At one point this month, the temperature dropped down to around 20 F with most days being clear and sunny. Most Decembers are cloudy, rainy and moderately cold and not freezing. It eventually eased up right before my sister came back home for the holidays. It's been a fun 2 weeks with my sister, her boyfriend and our friends back home. It definitely made it hard for me to say "goodbye" once again when they left since the last time I saw them was a year ago. Despite trying to relax this month, I did do a little bit of work and plan on finishing them up in the upcoming month. I really don't know what's in store or planned for me in 2014 as I need to find a proper job and start taking my work a lot more seriously. To do that, I think I'm going to have to give up writing on Superpad Unplugged because it takes up too much of my time each day throughout the past 3 years. It makes me a little sad to give up such a daily routine as it really connected me to the daily media of the videogame industry and has made me really appreciate the time, effort and quality that editors in videogame media put into what we read. But I really need to make this change because I had planned to produce 50 artworks and 50 audio projects and came up with 14 on each side. I feel pumped up and passionate about my planned audio works and so I want to put more of my time into that. Honestly, I'm a little nervous about next year. Can I get a job that I want at a place I'm happy at? Will I still be able to work on my own projects when working? With moving away from home, can I still do everything that I did at home such as playing guitar, piano, and console games?
In the gaming side of things, I finally completed Dark Souls after 60 hours of gameplay time! I had completed it the night my sister came home. To give a short answer to what I thought about the game: There were parts of the game I didn't like that I felt was poorly designed, but ultimately enjoyed the game a lot. I also finished Kid Icarus Uprising for the 3DS and returned it to my sister. Both games had their frustrating moments in difficulty and design flaws, but they were both fun. Looking back at my records, I actually completed a lot of games this month: Risk of Rain, The Angry Videogame Nerd Adventures, Orcs Must Die! 2, Divekick, Hatsune Miku Project DIVA F, Darksiders (FINALLY), Ninja Blade, Electronic Super Joy, DuckTales (NES), Castle of Illusion (Genesis), and DuckTales Remastered. I played a lot of fun games this month! I also acquired a lot of new ones due to the Steam Winter Sales that's still going on right now. I mainly bought a lot of First-Person Shooters and 2D Platformers it seems.
I immediately started up Electronic Super Joy when I got it since I knew it was a short game and I do enjoy platformers. The music is amazing, but I think they were made before the game was created and so I don't think they were made for the game specifically.
The game itself; however, had problems and I couldn't enjoy it entirely because of them. For platformers, it's better to be simple and revolve the game around the established mechanics. But the game kept changing them around. One level you're smashing down on enemies, others you're flying, then you can only double jump, then the level becomes sideways? Overall, the game felt like a mess and left a bad impression on me. There were some levels I genuinely really enjoyed though and the music made the experience exceedingly better. So far, I've gotten 22 games for myself with three more days of sales left. There are so many games I want to get around to playing, but it never seems like I have enough time to get to all of them.
It feels a bit sad that this year is almost over. The games that released this year were a lot better than I thought they'd be when the year began. The Nintendo 3DS in particular had a great line-up of games released this year. 2014 is shaping up to be another great year for gaming as well with the next generation of games on its way. I am so sad that Phantasy Star Online 2 did not release in the West and has yet to have any news on it.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Monday, November 25, 2013
What a nutso November!
So I still have yet to finish my portfolio or get to working on my next music project, but I've acquired quite a bit of games this month.
Remember how I said I wanted to finish Dark Souls, Final Fantasy XIII/XIII-2, and Persona 3FES/4 by the end of this year? I don't see that happening anymore. Dark Souls is taking longer than I expected to finish, but I am having fun with it. Besides that, I put Pokémon Y on hold while I started up Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS. The game isn't Kid Icarus anymore in terms of gameplay, but it still holds the lore and music from the original. The dialogues all have voice overs and are VERY cheesy, but the amount of humor they pour into it makes for a light-hearted experience. The game's very challenging and really hard to play without the stand because the 3DS XL is pretty heavy compared to the original, so I get tired from playing it fairly quickly. Still, it's a lot of fun with lots of action in it. Among these two games that I'm playing, I also bought 10 games this month. 4 3DS games, 4 PS3 games, and 2 PC games. Amazon Black Friday Sales have begun this week and Steam Autumn Sales start this Wednesday, so I might be picking up a few more.
Among the 10 that I bought, Senran Kagura Burst for the 3DS was one of them:
I was looking forward to this game when it was announced for a Western release. When I saw the screen shots for the first game was first revealed, it didn't look that great of a game. And the amount of fan-service also made me question whether the game itself was good or not. But when the game finally released, I saw gameplay footages and was amazed by how fluid and fast the combat looked. I got interested and learned more about it thinking that it wasn't a game that would see an English version. Burst came out and then eventually XSEED games made an announcement saying that they were going to localize it with the condition that it will be digital only. I was glad and sad at the same time. I don't like to buy games digitally on any system other than PC for various reasons, but that was the catch here. So I finally made my first digital purchase on my 3DS for Senran Kagura Burst and I'd say it was worth it. The mechanics feel very similar to Dynasty Warriors and all attack link into one another very smoothly. Sad to say, but in terms of gameplay I think Senran Kagura Burst is even better than Code of Princess, and I really liked Code of Princess. I've been just blessed with so many awesome beat-em-ups this year and one that I haven't even played yet is Dragon's Crown which I order a few days ago. I'm just waiting for that to come in the mail.
Besides my ever increasing backlog of games, I've been sucked back into Super Smash Bros. again. I've been messing around on Smash 64, Melee, and Brawl and then ran into Project M on Youtube just last week.
It's a mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to make it play more similar to Melee while changing the characters to be more balanced for a competitive level of play. One of my favorite character changes is Sonic the Hedgehog and I've just fallen in love with playing him in Smash. I've uploaded a video demo on my FB page if you want to check out what he's capable of now. So that's been another lovely distraction for me this month.
Right now, I think I need to focus on finishing my portfolio because I think I want to take a break for December and just relax and enjoy Winter. My sister is coming home to visit, friend's are coming back for the holidays, and I have a stack of games waiting for me to play them. Then I go back to turbo working mode in January!
Remember how I said I wanted to finish Dark Souls, Final Fantasy XIII/XIII-2, and Persona 3FES/4 by the end of this year? I don't see that happening anymore. Dark Souls is taking longer than I expected to finish, but I am having fun with it. Besides that, I put Pokémon Y on hold while I started up Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS. The game isn't Kid Icarus anymore in terms of gameplay, but it still holds the lore and music from the original. The dialogues all have voice overs and are VERY cheesy, but the amount of humor they pour into it makes for a light-hearted experience. The game's very challenging and really hard to play without the stand because the 3DS XL is pretty heavy compared to the original, so I get tired from playing it fairly quickly. Still, it's a lot of fun with lots of action in it. Among these two games that I'm playing, I also bought 10 games this month. 4 3DS games, 4 PS3 games, and 2 PC games. Amazon Black Friday Sales have begun this week and Steam Autumn Sales start this Wednesday, so I might be picking up a few more.
Among the 10 that I bought, Senran Kagura Burst for the 3DS was one of them:
I was looking forward to this game when it was announced for a Western release. When I saw the screen shots for the first game was first revealed, it didn't look that great of a game. And the amount of fan-service also made me question whether the game itself was good or not. But when the game finally released, I saw gameplay footages and was amazed by how fluid and fast the combat looked. I got interested and learned more about it thinking that it wasn't a game that would see an English version. Burst came out and then eventually XSEED games made an announcement saying that they were going to localize it with the condition that it will be digital only. I was glad and sad at the same time. I don't like to buy games digitally on any system other than PC for various reasons, but that was the catch here. So I finally made my first digital purchase on my 3DS for Senran Kagura Burst and I'd say it was worth it. The mechanics feel very similar to Dynasty Warriors and all attack link into one another very smoothly. Sad to say, but in terms of gameplay I think Senran Kagura Burst is even better than Code of Princess, and I really liked Code of Princess. I've been just blessed with so many awesome beat-em-ups this year and one that I haven't even played yet is Dragon's Crown which I order a few days ago. I'm just waiting for that to come in the mail.
