
    • Line 30: EA Fragrances, London W1T 3EY
    • Line 31: Made in U.S.A./Fabrique aux E.U.
    • Bottom left corner: Recycle symbol
    • Bottom right corner: 36M
  • F (Back) = 12 lines
    • Line 1: Vaporizador
    • Line 2: INGREDIENTS:
    • Line 3: ALCOHOL DENAT., FRAGRANCE (PARFUM), AQUA/WATER/EAU,
    • Line 4: BUTYL METHOXYDIBENZOYLMETHANE, ALPHA-ISOMETHYL
    • Line 5: IONONE, BENZYL ALCOHOL, BENZYL BENZOATE, BENZYL
    • Line 6: SALICYLATE, BUTYLPHENYL METHYLPROPIONAL, CITRONEL-
    • Line 7: LOL, EUGENOL, FARNESOL, GERANIOL, HYDROXYCITRONEL- [sic]
    • Line 8: LAL, HYDROXYISOHEXYL 3-CYCLOHEXENE CARBOXALDEHYDE,
    • Line 9: ISOEUGENOL, LIMONENE< LINALOOL, CI19140/YELLOW 5,
    • Line 10: CI14700(RED 4, CI42090/BLUE 1.
    • Line 11: FLAMMABLE / INFLAMMABLE / BRENNBAR /
    • Line 12: INFLAMABLE / INFIAMMABILE
    • Bottom right corner: 24M

JC bottom text

  • R (Bottom) = 3 Lines (I’ve seen other REAL boxes with different size barcode and the words “MADE IN USA” printed on the bottom, but that’s it.)
    • Line 1: No. JUIF00005
    • Line 2: Barcode
    • Line 3: 0DB16
  • F (Bottom) = 6 lines
    • Line 1: 07 229M3
    • Line 2: Barcode and recycle symbol (Barcodes are the same and will scan.)
    • Line 3: Juicy Couture Dis., 1441 Broadway, New York, NY 10018
    • Line 4: 1006 BB Amsterdam, NL
    • Line 5: Madie in USA/Fabrique aux Etats-Unis
    • Line 6: REF # 40X123400

JC lid text

Print on the inside lid of the box.

  • Text is the same for both.
  • R = Print is darker and thicker, but also has more detail.
  • F = Print is thinner and looks like a copy print.

JC inside cardboard

Cardboard inside

  • R = In perfect condition.
  • F = There is a long cut along the front of the cardboard, which you would never see until you pull it out of the box.

JC real fake

The Bottle

Gem top on cap.
I’ve read online some fakes have shorter gem tops, but mine were the same. However, quality differed.

  • R = perfect condition.
  • F = Arrived scratched and broken off the cap.

JC inside cap

The neck of the bottle cap is made of different material.

  • R = Silver neck of the cap is made of metal and the inside of the cap is grey.
  • F = Silver neck of the cap is made of plastic and inside of the cap is clear plastic.

JC different spray

Caps between R and F are not interchangeable.

  • R cap is larger than the F cap.
  • The spray top is visibly completely different.

JC necklace charms

Necklace charm is also different.

  • R = Brown string is thicker.
  • F = Brown string is darker brown, thinner, and shinier.
  • R = Crown charm has light brown color in the crevices.
  • F = Crown charm does not have any color in the crevices.
  • R = “J” charm jewels are small and embedded into the metal. There are no jewels on the underside of the “J” just metal studs.
  • F = “J” charm is a darker color and jewels are bigger and glued on poorly all around the “J”. There are jewels glued on the underside of the “J”.

JC Back glue

Terrier Crest

  • R = Crest is glued on carefully with glue in certain spots.
  • F = Crest is glued on poorly and you can see glue strings in the back. Additionally, the glue seeps around the edges of the crest.
  • R = To the touch, the R crest is smoother than the F crest.
  • F = The crest is very close to the R, but to the touch is rougher and the print is not as distinct as the R crest.

