Aside from my daily writing, I haven't done any work whatsoever ever since my sister came back from graduating. She's back in Southern California now, but for the past 3 weeks I've been mostly playing League of Legends, Playstation 3, and such with her and my friends online. My Birthday hangout this year went alright. I was able to get 3 friends together and play the downloadable games on my Playstation 3 and then gather 2 more friends online to play Left 4 Dead 2 and Counter-Strike: Source. I also had my first Birthday Cake Shot which is half Hazelnut Liqueur and half Vodka (tasted pretty good).
This weekend, a friend gave me a beta key to Hi-Rez Studio's new Action MOBA "SMITE" which is essentially DotA in a 3rd-Person Perspective played like an Action Game.
Source: Youtube Channel smitegame
It's a fun game. It feels pretty balanced, though lacking in content because it's currently limited to 5 characters in the beginning out of the 18 available.
Although I've been playing a lot of League of Legends, I still have a love/hate relationship with it. The fun part of the game comes from the contingency, spontaneous moments, and team work that's required to win. The problem is that playing alongside with random pubs (public members of the game) can be some of the worst experience you'll have to face when things go wrong. Much like the people on the internet, League of Legends is filled with trolls, immaturity, elitist, whiners, ragers, and everything in-between. There are too many instances where players feel above all others and are obligated to treat everyone like trash. It doesn't matter how good of a player you are if you can't even stick with the team and work with them. The most fun I've had with League of Legends are with and against friends where everyone knows each other and can have good clean fun without someone throwing a fit and spamming the chat box. It's because of the random pubs I've had to deal with that I've been staying away from LoL more often nowadays.
I've started Vanquish on PS3 (finally) even though I haven't finished Ninja Gaiden Sigma or Devil May Cry 4 (which I had planned on finishing before starting another Action game). Vanquish is what I expected it to be, though it's a bit more challenging than I had anticipated. I also got Dragon's Dogma for PS3 in the mail 4 days ago and tried a bit of it. I really like the combat mechanics and the pawn system is pretty interesting too. I have to admit from a lot of the critic reviews that the pawns are a little too chatty though. It's fine during combat since they actually give out cues and some helpful information, but they talk unnecessarily a lot during exploration and in town. My sister got Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for the 3DS and I played a few songs on it. It's an obvious lure to long time Final Fantasy fans who've played the games since the first one on the NES; however, I still found the game to be quite engaging and entertaining.
Two games had announcements that caught my attention. Guild Wars 2 is finally nearing its launch on August 28th and I'm especially excited to play it since I haven't had a chance to try it out. Just today, Phantasy Star Online 2 was announced for a Western release! So now have two games to look forward to playing!
Steam Summer Sales have been the hot topic on the internet for PC players the past month, and it still hasn't happened yet. The wait is seriously driving me nuts as I've been waiting for the past 3 weeks thinking it's going to happen to no avail. I'm hoping that it's next week, but I've been saying that for the past month. I can only hope.
I don't think I mentioned it in last month's post, or maybe I haven't found it yet, but I ran into a new animé series I've never heard of before and instantly fell in love with it.
Acchi Kocchi is a Slice-of-life, Romantic Comedy with a lot of artistic choices that's similar to Kyoto Animation and their work (but it's not them). The girl (Tsumiki) likes Io, but is always too shy to admit it. Io, who's oblivious to Tsumiki's feelings for him, supposedly likes her too but doesn't show it too prominently enough for her to know for certain. This creates the premise of the story where each day their friends try to do extreme things to get the two together. It's very much part of today's moé style animé and probably interest a very specific audience. I haven't been very good with keeping up with Animé in the past 4 years ever since I've graduated, but Acchi Kocchi definitely makes me want to get back into it.
Aside from all the play I've been doing, I'm hoping to get back on track and work on music, art, exercising, writing, job hunting and game making. But if Steam Summer Sales really is next week, I might be playing a bit longer...