Besides my ever increasing backlog of games, I've been sucked back into Super Smash Bros. again. I've been messing around on Smash 64, Melee, and Brawl and then ran into Project M on Youtube just last week.
It's a mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to make it play more similar to Melee while changing the characters to be more balanced for a competitive level of play. One of my favorite character changes is Sonic the Hedgehog and I've just fallen in love with playing him in Smash. I've uploaded a video demo on my FB page if you want to check out what he's capable of now. So that's been another lovely distraction for me this month.
Right now, I think I need to focus on finishing my portfolio because I think I want to take a break for December and just relax and enjoy Winter. My sister is coming home to visit, friend's are coming back for the holidays, and I have a stack of games waiting for me to play them. Then I go back to turbo working mode in January!
Monday, October 28, 2013
October's over already? How Spooky...
Last month, I wasn't sure what I wanted out of October other than maybe work on more music projects. Instead, I tried to focus on finishing up my portfolio. It's the last week of October and I honestly don't know what I really did this month. It passed by so quickly! I've been feeling tired and unmotivated to finishing up my portfolio, but it's something I really have to complete. In terms of work, I think I got one cover art done and one remix done. Both of them were done early October, so I suspect I was pretty distracted in the middle of this month up till now.
Thinking back on this month, I was pretty focused on getting some games done. I finally completed Titan Quest and the expansion. The game seemed to drag on after a while and I wasn't able to enjoy it as I did in the beginning. This makes me worried about Grim Dawn as the developers use the same exact game engine. I found a new copy of Sonic and the Black Knight for $14.99 for the Nintendo Wii and decided to finally get it after all these years of waiting. I've heard many awful things about Sonic and the Black Knight, but I was still curious. For one thing, the game is super short. So I thought "perfect, I'll finish it over the weekend". I played it and finished it all in one day. Strange enough, I was pretty entertained by it. There were only 2 levels that annoyed me and reminded me of Sonic 2006, but other than that I had fun. The game has really nice environments and the graphics are really nice for a Wii game. The game's fast-paced and arcade-like. There is a lot of swinging involved, and I knew my arm was going to be sore the next day (and it was). And the last boss was a little tedious, but still pretty good for a last boss fight. Sega had just released their newest Sonic game, Lost World, for the Nintendo Wii U. It seems like critics didn't really like it and I'm not surprised. After playing Sonic Generations and experienced how incredible a Sonic game could be, I had my doubts that they'd make the next Sonic game as good as that one. I worked on finishing Red Faction Guerrilla up for a while and finally completed the main story. The game wasn't anything amazing, but it was pretty fun destroying everything and causing mayhem. I got around to playing the entire story mode of Mortal Kombat 9 and really enjoyed it. I wasn't expecting too much from Mortal Kombat 9, but the story mode definitely made it into a memorable experience. I had bought "Legendary" for $2.49 and saw that it took an average of 5 hours for most people to beat it so I thought I'd rush through it. It has a LOT of problems and the gameplay overall felt boring and forgettable, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I had some fun with it. Unfortunately, I didn't truly finish the game as a game breaking bug caused me to fall through the elevator that brought me to the last scene of the game. It was only the last 15 minutes of the game and I decided to just watch it on Youtube and consider it completed. The two games I'm most proud of completing this month has to be Skyrim and Uncharted 3 though. I bought Skyrim two years ago and always had trouble finding the time to play it. So I eventually decided to skip all side quests half way through the game and complete the main story. It was a lot of fun and there were still a lot more I could explore in the game, but my PS3 is running out of hard drive space and I still have plenty more games to play. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception I borrowed from my friend over a year ago and haven't found the time to play. I decided to rush through it and finished it in two days which is really fast considering how long it takes me to finish a game most of the time. I didn't like the game as much as the first two iterations, but I was pretty proud of myself to finish a game so quickly in 2 nights of playing it. The way the plot progressed and how so many of the twists were "deceptions" made it too predictable after a few times and it really wears out the story. Another big thing that bugged me was how the game always slowed down every time the game got exciting. All the problems the series had with the first game that they fixed in the 2nd returned in the 3rd. I wasn't very happy with Uncharted 3, but I'm glad I got through it so I at least know what it's like.
I did a decent amount of purchases this month apparently. Nordic Games & Focus Interactive Humble Bundles, Pokémon Y, Enclave, Teleglitch, Resident Evil 6, Bionic Commando, Dark Void, Onimusha 3, Demigod, Nail'd, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower. I read, research, play, analyze, buy, and look at so many games everyday that I forget how much I actually do in a month sometimes. I'm doing a decent job of getting through my PS3 games at the moment as I plan on finishing up Dark Souls, Final Fantasy XIII, FF13-2 on PS3 and Persona 3&4 on PS2 before the end of the year. This is pretty ambitious to get through 5 RPGs in just 2 months. But I've been looking forward to playing these 5 games for a very very long time, so I think I'll be able to enjoy them.
I'm not sure what else to say about this month. November is coming up. The PS4 and Xbox One is going to release. Battlefield 4 comes out in 6 hours. I'm still waiting for Phantasy Star Online 2 to release in the US.
So last month, I said I wasn't sure what I wanted out of October. For November, I want to finish up my portfolio, send out my resume for any open positions I find, and get back to working on my music projects.
Thinking back on this month, I was pretty focused on getting some games done. I finally completed Titan Quest and the expansion. The game seemed to drag on after a while and I wasn't able to enjoy it as I did in the beginning. This makes me worried about Grim Dawn as the developers use the same exact game engine. I found a new copy of Sonic and the Black Knight for $14.99 for the Nintendo Wii and decided to finally get it after all these years of waiting. I've heard many awful things about Sonic and the Black Knight, but I was still curious. For one thing, the game is super short. So I thought "perfect, I'll finish it over the weekend". I played it and finished it all in one day. Strange enough, I was pretty entertained by it. There were only 2 levels that annoyed me and reminded me of Sonic 2006, but other than that I had fun. The game has really nice environments and the graphics are really nice for a Wii game. The game's fast-paced and arcade-like. There is a lot of swinging involved, and I knew my arm was going to be sore the next day (and it was). And the last boss was a little tedious, but still pretty good for a last boss fight. Sega had just released their newest Sonic game, Lost World, for the Nintendo Wii U. It seems like critics didn't really like it and I'm not surprised. After playing Sonic Generations and experienced how incredible a Sonic game could be, I had my doubts that they'd make the next Sonic game as good as that one. I worked on finishing Red Faction Guerrilla up for a while and finally completed the main story. The game wasn't anything amazing, but it was pretty fun destroying everything and causing mayhem. I got around to playing the entire story mode of Mortal Kombat 9 and really enjoyed it. I wasn't expecting too much from Mortal Kombat 9, but the story mode definitely made it into a memorable experience. I had bought "Legendary" for $2.49 and saw that it took an average of 5 hours for most people to beat it so I thought I'd rush through it. It has a LOT of problems and the gameplay overall felt boring and forgettable, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I had some fun with it. Unfortunately, I didn't truly finish the game as a game breaking bug caused me to fall through the elevator that brought me to the last scene of the game. It was only the last 15 minutes of the game and I decided to just watch it on Youtube and consider it completed. The two games I'm most proud of completing this month has to be Skyrim and Uncharted 3 though. I bought Skyrim two years ago and always had trouble finding the time to play it. So I eventually decided to skip all side quests half way through the game and complete the main story. It was a lot of fun and there were still a lot more I could explore in the game, but my PS3 is running out of hard drive space and I still have plenty more games to play. Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception I borrowed from my friend over a year ago and haven't found the time to play. I decided to rush through it and finished it in two days which is really fast considering how long it takes me to finish a game most of the time. I didn't like the game as much as the first two iterations, but I was pretty proud of myself to finish a game so quickly in 2 nights of playing it. The way the plot progressed and how so many of the twists were "deceptions" made it too predictable after a few times and it really wears out the story. Another big thing that bugged me was how the game always slowed down every time the game got exciting. All the problems the series had with the first game that they fixed in the 2nd returned in the 3rd. I wasn't very happy with Uncharted 3, but I'm glad I got through it so I at least know what it's like.