JC Bottle bottom

Bottom Label

  • R = 7 lines
    • Line 1: JUICY COUTURE
    • Line 2: EAU DE PARFUM SPRAY/VAPORISATEUR
    • Line 3: 3.4 FL. OZ. 100 ml e
    • Line 4: (copyright symbol) EA FRAGRANCES CO., DIST., N.Y., NY 10003
    • Line 5: LONDON W1T 3EY
    • Line 6: MADE INUSA/FABRIQUE AUX E.U.
    • Line 7: NO.JUIF00005
  • F = 6 lines
    • Line 1: 100mL e 3.4 El.Oz.Liq.
    • Line 2:    FLAMMABLE/INFLAMMABLE
    • Line 3: Juicy Couture Dist.,1441 BRoadway.
    • Line 4: New York, NY 10018
    • Line 5: 1006 BB Amsterdam,mL
    • Line 6: Made in USA/Fabrique aux Etats-Unis

Perfume Liquid

  • R = Liquid color is golden yellow.
  • F = Liquid color is pinkish peach.

The Scent

  • R = When sprayed the scent is sweet smelling and when the alcohol is gone there is a sweet after scent.
  • F = When sprayed there is a very strong alcoholic smell. When the alcohol finally dissipates, the after scent smells like old cheap perfume. Also the perfume is oiler than the R perfume.

As you can see from my list, you don’t have to be a perfume connoisseur to see there are quite a few things you can spot to see if the perfume you got is counterfeited or not. I am most definitely not a perfume connoisseur. The last perfume bottle I purchased was from Bath and Body Works and their eau de Toilette are only $30.

Since I discovered the counterfeit early on and purchased this through eBay using Paypal, after I sent a message to the seller as a courtesy and waited 24 hours for her to respond, I immediately went through Paypal, went to the transaction, and clicked the “Click here to resolve” link to open a case on eBay through eBay’s buyer protection program.

eBay’s Buyer Protection program basically has three steps. When you open a case with eBay, they will ask you to try to contact the seller one more time and you can leave a detail account of what transpired. Then eBay will tell you to give the seller 7 days to contact you. By the 7th day, if the seller has not contacted you or if the dispute hasn’t been settled, you can “escalate” the case and eBay will resolve the issue.

After escalating my case, eBay said they would get back to me in 72 hours. In about 2 hours, I saw that ebay had refunded me the full cost of $37.99 that I paid back to my credit card. Though I think my case was pretty solid since by the time I escalated the case, the user (Majoriemoney1) had “not a registered user” next to her name, and the address that I found connected to her paypal account, when put into google maps it didn’t exist, and it kept taking me to the Arizona State Hospital aka Arizona State Asylum. (I’m sure there is a joke in there somewhere.)

Even though if the fake smells “close enough” to the real perfume,  I don’t recommend using these knock-off perfumes, you don’t know what chemicals these counterfeiters use since there is no quality control. From articles I’ve found online about perfume counterfeiter there have been cases of urine and antifreeze found in the counterfeit perfumes.

I know it sounds cliche, but if you think the price is too good to be true it probably is. So go with your gut and immediately report these counterfeiters if you decide to chance it. Though I recommend just waiting for a 20% off sale and buy your favorite perfume from an authorized retailer or something. It is also good to know that eBay’s Buyer Protection works, just make sure to make your reports within 30-45 days.

ETA: This article was also featured on The Counterfeit Report.

3 Comments
by on January 20, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Ramblings
Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Posted by AthenaKTT on January 20, 2013

http://athenaktt.com/2013/01/20/misadventures-in-shopping-counterfeit-perfumes/

PS3: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception

**Warning: Foul and Corrupting Language below!**

Uncharted_3_Boxart

I would have finished this game months ago, but my friend is lousy in making play dates with me, so I decided to just finish it without him, and I can finally finish this review and move on to Resident Evil 6 or something. He can youtube the ending if he wants to know what happened. That’ll teach him to stand me up again.

After playing Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, I was kind of excited to play Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. In comparison to Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. I really liked Uncharted 2. However, I’m not sure what happened, but I feel like whatever the developers felt that worked in Uncharted 2, they felt the need to tweak it and make it bad.

The general gameplay is the same platforming, cover and shoot, solve some puzzles that are pretty easy if you knew what in the world you were looking for. I know my friend and I were looking at a puzzle that we knew was ridiculously easy, but for some reason it took us ten minutes to figure it out. I guess we were over-thinking things and thought, “It can’t be that easy.” After facepalming for a few seconds, we realized that yes, yes, it can be that easy because it’s Uncharted.

