Hello all! It's already spring and almost April! Man, time is going by so quickly. I have completed the music to one of the projects I'm working on and am waiting for it to be published on Steam and XBLA. The other project I'm on seems to be dwindling down on momentum and might cancel eventually. With that, I'm kind of out of work to do that needs my immediate attention. I've been falling behind on doing my game write-ups so I don't have any tactile proof of what I've learned from games I've played. I counted it up and I'm up to 122 completed games now! Still, my backlog is a monster I can't put down so I have a lot more to go through. I'm still not done with the Street Fighter Mix and it's driving me nuts that I haven't yet. I'm currently working on a digital drawing that's taking much too long for its quality, but that just means I need a lot more practice. As always, I've been searching for a job within the Interactive Entertainment Industry to no avail. Open positions are limited and companies are laying off more than hiring lately. Blizzard recently reported a lay off of 600 employees across their company, most of them not in development. It was sad to hear that one of my friends that had worked with Blizzard for 11 years was one of them. I'm sure he'll be able to find another job quickly if he wanted to, me on the other hand...
So speaking of Blizzard, a release date for Diablo 3 has been made! On May 15th, 2012, we will get to revisit hell in all its new technological glory as Diablo's 3rd iteration makes its return to the series since Diablo 2's expansion back in 2001. I'm really excited about it now that I've finished Diablo 2 (I'm still thinking of playing through Diablo 1). Guild Wars 2 should be releasing sometime this year too, and I think it's one MMORPG I'm willing to go out and buy to play. Besides those two PC games, I am eagerly awaiting for Warriors Orochi 3 and Dragon's Dogma for the Playstation 3 as well as The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii. There are so many new games that have come out or about to release that it's hard to keep up. To name a few: Street Fighter X Tekken, Ninja Gaiden 3, Mass Effect 3, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, Soul Calibur V, and Final Fantasy XIII-2. For some reason, all of those games received bad remarks from critics or fans of each of those series. I'm about to do a proper review of that on tomorrow's Superpad post.
One of my friends got me back into playing MMOs again so I've started playing games like Aion, Vindictus, Dragon Nest, Maple Story, Rift, and Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes. I quickly slowed back down on all those games and finally convinced my friend to play Dungeon Defenders with me since Steam had a 50% off sale for the game over the weekend.
I've had the game for a few months now but didn't play it extensively, so he was able to catch up quite quickly and have already gone past my level. It's a really enjoyable game as it's simple to understand and learn while still challenging and engrossing throughout playing it. There has been a few other games I've been trying to finish up such as Eternal Sonata on PS3, Castlevania: Judgment on Wii, Nightshade on PS2, and E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy on PC. I completed a game called Painkiller on PC, and it was pretty interesting. The game was super fast-paced Action FPS that felt a lot like Quake and Unreal Tournament. I really liked the environment in that game. I also finally sat down and completed Ninja Gaiden 3: The Ancient Ship of Doom for the NES. It was very difficult, but a lot of fun. Playing older games on the NES make me realize how much I miss action platformers. The charming graphics, catchy tunes, and simple yet challenging gameplay seems to be very difficult to capture in games nowadays. Even with games that mimic classic gameplay of retro games, it just doesn't feel the same. The boss battles in Ninja Gaiden 3 were easier than the ones from 2 and 1 except for the last boss. When I finally found the pattern for defeating the final boss, he suddenly appears with a true form that was tricky at first but I realize was even easier than the first form. Then after that, there was a "final" form that had a shield you had to destroy before being able to damage him. By that point, I was already going "PLEASE, let this be the last form..." Developers were rather sadistic in a lot of the older games. I mean, you have a limited amount of continues in Ninja Gaiden 3! If you die at the final boss, you go waaaaaay back to the last check point you were at just like in the first one. When you beat one form of the final boss, you don't regain any health back. Ninja Gaiden 3 was pretty fun, but I think the first two were more memorable.
I've been pretty much relaxing after I finish doing a blog post each day if I'm not working on music or drawing. I've still been looking for a job and sent out a few more applications whenever I see an open position. This is like an intermission I'm in right now since I'm not actively working like I was before and haven't started working on another project yet. I'm probably going to start making my own games now that I have the time so that I can add them to my portfolio. I probably won't make it as lead design yet, but maybe I can still reach out to a developer that wants music if I can't find a job as a QA Analyst. Oh well, now that my sister is home for spring break and my friend is still available to play games each day, I'm going to enjoy my little intermission for now and get back in gear right after.