I did a decent amount of purchases this month apparently. Nordic Games & Focus Interactive Humble Bundles, Pokémon Y, Enclave, Teleglitch, Resident Evil 6, Bionic Commando, Dark Void, Onimusha 3, Demigod, Nail'd, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower. I read, research, play, analyze, buy, and look at so many games everyday that I forget how much I actually do in a month sometimes. I'm doing a decent job of getting through my PS3 games at the moment as I plan on finishing up Dark Souls, Final Fantasy XIII, FF13-2 on PS3 and Persona 3&4 on PS2 before the end of the year. This is pretty ambitious to get through 5 RPGs in just 2 months. But I've been looking forward to playing these 5 games for a very very long time, so I think I'll be able to enjoy them.
I'm not sure what else to say about this month. November is coming up. The PS4 and Xbox One is going to release. Battlefield 4 comes out in 6 hours. I'm still waiting for Phantasy Star Online 2 to release in the US.
So last month, I said I wasn't sure what I wanted out of October. For November, I want to finish up my portfolio, send out my resume for any open positions I find, and get back to working on my music projects.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Goodbye Summer~
Is it really the end of September already? This month passed by like it was nothing! And it's not like it was fun and games this month as I've been working daily on music to use as part of my portfolio or to improve myself. I had 3 songs I was working on and I was able to finish one while I started 2 others. Then in the middle of the month, Music Creator 6 had gone on sale on Steam along with some Virtual Instruments available for it. I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to spend money to get it and time to learn it. In the end, I realized I wasn't so readily prepared to spend $500-$1000 on Native Instruments Komplete 9/Ultimate Edition and would rather settle for something that was $45 ($200 if I had to buy everything at full price) and potentially be better than what I have (also it's cheaper than my first music program). So I added in one extra project to do: a sort of cover of "Labyrinth 1 - The Green Green Woodlands" from Etrian Odyssey 1 for the NDS which has been remade and being released on 3DS as Etrian Odyssey Untold (called Emerald Woodlands in that game).
It's the same exact song, but the remake of the song is slower and sounds similar to the style in Etrian Odyssey IV. I honestly didn't get anywhere in the first game but loved this theme so much. So when I heard the arrangement for the remake, I fell in love with the song again and have been practicing it on the piano all year. Because of that, I wanted to use it as a practice in the new program. It was quite a challenge since the layout and mechanics of Music Creator 6 feels different from Mixcraft, Ableton Live, FL Studios, Pro Logic, and just about every other Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) I've ever used. Well, I've learned a great deal from recreating the song and will most likely finish it today. I was actually pretty disappointed with the program and VSTs I got with it at first and wanted a refund. The Steinway Piano VST didn't sound like a Steinway, the orchestra strings didn't sound that much better, the guitar VSTs are extremely limited, they keyboard synths were boring and didn't offer much in variation, and the world instruments consisted mostly (if not entirely) of African drums. The only thing that seemed decent were the drum kits (significantly better than what I have) and the bass (also much better than what I have). But after working on the song for a bit and learning how the program worked, I realized a lot of the instruments are better than what I have and expanded the possibilities of what I have to work with. The program is still kind of confusing and the VSTs can't be used on my older program, but at least I have more options now.
Whew, that was quite a rant. Here's the tl;dr version: started 3 music projects, finished 1, got a new music program and worked on 4th project to practice on it.
Another thing that took up a lot of time this month was reorganizing my iPod and deciding what to take out. It's so easy to add new songs in, but so hard to take old songs out. I've been hearing all sorts of interesting and weird music this month now that I think about it. I found out about PrototypeRaptor yesterday when I happened to watch this silly little video with one of his songs in it:
And then a friend of mine shared a music video with me that went viral and sort of enjoyable to listen to and down-right absurd:
There's also the reveal of Mighty No. 9, a project led by Keiji Inafune of Megaman fame who launched a Kickstarter campaign to ask for the community's support and has reached up to 3 Million dollars in funds as of today with 25 hours to go. I really liked the interview they had with music composer Minami Matsumae.
And I definitely liked the documentary prelude they had for Mighty No. 9 and interviewed Keiji Inafune. At one point in the documentary, they asked Inafune "Do you have a personal goal for this project?" He said he had an assortment of goals, but mainly to make everyone happy.
This is the main theme she composed and produced that was played during the reveal video of the game.
We're not going to get to play it until 2015, but I'm pretty sure it'll be great.
Other than that, I have put Etrian Odyssey IV on hold because it's taking me forever to complete it (and yet I'm about to get Etrian Odyssey Untold tomorrow with Pokémon X/Y approaching, guh...) and so I started up Project X Zone up this month because I've waited all year long for it (pre-ordered it and everything and still didn't play it for 2 months because I've been too busy. To be blunt and straight-forward, Project X Zone is freaking awesome and the best fan-service to fans of gaming could ask for this year. Every time a new character appears and it's one I recognize with their theme playing, I get all excited and nostalgic. Theme songs like this:
and this: OR HOLY SMACKS THIS: I would've pointed out some more obvious ones like the Volcanic Rim Stage of Street Fighter IV, Tekken Tag Tournament Piano Intro, or Devils Never Cry from Devil May Cry, but I listen to those pretty frequently. Some of these themes I haven't heard in years! Seriously though, I think Project x Zone might be Game of the Year for me. The visuals, music, THEIR SIGNATURE QUOTES, the game mechanics, the memories, the challenge, and everything in-between just makes me remember why I loved all these video games I've played in the past. I have a serious problem with that in the past few years where I'm playing a game, I'll ask myself "am I even having fun? Is it worth it to playthrough?" I remember I wrote a post about it last year with the opposite problem: The Problem with Fun Games. I'll leave it at that since this post may never end if I go too far into the topic.
Two other games worth mentioning that I played recently are Krater and PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+. Krater came out last June and I bought it last November, but I never got around to playing it until just last month I convinced a friend to get it when it was $3 so that we could play multiplayer. Sadly, multiplayer was just 3 separate missions from the main game that players could "grind in" essentially.
Krater has had me interested for the past year it's been out, and I got it despite the lower scores that it got in reviews. The music really got me curious and the gameplay looked pretty crazy too. After completing, I can say that it was an unrealized project that had a lot of potential but never reached it and was released prematurely. Krater is a party-based Action-RPG (think Diablo with 3 characters to control, or Dungeon Siege if you've ever played that) that had a lot of great ideas but lack polish, content, and variety. For a game that allowed you to control 3 characters at once, you'd think there would be more classes (there's only 4 classes with a variation for each one), more skills (each class only has 2), and a lot less grinding. There are a lot of side quests, which is pretty cool if you want to keep playing more. I wanted to rush through the game, but it was impossible to. Side quests didn't reward the player with that much money or experience points, and so what I ended up doing was soloing multiplayer missions over and over again. I seriously got sick of staring at bears, wolves, boars and mooses. I could've given up on the game, but for some strange reason, I was very stubborn about finishing the game. And so, I finally completed the game 42 hours into it. I didn't feel like playing it anymore because out of those 42 hours, only about 15 hours was spent playing to progress the story and not grinding/farming for levels/currency. I was hoping I'd feel satisfied completing such a difficult game, but just went "this is stupid" when I finished off the last boss because honestly it wasn't hard, it was just tedious. I can't say I hated the game, but there are some parts of it I really enjoyed. I loved the music, and the whole atmosphere had a kind of fantasy theme behind it despite being a post-apocalyptic Sweden. The only way I'm going back to the game is to help my friend grind through the game so that he can finish it too.
So PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+ came out last week and I pre-ordered it a month beforehand to get 8 free DLCs with it.
I've already played through each course at least once and I gotta say it's a lot of fun. I have fond memories of playing Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man with my dad when I was younger and I didn't think they'd be able to change Pac-Man all that much. With the newer Pac-Man, it's similar to classic Pac-Man along with snake where you'll lure a bunch of ghosts to follow you and then chomp them all when you get a power-pellet. The game can get really intense and is a fun arcade-like game to jump back into once in a while.