The story begins in a pub in London. Everyone in the pub is a bald clone of each other only difference is the hat wear.  It looks as if Drake is planning to sell Sir Francis Drake’s ring, but in reality it’s a plot to reveal the new baddie. Katherine Marlowe. Apparently, this is a grudge that has been stewing for TWENTY years. Because of this, we get some back story of how little Nathan Drake meets a twenty years younger Sully, and how he comes into possession of Francis Drake’s ring in the first place. Chloe Frazer and Elena Fisher make small cameo appearance. It is hinted that Nathan and Elena are married, but estranged. Charlie Cutter is new character that makes an appearance for the first half of the game, but conveniently disappears once all the puzzle pieces to find the lost city have been discovered.

If you are expecting the same thing as the first two games of the franchise you will not be disappointed. Like both of the previous games, I tend to get tired of the redundancy of solving a simple puzzles, have a duck/cover shoot out for 10 minutes, and then have a chase sequence. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

This Uncharted 3 is shorter than the first two. I logged about 10 hours for this game while the other two were in the 14 to 15 hour range. Even though this game was shorter, it felt longer because of the repetitiveness. There were way too many running away from things and things collapsing.  When you’re not running for your life, you’re chasing things and being chased at the same time. However, I have to add I did enjoy the horse chase near the end of the game. I found chasing a caravan and jumping on and off a horse to be completely unrealistic but ridiculously fun.

However, I did find the ending disappointing because when I reach the end I expect some mega-boss fight that would make me curse like a ill-tempered drunk sailor. When I reached the ending “fight”, it wasn’t really a fight at all. It was mostly just a struggle to escape, you guessed it, more collapsing ancient ruins with some annoyances thrown in. So once the game ends, you’re left thinking, that’s it?!

Aside from the horrible controls and Nathan’s increased love for sticking to walls and walking like his foot fell asleep, Uncharted 3 is pretty much what you expect of Nathan Drake and friends.

If you like the Uncharted series, you won’t be disappointed with more of the same thing. Though I could really do without the 10 minute trek through sand dunes, and the one too many acid trips along the way.

Frustrated Comments: “Fucking shit balls!” (I have no idea where I’ve picked up the term “shit balls”.); “What the fucking shit?!”; and “What’s the matter with you, you fucking idiot!” (This is what I yell when Drake refuses to drop/pull away from the wall leading to numerous deaths.)

4 Comments
by on January 10, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Video Games
Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Posted by AthenaKTT on January 10, 2013

http://athenaktt.com/2013/01/10/uncharted-3-drakes-deception/

Fitness Sites

fitocracy-fred-purple-heart_designI know I’ve been MIA for awhile. First, I was trying to do some catching up after my vacation. Failed. Then I was preparing for NaNoWriMo. Then NaNoWriMo came and went, and I’ve been burnt out on writing ever since. I’ve written over 50,000 words for my novel and I’m still outlining… Should have done that before NaNoWriMo. Oh well…

Anyway since the “end of the world” is on Friday, what better time than now to get back into my fitness routine? Rule #1: Cardio, right?

In the last couple months, I manage to gain weight again, which is always annoying, but I know I can always lose the weight again if I watch what I eat (which I don’t do when I’m vacation or during the holidays…) and be consistent with my exercise.

In order to keep track of my calories and workouts, I’ve been testing out various sites to keep me motivated. Some sites are great for tracking, others have a great community and support, others have the potential for being great, but are still lacking something.

The following are sites I’ve used over the years, but the two sites that I’ve use regularly now are My Fitness Pal and Fitocracy.

myfitnesspal logoMy Fitness Pal:  This is probably the most popular site/app to use if you’re calorie counting. It has a fairly large database that people are constantly adding to. After using My Fitness Pal for about 6 months, I managed to lose 13 lbs. I stopped for about 2 months, and now I’ve gained half of that back, but the moment I got back on the calorie counting wagon, I lost 1.5 lbs in the first week.

