I'm making another short rant for the month of April. Time is so limited and valuable now. School, sleep, clubs, homework, downtime, lab/discussions, everything takes up time. I'm averaging about 3-4 essays a week and about 2-3 reading assignments a week (sometimes more). Then every 3 weeks, I have 2 projects to work on with the work on top of that. I still go to all my club meetings and discuss on what I need to do for Videogame Development Club and Language Exchange Program. I still keep up the work for those two clubs too. Going to Tomo no Kai is my downtime (just to chillax and hang-out). I'm taking Kendo and Iaido this quarter, but I skip wednesday's iaido practice since I have a class that conflicts time with it. With all these going on, I fell behind in the class I like the most and the one I like the least: Game Design (World of Warcraft Class) and History of Contemporary Art respectively. This weekend, I have a lot of work again, but I'm trying to catch up on both those classes. I recieved my first Mid-term, which is a take home Essay that's 4-6 pages long for my History of Contemporary Art class. That class is just torture to all the studio arts students of UC Irvine. It's dead boring, hard to follow, and feels very useless as part of our academics.
But enough of the depressing stuff. Times are tough now for everyone, especially with this "swine flu" talk going around the world. It's really scary to hear about such things when they're so close to you, becuse you don't know what's going to happen but know it's going to be bad if it DOES happen. Still, I've been trying my best to enjoy life if possible throughout these past 5 weeks. I tried out the Japanese version of Phantasy Star Zero for the Nintendo DS and fell in love with the Opening song "Makenai Kokoro" sung by young and talented Okumura Hatsune (奥村初音) who is also very pretty! XD But really, she started writing her own music around the age of 10, has done a few dramas, and has an incredibly beautiful singing voice. I've never heard of her before actually, and I thought her voice was familiar when I first heard the song. Anyways, the game so far has a great balance between action and story since Phantasy Star Online (PSO) was more about action and Phantasy Star Universe (PSU) was more about story. It meets halfway between the two and makes it a enjoyable game for both PSO and PSU players as well as new players. The controls are more similar to PSO than PSU but lacks the amount of feature customization when creating a character. It's not that bad as you get to choose from a good amount (more than Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Shining Soul). The graphics are great for a Nintendo DS, and the gameplay is just as fun as the past Phantasy Star games. The sound effects of the game is a bit harder to judge since they sound very old-computer-ish like sounds, but it makes it funny and reminiscents old retro games. The controls are a little hard to get used to, but new features in the game make it a new experience for returning fans and new ones (you can actually dodge and block now!!!) Still, the story is told by short clips of video and mostly reading, so I wasn't able to read the dialogue very well when going through the intro. The good thing was I could read the names of the items and weapons that I picked up. I can't wait for this game to come out in America, I'm so going to buy it so I could play online!!!
[Just a funny video I watched last quarter.]
I don't want to continue too long, but here's some other short rants:
World of Warcraft: I'm falling behind in my class like I said before, but I'm (sorta) having fun. I have a Druid at level 15 (when everyone else is level 30) for my class and I started a Hunter not too long ago but don't have time to play it. I also want to play a rogue, but I don't know if I have the time to do so. I really hope I catch up with the class so I could group/instance/raid with them.
Puzzle Quest Galactrix: I tried it out and it's different from Puzzle Quest: Challange of the Warlords. It's easier to create combos, but it's also more unexpected of what's going to happen next. Fun game, not sure how often I'll get to play it though.
Space Siege: Wow, I can't believe I didn't play this earlier. The game mechanics is actually really fun and more action than Dungeon Siege. Along with being able to have more control over attacking and dodging, not having to worry about misc. items keeps the game going without having to constantly sort through my equipments. I should really play this through LAN with someone, I think it's worth it. One thing that does bug me is getting used to the controls the first time playing it.
-Well, I have about 30 minutes before I go to my Tomo no Kai meeting, so I think I'm going to play WoW for just a moment. We're going to Karaoke tonight, so it should be fun (hopefully).
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