Last month, I mentioned getting Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F for PS3, but I don't think I had purchased the controller yet. So there's a controller that works alongside with the game and was only sold in Japan. I hounded the Amazon page for it and waited for a price I was willing to spend for it. And then one day, I saw it for $117 (usually people put it up for $160+) and immediately purchased it (after 3 hours of pondering...so maybe not immediately). The problem was that I bought it from a new user on Amazon. After thinking about it for another 3 hours of purchasing it, I decided to purchase another one from a TRUSTED user on Amazon for $119 and asked to cancel the other order. I wasn't feeling too confident about buying for a new user. To my surprise, the seller sent me a message along the lines of "Thank you for purchase, goods will come in mail soon". So I immediately sent another messaging explaining I want to cancel the order and even had a friend find the suitable way to write it in Japanese so that they would understand. And I didn't hear back from the seller and saw that it was shipped out the day after. They responded 5 days later saying "Goods have been sent, send back after you receive". Both order said it would take a month to get here, and so I was pretty irritated with the situation and still am. Amazingly, I got the controller from the TRUSTED user a week after I made the order and have been playing on it the past few weeks while I'm still waiting for the other controller to get here, not knowing if it's the real thing/functional or if it will ever get here. I might actually have to file an order claim or report the user to Amazon if anythings goes wrong with the order (like it already hasn't). In any case, my point in telling this story is to tell you guys this: Buy from trusted users with experience and positive feedback on Amazon. Apparently there has been cases of counterfeit items and orders gone bad.
To end things off for this month's post, Tokyo Game Show was this month and I saw some interesting videos. Lightning Returns - Final Fantasy XIII was the one that stood out for me, right next to Deep Down.
I'm not sure what I want out of October, but I guess I mainly want to continue working on my music projects.
It's the same exact song, but the remake of the song is slower and sounds similar to the style in Etrian Odyssey IV. I honestly didn't get anywhere in the first game but loved this theme so much. So when I heard the arrangement for the remake, I fell in love with the song again and have been practicing it on the piano all year. Because of that, I wanted to use it as a practice in the new program. It was quite a challenge since the layout and mechanics of Music Creator 6 feels different from Mixcraft, Ableton Live, FL Studios, Pro Logic, and just about every other Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) I've ever used. Well, I've learned a great deal from recreating the song and will most likely finish it today. I was actually pretty disappointed with the program and VSTs I got with it at first and wanted a refund. The Steinway Piano VST didn't sound like a Steinway, the orchestra strings didn't sound that much better, the guitar VSTs are extremely limited, they keyboard synths were boring and didn't offer much in variation, and the world instruments consisted mostly (if not entirely) of African drums. The only thing that seemed decent were the drum kits (significantly better than what I have) and the bass (also much better than what I have). But after working on the song for a bit and learning how the program worked, I realized a lot of the instruments are better than what I have and expanded the possibilities of what I have to work with. The program is still kind of confusing and the VSTs can't be used on my older program, but at least I have more options now.
Whew, that was quite a rant. Here's the tl;dr version: started 3 music projects, finished 1, got a new music program and worked on 4th project to practice on it.
Another thing that took up a lot of time this month was reorganizing my iPod and deciding what to take out. It's so easy to add new songs in, but so hard to take old songs out. I've been hearing all sorts of interesting and weird music this month now that I think about it. I found out about PrototypeRaptor yesterday when I happened to watch this silly little video with one of his songs in it:
And then a friend of mine shared a music video with me that went viral and sort of enjoyable to listen to and down-right absurd:
There's also the reveal of Mighty No. 9, a project led by Keiji Inafune of Megaman fame who launched a Kickstarter campaign to ask for the community's support and has reached up to 3 Million dollars in funds as of today with 25 hours to go. I really liked the interview they had with music composer Minami Matsumae.
And I definitely liked the documentary prelude they had for Mighty No. 9 and interviewed Keiji Inafune. At one point in the documentary, they asked Inafune "Do you have a personal goal for this project?" He said he had an assortment of goals, but mainly to make everyone happy.
"I don't just want to make users happy; I want the creators to be happy, too.[...]I hope we can reach that point, because there's no worrying about our sales this quarter, or our profits this quarter, or what the shareholders are thinking. If the gamers are happy and we're happy, we've succeeded."
It was an inspirational documentary and I think this project will be very inspirational as well. As I learn more about the game industry, I am saddened and hesitant in what I might be getting into as the Videogame industry isn't too different from other businesses nowadays where profits and business overrules creativity and ambition. I teared up a little when hearing Keiji Inafune talk about his own ambitions.
This is the main theme she composed and produced that was played during the reveal video of the game.
We're not going to get to play it until 2015, but I'm pretty sure it'll be great.
Other than that, I have put Etrian Odyssey IV on hold because it's taking me forever to complete it (and yet I'm about to get Etrian Odyssey Untold tomorrow with Pokémon X/Y approaching, guh...) and so I started up Project X Zone up this month because I've waited all year long for it (pre-ordered it and everything and still didn't play it for 2 months because I've been too busy. To be blunt and straight-forward, Project X Zone is freaking awesome and the best fan-service to fans of gaming could ask for this year. Every time a new character appears and it's one I recognize with their theme playing, I get all excited and nostalgic. Theme songs like this:
and this: OR HOLY SMACKS THIS: I would've pointed out some more obvious ones like the Volcanic Rim Stage of Street Fighter IV, Tekken Tag Tournament Piano Intro, or Devils Never Cry from Devil May Cry, but I listen to those pretty frequently. Some of these themes I haven't heard in years! Seriously though, I think Project x Zone might be Game of the Year for me. The visuals, music, THEIR SIGNATURE QUOTES, the game mechanics, the memories, the challenge, and everything in-between just makes me remember why I loved all these video games I've played in the past. I have a serious problem with that in the past few years where I'm playing a game, I'll ask myself "am I even having fun? Is it worth it to playthrough?" I remember I wrote a post about it last year with the opposite problem: The Problem with Fun Games. I'll leave it at that since this post may never end if I go too far into the topic.
Two other games worth mentioning that I played recently are Krater and PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+. Krater came out last June and I bought it last November, but I never got around to playing it until just last month I convinced a friend to get it when it was $3 so that we could play multiplayer. Sadly, multiplayer was just 3 separate missions from the main game that players could "grind in" essentially.
Krater has had me interested for the past year it's been out, and I got it despite the lower scores that it got in reviews. The music really got me curious and the gameplay looked pretty crazy too. After completing, I can say that it was an unrealized project that had a lot of potential but never reached it and was released prematurely. Krater is a party-based Action-RPG (think Diablo with 3 characters to control, or Dungeon Siege if you've ever played that) that had a lot of great ideas but lack polish, content, and variety. For a game that allowed you to control 3 characters at once, you'd think there would be more classes (there's only 4 classes with a variation for each one), more skills (each class only has 2), and a lot less grinding. There are a lot of side quests, which is pretty cool if you want to keep playing more. I wanted to rush through the game, but it was impossible to. Side quests didn't reward the player with that much money or experience points, and so what I ended up doing was soloing multiplayer missions over and over again. I seriously got sick of staring at bears, wolves, boars and mooses. I could've given up on the game, but for some strange reason, I was very stubborn about finishing the game. And so, I finally completed the game 42 hours into it. I didn't feel like playing it anymore because out of those 42 hours, only about 15 hours was spent playing to progress the story and not grinding/farming for levels/currency. I was hoping I'd feel satisfied completing such a difficult game, but just went "this is stupid" when I finished off the last boss because honestly it wasn't hard, it was just tedious. I can't say I hated the game, but there are some parts of it I really enjoyed. I loved the music, and the whole atmosphere had a kind of fantasy theme behind it despite being a post-apocalyptic Sweden. The only way I'm going back to the game is to help my friend grind through the game so that he can finish it too.
So PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX+ came out last week and I pre-ordered it a month beforehand to get 8 free DLCs with it.