However, I really wished that My Fitness Pal would do calorie counting for strength training rather than just record the weights and reps I’ve done, but there is a workaround. In the “Cardio” section there are selections for “circuit training” and “strength training”. They aren’t as accurate as actually using a heart rate monitor, but it’s close enough if you just want to gauge your calorie burn.

livestrong logoLivestrong: Livestrong is the calorie counting site I used before I discovered My Fitness Pal. It also has a decent size database and a good size community, but I switched to My Fitness Pal, mainly because My Fitness Pal has an Android app.

calorie-count-logoCalorie Counter: This was the first site I found when I decided I wanted to calorie count years ago. It is similar to Livestrong, and has a pretty active community. However,  the Livestrong interface had appealed more to me.

fitocracy logoFitocracy: I recently found out about Fitocracy, and the gamer in me loves Fitocracy. The main idea of Fitocracy is to make working out a game. For each workout you log, you get rewarded points. These points are your “experience points”. Like any game, after you gain the required amount of experience points, you level up. There are quests and challenge badges you get when you complete the challenges. So if you are obsessive about collecting achievements and trophies in your gaming, this is the perfect site to motivate you to get healthy.

Keep in mind that these points are NOT calories, and some of the points seem to be awarded oddly. I also notice that Fitocracy’s point system encourages you do more strength training exercises if you want to level up quicker, which is something that I also like.

The Fitocracy community is very active and very supportive, and there are thousands of groups on the site. So if you don’t feel comfortable posting in the big groups you can find your niche group and get comfortable there. I think what really helped was when I first joined, a member had reached out to and me and offered to help and “Follow” (Fitocracy’s version of “Friend”) me.

When I joined, I wasn’t planning to get active in the community. I had only expected to log in my workouts and level up. Eventually, I found myself looking for groups and joining in conversations on Fitocracy. Additionally, the Fitocracy team is developing an Android app, which is slated for release in January 2013. Heroes (paid members) get an early preview of the beta app. There is already an iPhone app available.

The only thing Fitocracy needs is a section to log your calories then I can just have one stop for all my tracking needs, but Fred the Robot is a good enough consolation prize for the moment.

UPDATE: Android App for Fitocracy is now available in the Play store.

slimkickerlogoSlimkicker:  Slimkicker is basically like Fitocracy only it has the addition of calorie counting on the site. This is great! Every time you log in your exercises and your food intake, you get rewarded points and level up. You can also pick the reward you want to give yourself once you level up. There are also challenges you can take. These challenges generally last 3 – 7 days and will help give you point boosts.

There is one problem. SlimKicker is a pretty new site. It’s been around for less than a year, so it is understandable that the community is quite small. The forums are pretty much inactive. As of today, the most recent comment was posted 3 days ago and the comment before that was posted 173 days ago. Some groups may be more active than the forums, but the groups I’ve joined have been dead for months.

However, the Inspiration Feed does have daily updates, but it’s hard not have an update when you’re basically viewing status updates of every member on the site. Since the community is small right now, I’ve only received 5 – 10 updates on my feed per day. Again this reflects the small size of the community. Because of the lack of a strong community, I find myself forgetting to log into SlimKicker despite it having everything I need: Calorie counting and a gaming aspect to fitness.

Another reason I find that don’t go on SlimKicker as much is because the food and exercise database is still quite small, and it can get frustrating when I am trying to log my food intake as accurately as I can. Even with My Fitness Pal’s huge database, I still find myself guesstimating my intake, but at least there is an alternate option. With SlimKicker I don’t have that option… yet.

I know the administrators of SlimKicker are trying to get their community to grow since I only found out about SlimKicker when I was approached by someone on the site to try out SlimKicker and post about it on my blog. But I also found that the administrators for the site are not that active in the forums as well, which I think contributes to the lack of participation within the community forums. I think if the administrators would post updates on what the have planned for the site, it will keep people interested and stick around, and it will show the community that something is happening behind the scenes.

I’ll stick around on SlimKicker because it has potential, but if Fitocracy ever decides to add calorie counting, SlimKicker is going to have to work really hard to get me back.

3 Comments
by on December 20, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Health and Fitness
Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted by AthenaKTT on December 20, 2012

http://athenaktt.com/2012/12/20/fitness-sites/

2012 SoCal: Run For Your Lives 5K

On Sunday, October 21, 2012, I woke up at OMFG o’clock of 4:00AM to get ready for my Zombie 5K obstacle course. My first thought was how will people tell zombies from runners when I feel like a brain dead zombie even before the run.

OMFG o’clock!

After getting dressed, I reached my friend’s house at 5:45AM. At 6:15AM we were off to the Vail Lake Resort down in Temecula which is about an hour drive from Los Angeles. Of course, it just happens the Race for the Cure was also going on in Temecula, so we were detoured when we saw a sign that said, “RACE TRAFFIC TURN RIGHT”. We ended up in a mall, and we couldn’t get out since every exit route was blocked off for the race. I quickly realized this was not the right race when I saw the volunteers wearing bright yellow shirts with pink breast cancer ribbons.

Registration line

So that was another unexpected delay. We finally arrived at the course a bit after 8:00AM then got to stand in one of the slowest registration lines. The line was so slow that we just barely missed our 9:30AM wave. But I guess it worked out since we started running at the 10:00AM wave, which give us some time to warm up our muscles before jogging/hiking up one of the highest hills I have ever seen. At one point I felt like if it got any steeper, I’d have to climb up on my hands and knees.  Little did I know I would be crawling a lot more than I anticipated.

Behind those tents is the hill we had to run up. You can see the next group of zombie bait racing to the top.

I thought I would have “died” and lost all my flags in the first ten minutes of the race, but I survived the first couple waves of zombies by sticking with the crowd. It was at the 20 minute mark, right after the first mud pit, immediately lost two of my flags. I had a choice of: fall on my face or let the zombie take my flag. I opted for losing a flag, since my main goal for this race was to complete all the obstacles and not get injured.

I managed to be alive for 30 minutes, which was about half of the race since I finished in under an hour. For the first mile aside from the hills and a zombies there weren’t many obstacles, but once we hit the first mud pit I started seeing more and more obstacles.

I think my favorite obstacle had to be the electric houses because on top of one house it said, “CARL STAY IN THE HOUSE!” I wish I had my camera on me to get a picture of the house and some zombies, but I didn’t want my camera to get destroyed by mud. The worse obstacle was crawling under logs over shallow muddy water because I have a big head I had to put my face under water to get through. So when we got out of the water I couldn’t see anything, and I couldn’t wipe my face since my whole body was covered in mud. If I wasn’t “dead” already, I would have been perfect zombie bait since I couldn’t see where I was going for a good 5 minutes.

I didn’t get pictures of zombies, but Zippy did make an appearance.

I guess climbing over the walls was also fun too, especially since I was always pretty weak when it came to upper body strength. When I ever attempted to climb walls it was always a really pathetic attempt where I would hurl my body over the top and then try to roll over to the other side. So when we came to the first wall my first thought was “oh crap”. One of the guys that ended up next to me offered to help if I needed it, but I told him I’d try it out on my own first, and I had no problem pulling my body high enough for my leg to get over to straddle the wall and slid down the other side without slipping. Huzzah!

Here’s a list of the types of obstacles we had to endure. These are not in order since I can’t remember exactly which came first. After the first mud pit, my brain got muddy too.

  1. Hills
  2. Zombies
  3. Mud pits
  4. Electric House
  5. Sand moguls
  6. crawling under logs in shallow muddy water
  7. Mud slide
  8. Maze
  9. crawling under barbed wires
  10. crawling under triangle wood thingy
  11. crawling under an electric fence
  12. climbing over walls

As you can see there is a lot of crawling through mud and from my “after” picture you can see. I did the mud run right since I was FILTHY! I think I still have dirt in my ears…

I’m the muddy dork in braids.

After the run, the first order of business was to get clean. I saw a sign that said “showers”, but the big lake with the sign “get clean” pointing towards the lake was more appealing and immediate. So I ran into the lake leaving a nice long trail of mud behind me and “rinsed” off the layer of mud before heading back to civilization and changed into dry clothes. Also thanks Weather.com for your forecast of 10% chance of rain, which became 100% chance of rain, which only add to the ominous atmosphere of being chased by zombies.

2012 Zombie Run Medal

I have to say it was pretty fun. I’m proud of myself for completing a 5K obstacle course, playing in mud, and being able to climb walls pretty easily. I have a few scrapes and lots of bruises, but it’s a success when I didn’t need to go to the first aid station.

I don’t know if I would do this run again, but I might consider doing other obstacle courses in the future. Other obstacle courses in the future?! Oh god, what is happening to me?! 10 years ago if you said I would be doing this, I’d call you crazy!

3 Comments
by on October 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Health and Fitness, Misadventures of Zippy T. Zombie
Tagged , , , , , , ,
Posted by AthenaKTT on October 23, 2012

http://athenaktt.com/2012/10/23/2012-socal-run-for-your-lives-5k/

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