I've already played through each course at least once and I gotta say it's a lot of fun. I have fond memories of playing Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man with my dad when I was younger and I didn't think they'd be able to change Pac-Man all that much. With the newer Pac-Man, it's similar to classic Pac-Man along with snake where you'll lure a bunch of ghosts to follow you and then chomp them all when you get a power-pellet. The game can get really intense and is a fun arcade-like game to jump back into once in a while.
Last month, I mentioned getting Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F for PS3, but I don't think I had purchased the controller yet. So there's a controller that works alongside with the game and was only sold in Japan. I hounded the Amazon page for it and waited for a price I was willing to spend for it. And then one day, I saw it for $117 (usually people put it up for $160+) and immediately purchased it (after 3 hours of pondering...so maybe not immediately). The problem was that I bought it from a new user on Amazon. After thinking about it for another 3 hours of purchasing it, I decided to purchase another one from a TRUSTED user on Amazon for $119 and asked to cancel the other order. I wasn't feeling too confident about buying for a new user. To my surprise, the seller sent me a message along the lines of "Thank you for purchase, goods will come in mail soon". So I immediately sent another messaging explaining I want to cancel the order and even had a friend find the suitable way to write it in Japanese so that they would understand. And I didn't hear back from the seller and saw that it was shipped out the day after. They responded 5 days later saying "Goods have been sent, send back after you receive". Both order said it would take a month to get here, and so I was pretty irritated with the situation and still am. Amazingly, I got the controller from the TRUSTED user a week after I made the order and have been playing on it the past few weeks while I'm still waiting for the other controller to get here, not knowing if it's the real thing/functional or if it will ever get here. I might actually have to file an order claim or report the user to Amazon if anythings goes wrong with the order (like it already hasn't). In any case, my point in telling this story is to tell you guys this: Buy from trusted users with experience and positive feedback on Amazon. Apparently there has been cases of counterfeit items and orders gone bad.
To end things off for this month's post, Tokyo Game Show was this month and I saw some interesting videos. Lightning Returns - Final Fantasy XIII was the one that stood out for me, right next to Deep Down.
I'm not sure what I want out of October, but I guess I mainly want to continue working on my music projects.
Friday, August 30, 2013
The Fall of Summer
I can feel Fall approaching as I'm sneezing more often these few days. I hate Spring and Fall because of the unbearable allergic reactions I get from the pollen floating around when Winter's blistering cold melts or when Summer's searing heat dissipates. And again, an entire Summer has gone by where I'd say I'll go swimming and didn't even go once. I also haven't been keeping up with going to the gym as regularly the past two months. I think this week might be the first week I'll have gone all three days of the week since the first week of July.
I'm not sure what to report this month since it feels like a lot has happened, yet it also feels like it flew by like it was nothing. The perception of time is an odd thing where it can feel long and short at the same time. Between my last post and today's, we had family friends from China visit us for two weeks. In those two weeks, we pretty much had a large dinner of some sort every night at my house, or my grandmother's house, or my aunt's house, or at a restaurant. Long story short: I pigged out. So I gained a bit more weight again and have to work towards losing them again. It was good seeing my family friends again since it's been 7 years since I last seen them.
In between working on some music work, I got the chance to try out Payday 2 with a friend when we saw it on our Steam game list the day before it launched. It must've been some sort of Open Beta or special for those who owned the first game. I kept commenting on how great the music was and looked it up and realized it was Simon Viklund who led the remake of Bionic Commando Rearmed and remixed all the original songs. I then found out that there was a little remix contest he was holding that involved one of the tracks he made for Payday 2. Unfortunately, I found out the day of submission and knew I couldn't finish it in time. So I just did it for fun and practice. Here it is:
I only spent two days working on this, but I was super focused. I wish I were that focused on all the projects I worked on. Sadly, I've been working on a small arrangement project for one of the games I was working on and it's still not done. I really want to finish up and move onto new things so I can build up that portfolio. I'm really not sure if I'm doing what's best for my career right now as most people would say that I'm not and that I should be working, no matter what it is. I just don't want to end up working at a place long enough that I can't get to where ever I had originally planned. It'd be nice to work on an awesome game at a studio and be proud of the project I was working on, but I don't know how to go about doing that. So for now, I want to work on the game and music projects I have in mind until I feel satisfied and have the opportunity to show developers what I'm capable of.
Which tournament did I watch this month again? I'm pretty sure it was DotA 2's International 3. There were a lot of tournaments going on this month including League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Pokémon, and a bunch of others. I had a lot of fun watching DotA 2, but I was so burnt out from it that I didn't feel like watching any other. I skipped watching LoL entirely this year. I'd really like to watch some more fighting game tournaments though. EVO was just so exciting this year that it still lingers on my mind right now.
Speaking of fighting games, I pre-ordered Skullgirls for Steam and got a special Color DLC Palette. I usually don't care for color changes for characters in fighting games, but when I saw how many references it made to other videogames, animé, and pop culture, I jumped at the opportunity to nab it. The game's a lot of fun and has great mechanics for an indie developed game. I only wish that it had some sort of endless mode for single-player.
My friends have been asking me to stream the games I play for a while and I keep refusing. But I eventually made the effort to gather the applications and accounts to start streaming and have been doing so. I found out that Twitch records your entire broadcast and I was happy about that. I was going to download the videos and make highlight videos of my own since I didn't really want to make them on Twitch or Youtube. But then, one day out of nowhere, 7 of those videos were gone. I looked it up on the forums and realized that Twitch periodically deletes videos every 4-7 days. I was furious and sad at the same time. Actually, I think that happened earlier this week. This week was quite the roller coaster ride for me. On Sunday night, I found out that my Kendo Sensei Moon Kang had passed away the day before due to terminal illness of lung cancer. I can't say that I was surprised since he smoked a lot, but it was still very saddening to hear. I was hoping to still see him in the future if I had ever gone back to Irvine for work. He taught me a lot those 2 short years I was at UC Irvine about Kendo and how they can be carried over to our daily lives. In Kendo, he tells the students often not to hesitate. If you strike an enemy, make it decisive and quick. "Don't think too much and just do it." I guess that could be said about anything we do in life. If we hesitate too much, we start building up doubt and can't perform our best. Sadly, that didn't carry over very well for me in my career. Still, I remember how empowering it felt in Kendo whenever I made a strike and was able to perform well. Kang Sensei would tells us the story of how one of the masters would show their student that hesitation makes their swing sloppy. They would leave a small crack on a sliding door, close their eyes, and cut in-between the crack several times with a katana and not hit the door or wall. As long as you practice, don't hesitate, and have confidence with every swing, you will never miss your mark. There are many more stories and lessons he gave, but then I'll just be rambling on and on. He really was an inspirational teacher, and I'm going to miss him.
Right after seeing the post about Kang Sensei's passing, I saw an incredible deal for Lost Planet 2 for $6 on Green Man Gaming. I purchased it and was given no steam key. After some frustrating research and submitting a ticket for support, I was told that they ran out of keys to give but would give me one as soon as they got more. Luckily, they gave me one the day after. Now that's quick and responsive customer support! After purchasing Lost Planet 2, I was streaming some Retro City Rampage for my friends and then looked into the recordings section and that's when I found out 7 of my other videos were gone. So yeah, Sunday night was a pretty bad night for me. The next morning, I found out that Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F had a retail version being sold. I was happy about it, but was also indecisive about getting it since it was $49.99. By this point, I had the mixture of emotions from the night before with the ones right then and there. Sadness, frustration, anger, happiness, and indecisiveness overwhelmed me that day.
On Tuesday, I went out and bought Project DIVA F, found out that I got my Lost Planet 2 key on Monday in my e-mail, and got over my anger over losing my video recordings on Twitch. So my week was starting to turn around. On Thursday (yesterday), Valve had put up 50+ greenlit games on sale between 10%-75% off in celebration of one year since Steam Greenlight had launched. It hit a weak spot for me and I bought 4 games. And here I am today, happy for the most part, but frustrated with myself that an entire month has gone by and have accomplished very little. The most productive thing I did in August was the Payday 2 remix, and that was only 2 days out of the 31 days of this month. The only other "productive" thing worth mentioning I've done is the completion of 88 games from last months checkpoint of 70. This does make me happy and feel a bit proud that I got through so many games, but there are still plenty to go through.
I'm not sure what to report this month since it feels like a lot has happened, yet it also feels like it flew by like it was nothing. The perception of time is an odd thing where it can feel long and short at the same time. Between my last post and today's, we had family friends from China visit us for two weeks. In those two weeks, we pretty much had a large dinner of some sort every night at my house, or my grandmother's house, or my aunt's house, or at a restaurant. Long story short: I pigged out. So I gained a bit more weight again and have to work towards losing them again. It was good seeing my family friends again since it's been 7 years since I last seen them.
In between working on some music work, I got the chance to try out Payday 2 with a friend when we saw it on our Steam game list the day before it launched. It must've been some sort of Open Beta or special for those who owned the first game. I kept commenting on how great the music was and looked it up and realized it was Simon Viklund who led the remake of Bionic Commando Rearmed and remixed all the original songs. I then found out that there was a little remix contest he was holding that involved one of the tracks he made for Payday 2. Unfortunately, I found out the day of submission and knew I couldn't finish it in time. So I just did it for fun and practice. Here it is:
I only spent two days working on this, but I was super focused. I wish I were that focused on all the projects I worked on. Sadly, I've been working on a small arrangement project for one of the games I was working on and it's still not done. I really want to finish up and move onto new things so I can build up that portfolio. I'm really not sure if I'm doing what's best for my career right now as most people would say that I'm not and that I should be working, no matter what it is. I just don't want to end up working at a place long enough that I can't get to where ever I had originally planned. It'd be nice to work on an awesome game at a studio and be proud of the project I was working on, but I don't know how to go about doing that. So for now, I want to work on the game and music projects I have in mind until I feel satisfied and have the opportunity to show developers what I'm capable of.
Which tournament did I watch this month again? I'm pretty sure it was DotA 2's International 3. There were a lot of tournaments going on this month including League of Legends, Starcraft 2, Pokémon, and a bunch of others. I had a lot of fun watching DotA 2, but I was so burnt out from it that I didn't feel like watching any other. I skipped watching LoL entirely this year. I'd really like to watch some more fighting game tournaments though. EVO was just so exciting this year that it still lingers on my mind right now.
Speaking of fighting games, I pre-ordered Skullgirls for Steam and got a special Color DLC Palette. I usually don't care for color changes for characters in fighting games, but when I saw how many references it made to other videogames, animé, and pop culture, I jumped at the opportunity to nab it. The game's a lot of fun and has great mechanics for an indie developed game. I only wish that it had some sort of endless mode for single-player.
My friends have been asking me to stream the games I play for a while and I keep refusing. But I eventually made the effort to gather the applications and accounts to start streaming and have been doing so. I found out that Twitch records your entire broadcast and I was happy about that. I was going to download the videos and make highlight videos of my own since I didn't really want to make them on Twitch or Youtube. But then, one day out of nowhere, 7 of those videos were gone. I looked it up on the forums and realized that Twitch periodically deletes videos every 4-7 days. I was furious and sad at the same time. Actually, I think that happened earlier this week. This week was quite the roller coaster ride for me. On Sunday night, I found out that my Kendo Sensei Moon Kang had passed away the day before due to terminal illness of lung cancer. I can't say that I was surprised since he smoked a lot, but it was still very saddening to hear. I was hoping to still see him in the future if I had ever gone back to Irvine for work. He taught me a lot those 2 short years I was at UC Irvine about Kendo and how they can be carried over to our daily lives. In Kendo, he tells the students often not to hesitate. If you strike an enemy, make it decisive and quick. "Don't think too much and just do it." I guess that could be said about anything we do in life. If we hesitate too much, we start building up doubt and can't perform our best. Sadly, that didn't carry over very well for me in my career. Still, I remember how empowering it felt in Kendo whenever I made a strike and was able to perform well. Kang Sensei would tells us the story of how one of the masters would show their student that hesitation makes their swing sloppy. They would leave a small crack on a sliding door, close their eyes, and cut in-between the crack several times with a katana and not hit the door or wall. As long as you practice, don't hesitate, and have confidence with every swing, you will never miss your mark. There are many more stories and lessons he gave, but then I'll just be rambling on and on. He really was an inspirational teacher, and I'm going to miss him.
Right after seeing the post about Kang Sensei's passing, I saw an incredible deal for Lost Planet 2 for $6 on Green Man Gaming. I purchased it and was given no steam key. After some frustrating research and submitting a ticket for support, I was told that they ran out of keys to give but would give me one as soon as they got more. Luckily, they gave me one the day after. Now that's quick and responsive customer support! After purchasing Lost Planet 2, I was streaming some Retro City Rampage for my friends and then looked into the recordings section and that's when I found out 7 of my other videos were gone. So yeah, Sunday night was a pretty bad night for me. The next morning, I found out that Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F had a retail version being sold. I was happy about it, but was also indecisive about getting it since it was $49.99. By this point, I had the mixture of emotions from the night before with the ones right then and there. Sadness, frustration, anger, happiness, and indecisiveness overwhelmed me that day.
On Tuesday, I went out and bought Project DIVA F, found out that I got my Lost Planet 2 key on Monday in my e-mail, and got over my anger over losing my video recordings on Twitch. So my week was starting to turn around. On Thursday (yesterday), Valve had put up 50+ greenlit games on sale between 10%-75% off in celebration of one year since Steam Greenlight had launched. It hit a weak spot for me and I bought 4 games. And here I am today, happy for the most part, but frustrated with myself that an entire month has gone by and have accomplished very little. The most productive thing I did in August was the Payday 2 remix, and that was only 2 days out of the 31 days of this month. The only other "productive" thing worth mentioning I've done is the completion of 88 games from last months checkpoint of 70. This does make me happy and feel a bit proud that I got through so many games, but there are still plenty to go through.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
All the HYPE!
Man, what a crazy month it's been! It's funny that I say that since I haven't really gone anywhere. I decided to take a break from work in July and had planned that for June but kept busy in order to keep up with work. I'm so sad July is coming to an end since it's been so much fun for me. In the beginning of the month, a friend from LA drove all the way up to visit me and hang out for a few days. I played a bunch of games on Wii, PS3, and PC with him and showed him around Old Sacramento. It was a short visit, but it was definitely worth seeing him again since the last time I got to hang out with him was 3 years ago before I graduated from UCI. Project X Zone for the 3DS finally came in the mail, but I didn't get the chance to play it until 2 nights ago since I've been so busy the past 3 weeks. On July 11th, Summer Steam Sales and EVO began. On that weekend, I watched all the matches on Twitch Stream while playing the Open Beta for Firefall. There were a lot of exciting matches and this was the first year I watched all of EVO.
Source: Youtube Channel IGN
The match between Justin Wong vs. ChrisG on Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was the one I really wanted to see happen and it did when Justin was knocked into the loser's bracket. When it was 0-2 and Justin was down to his last character, I just expected him to lose and thought it was a one-sided match with ChrisG doing some excellent plays. But then Justin surprised everyone with a crazy comeback with Storm (which he has done before) and won 3 rounds in a row and climbed his way all the way out of loser's bracket and into the finals with 2-2 but lost in the end. Still, it was such an exciting experience watching him beat all odds and get so far. I enjoyed watching most of the finals, but for specific games, I was looking forward to watching Persona 4 Arena, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Street Fighter x Tekken since those are games I generally don't get to see tournament plays for. I played Firefall and Path of Exile with a friend while watching the streams that weekend.
Then the week continued with more sales from Steam. I had ordered a discounted Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate 3 for 3DS and went out to buy Dynasty Warriors 8 on the first day it came out (July 16th) for the PS3 in between the sales. And right when the sale started, there was a Humble Weekly Bundle of Spiderweb Software's 15 games. I also forgot to mention that during my friend's visit from LA, we went to GameStop and I finally got a copy of Baroque for the Wii for $5 and Odin Sphere went on sale for $5 on PSN this week so I picked that up last night. Needless to say, I acquired a plethora of new games and have been excitedly playing through a good number of them in the past 2 weeks.
To go through some of the games I got on steam, I finally purchased Defiance for $13.59 and thought it was a good price for a game I can hop onto once in a while to mess around in and kill stuff. I didn't feel very good about a $30 on it during the free weekend I tried it a few weeks ago, but $13.59 isn't too bad of a price. I had a lot of trouble getting God Mode to work and then found a way to play it without it crashing by turning all the graphic settings to low. It's definitely a multiplayer intensive game, but I can't connect to anyone's game which means no one plays it or match making sucks. Still, it's a fun third-person shooter that cuts to the chase and let's me jump into the action. The one game I'm really happy with is Rogue Legacy. It's an Action-Platform Adventure game with RPG and Rogue-like elements such as level progression, equipment acquisition, randomly generated levels, and extreme difficulty. It reminds me a lot of Castlevania post Symphony of the Night type games and I think that's where it really pulls me in. I'm also really happy with The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, a sort of diablo-ish game with a unique skill tree and ability mechanic. Along with me buying a bunch of games during the sale, a lot of my friends have been buying games too and I've been able to play a bunch of games with them because of it.
And the month isn't over just yet. One of my friends is treating me to Videogames Live tomorrow and it will be the first time I'm seeing it in concert. There's still so many games I want to play and get through. My plan for "relaxation" originally was to beat as many games as possible with one of them being Starcraft 2. Well, that didn't happen as I haven't even touched it yet. I just ended up buying a bunch of games and playing whatever I felt like. Surprisingly, I jumped up from 53 completed games to 70 since the last time I posted last month. What makes me sad about July ending soon is what I have to get back into for the next month: back to arranging my portfolio, searching for job openings and submitting resumés and cover letters, possibly going to court for jury duty (most likely, ugh), and getting work done. Hopefully I was able to relax enough this past month to actually help me keep focused for the next month.
Source: Youtube Channel IGN
The match between Justin Wong vs. ChrisG on Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was the one I really wanted to see happen and it did when Justin was knocked into the loser's bracket. When it was 0-2 and Justin was down to his last character, I just expected him to lose and thought it was a one-sided match with ChrisG doing some excellent plays. But then Justin surprised everyone with a crazy comeback with Storm (which he has done before) and won 3 rounds in a row and climbed his way all the way out of loser's bracket and into the finals with 2-2 but lost in the end. Still, it was such an exciting experience watching him beat all odds and get so far. I enjoyed watching most of the finals, but for specific games, I was looking forward to watching Persona 4 Arena, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Street Fighter x Tekken since those are games I generally don't get to see tournament plays for. I played Firefall and Path of Exile with a friend while watching the streams that weekend.
Then the week continued with more sales from Steam. I had ordered a discounted Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate 3 for 3DS and went out to buy Dynasty Warriors 8 on the first day it came out (July 16th) for the PS3 in between the sales. And right when the sale started, there was a Humble Weekly Bundle of Spiderweb Software's 15 games. I also forgot to mention that during my friend's visit from LA, we went to GameStop and I finally got a copy of Baroque for the Wii for $5 and Odin Sphere went on sale for $5 on PSN this week so I picked that up last night. Needless to say, I acquired a plethora of new games and have been excitedly playing through a good number of them in the past 2 weeks.
To go through some of the games I got on steam, I finally purchased Defiance for $13.59 and thought it was a good price for a game I can hop onto once in a while to mess around in and kill stuff. I didn't feel very good about a $30 on it during the free weekend I tried it a few weeks ago, but $13.59 isn't too bad of a price. I had a lot of trouble getting God Mode to work and then found a way to play it without it crashing by turning all the graphic settings to low. It's definitely a multiplayer intensive game, but I can't connect to anyone's game which means no one plays it or match making sucks. Still, it's a fun third-person shooter that cuts to the chase and let's me jump into the action. The one game I'm really happy with is Rogue Legacy. It's an Action-Platform Adventure game with RPG and Rogue-like elements such as level progression, equipment acquisition, randomly generated levels, and extreme difficulty. It reminds me a lot of Castlevania post Symphony of the Night type games and I think that's where it really pulls me in. I'm also really happy with The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, a sort of diablo-ish game with a unique skill tree and ability mechanic. Along with me buying a bunch of games during the sale, a lot of my friends have been buying games too and I've been able to play a bunch of games with them because of it.
And the month isn't over just yet. One of my friends is treating me to Videogames Live tomorrow and it will be the first time I'm seeing it in concert. There's still so many games I want to play and get through. My plan for "relaxation" originally was to beat as many games as possible with one of them being Starcraft 2. Well, that didn't happen as I haven't even touched it yet. I just ended up buying a bunch of games and playing whatever I felt like. Surprisingly, I jumped up from 53 completed games to 70 since the last time I posted last month. What makes me sad about July ending soon is what I have to get back into for the next month: back to arranging my portfolio, searching for job openings and submitting resumés and cover letters, possibly going to court for jury duty (most likely, ugh), and getting work done. Hopefully I was able to relax enough this past month to actually help me keep focused for the next month.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
The Future of Gaming looks bright!
E3 has already gone and past and still no word from Sega of when Phantasy Star Online 2 is coming out in NA. It was reported on Kotaku today that they reached out to Sega and they replied back saying it's still delayed. It's been nearly a year since it launched in Japan. In fact, they have Episode 2 on its way!
It's time for me to fall back on Phantasy Star Universe and get through the story once and for all. As mentioned last month, I had to start over because I lost my save file from the computer crash of early 2012.
Anyways, last week was a super busy week of following coverages of E3 and finding out all I could about the newest games coming out. There were a LOT of interesting games showed this year. It was actually overwhelming. One particular game that's a new IP that stood out for my friends and I was Tom Clancy's The Division.
It looks like it has similar elements to games like DayZ where the player must find food and other sustenance to survive. Players can group up with friends to take on missions together that seem to happen spontaneously in an open-world environment. It has some RPG elements where players can upgrade skills and give buffs and heals to team members in the midst of a fire-fight. Someone with a tablet/iPad can join in as a UAV and scout out enemies for team members and tag them into visibility. At the end of the video it showed the group of players suddenly in contact with another group and engage in open-world PvP. The only problem right now is that it's set out to release only on consoles, but many PC gamers are rallying for a petition to see it released for the PC as well. I can go on and on about the rest of what I saw on E3, but it'll take too long. I spent all 5 days last week covering it.
Last month, I mentioned that I bought Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate for the 3DS. I went and played through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and got through it. All my complaints about it still stands and I enjoyed playing it despite being disappointed by it at the same time if that makes sense. I started playing Mirror of Fate and it's just making me cringe as I get through the story and play the game because of how drastically different it is from the Castlevania I usually love and play. It's fun in its own way, but like Lords of Shadow for the PS3, I have a lot of problems with it. I'm trying to finish it up quickly so I get back to Etrian Odyssey IV and complete that game as well. I still have Kid Icarus uprising to play and Project X Zone pre-order which will be out next week.
Speaking of next week, I didn't even realize how quickly my birthday is coming up. I've been so busy playing catch-up with my work that the past 4 months just flew by like it was nothing. I didn't really have anything planned and don't even know if my friends were available to hang out, but I had set this Saturday to go eat lunch, go back to my place to play some fighting games and eat dinner and end the night with Counter-Strike: Source. I couldn't really think of anything big to do nor is it really important right now. Being able to hang out with a few of my friends sounded good enough for me as I try to balance out my unorganized schedule. I'm trying to do so many things at once with drawing, music, fixing up my portfolio, looking up new jobs, and working towards my own game developments as well as my more personal but unnecessary goals such as completing games to my crazy backlog. I'm at 53 right now just from the 48 I reported last month. Castlevania took up most of the time, but I think I'll be able to complete some more in the following weeks. Also, I got a beta invite to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 5 days ago and didn't even realize it until I checked my email today. I'm downloading the test client right now and getting ready for the next beta run this Friday. I've been too tried and busy to try out betas for any game nowadays. DotA 2 will finally be out of beta sometime this Summer and become an official game available on Steam as a free-to-play game. It's strange to call it a beta considering that I've spent 170 hours on it already. That's more than what I have on Team Fortress 2!
I really want to spend some focused time on beating some games such as Starcraft 2, so I'm probably going to spend July playing games. But I feel that might be unproductive, so I'll probably be doing drawing and music in-between. That just means I need to work extremely hard these next 3 weeks to finish up my portfolio and look at some potential jobs to apply for. As tiring and busy as it was last week, getting to see all the new games that's in development really excited me and made me happy in a way. I'm happy that so many interesting games will be out in the future, but the ones I really want to play I have to wait so long for. I can't wait for Super Smash Bros.!
It's time for me to fall back on Phantasy Star Universe and get through the story once and for all. As mentioned last month, I had to start over because I lost my save file from the computer crash of early 2012.
Anyways, last week was a super busy week of following coverages of E3 and finding out all I could about the newest games coming out. There were a LOT of interesting games showed this year. It was actually overwhelming. One particular game that's a new IP that stood out for my friends and I was Tom Clancy's The Division.
It looks like it has similar elements to games like DayZ where the player must find food and other sustenance to survive. Players can group up with friends to take on missions together that seem to happen spontaneously in an open-world environment. It has some RPG elements where players can upgrade skills and give buffs and heals to team members in the midst of a fire-fight. Someone with a tablet/iPad can join in as a UAV and scout out enemies for team members and tag them into visibility. At the end of the video it showed the group of players suddenly in contact with another group and engage in open-world PvP. The only problem right now is that it's set out to release only on consoles, but many PC gamers are rallying for a petition to see it released for the PC as well. I can go on and on about the rest of what I saw on E3, but it'll take too long. I spent all 5 days last week covering it.
Last month, I mentioned that I bought Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate for the 3DS. I went and played through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and got through it. All my complaints about it still stands and I enjoyed playing it despite being disappointed by it at the same time if that makes sense. I started playing Mirror of Fate and it's just making me cringe as I get through the story and play the game because of how drastically different it is from the Castlevania I usually love and play. It's fun in its own way, but like Lords of Shadow for the PS3, I have a lot of problems with it. I'm trying to finish it up quickly so I get back to Etrian Odyssey IV and complete that game as well. I still have Kid Icarus uprising to play and Project X Zone pre-order which will be out next week.
Speaking of next week, I didn't even realize how quickly my birthday is coming up. I've been so busy playing catch-up with my work that the past 4 months just flew by like it was nothing. I didn't really have anything planned and don't even know if my friends were available to hang out, but I had set this Saturday to go eat lunch, go back to my place to play some fighting games and eat dinner and end the night with Counter-Strike: Source. I couldn't really think of anything big to do nor is it really important right now. Being able to hang out with a few of my friends sounded good enough for me as I try to balance out my unorganized schedule. I'm trying to do so many things at once with drawing, music, fixing up my portfolio, looking up new jobs, and working towards my own game developments as well as my more personal but unnecessary goals such as completing games to my crazy backlog. I'm at 53 right now just from the 48 I reported last month. Castlevania took up most of the time, but I think I'll be able to complete some more in the following weeks. Also, I got a beta invite to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 5 days ago and didn't even realize it until I checked my email today. I'm downloading the test client right now and getting ready for the next beta run this Friday. I've been too tried and busy to try out betas for any game nowadays. DotA 2 will finally be out of beta sometime this Summer and become an official game available on Steam as a free-to-play game. It's strange to call it a beta considering that I've spent 170 hours on it already. That's more than what I have on Team Fortress 2!
I really want to spend some focused time on beating some games such as Starcraft 2, so I'm probably going to spend July playing games. But I feel that might be unproductive, so I'll probably be doing drawing and music in-between. That just means I need to work extremely hard these next 3 weeks to finish up my portfolio and look at some potential jobs to apply for. As tiring and busy as it was last week, getting to see all the new games that's in development really excited me and made me happy in a way. I'm happy that so many interesting games will be out in the future, but the ones I really want to play I have to wait so long for. I can't wait for Super Smash Bros.!
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Time flies when not working hard
Oh dear, where did the time go? I've been preparing for the May 10th weekend for over 2 months and I now that it's past it feels like all time has been warped. I went down to Irvine to celebrate my sister's Birthday on May 10th and met up with all my League of Legends friends on May 11th. A year ago, a few of my friends from UC Irvine started playing League of Legends and so I played with them to get them more familiar with the game. As I played with them, they found other friends that played the game and invited them into our games. Soon after, they invited their friends and we've ended up playing together almost every night in the past year and have grown quite familiar and close. The only problem was that I never got to meet them in person until just now. We met up at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa and at lunch before deciding to go to Irvine's Spectrum to play at the arcades within Dave and Busters. It's been so long since I've played at an arcade, but I realize they're really expensive (I spent $22). We then went back to Fountain Valley area to Karaoke at Elvis!? It's the same place I went to Karaoke when I was with Tomo no Kai in UC Irvine. We ate dinner, got some cake, and went to a friend's house to play fighting games on the PS3. It was a fun and memorable day for me, and it was great seeing my sister after a half year of not seeing her. But ever since I got back from that weekend, I've been lethargic and slow on work. It could also have to do with that 7 drive there and 7 drive back (I hate long car rides). I should be working on my portfolio and sending out job applications, but I've been working on another drawing (this time digital). I'm practically done, but I think I need one more day's work and I can complete it. After that, I really need to buckle down and send those resumés out. I especially want to complete everything this month so that I can fully focus and enjoy June where I'll be powering through my backlog and completing games.
I'm at a pretty good rate right now with up to 48 games completed. I finished Anarchy Reigns on PS3 and really enjoyed it. It had a great soundtrack and it was simple beat-em-up fun. Sonic Generations was especially fun. I haven't played a Sonic game that I enjoyed so much in the longest time. It was announced a few days ago that another Sonic game is in the works, but I'm not sure if it can live up to the quality of Sonic Generations. I finally completed Cherry Tree High Comedy Club after failing the first time and getting it right the 2nd time around. It was a light-hearted game that doesn't have too much replay value, but it was a really happy experience. It was almost like watching an animé. I finally gave up on Alpha Protocol after playing it for like 1-2 years off and on because it ended up just crashing every time I started it and I had just gotten to the last mission too. I watched every ending possible online and was surprised with the amount of endings the player could get. The game was semi-enjoyable with a lot of problems and flaws that made it difficult to play at times. I tried my best not to buy anymore games until I've finished more up, but after playing some fighting games at my friend's house when I was in SoCal, I wanted to get two of them that were fairly cheap. I ordered The King of Fighters XIII ($24) and Soul Calibur V ($14) for PS3 last week and plan on getting Dead or Alive 5 later as an "Ultimate" version is in the works for release this October.
I also ordered Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate ($25) for the 3DS despite not having finished or even started on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for the PS3. Because of that, I started it this weekend and had a lot of conflicting thoughts on it. On one side, I think it's well developed with quality working mechanics and a thought out design around it. At the same time, I feel like the game suffers from an identity crisis. It's supposed to be a "Castlevania" game yet the only thing that really feels like Castlevania is the use of the whip and daggers. The combat is "God of War". The Boss fight is "Shadow of the Colossus". The themes and platforming is Uncharted (although some levels looked exactly like Garshasp: The Monster Slayer). It takes the best elements of the Action-Adventure genre and stuffs it in this game. In terms of gameplay, it works really well and it's enjoyable. But as a videogame and Castlevania experience, it feels generic and forgettable. It was really cool hearing Patrick Stewart's voice narrating the game in the beginning. But as the story progresses, it became so overly forced in sounding epic that it starts sounding cheesy. The same with the music. It constantly plays at odd times with the most epic sounding strings and vocals that it's almost like a parody of epic games being epic. And don't even get me started on the main Character. I'm really hoping there's more progress in character development, because as of the end of chapter 2, I find Gabriel Belmont to be a very boring character with no personality. It's like watching Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. I think the game's fun and combat is a lot better than a lot of other action games I've played, but the game doesn't really stand out the way most Castlevania games do. As I've said before: this game suffers from an identity crisis! I think I'd feel a bit better if they just had this game stand as an independent IP and call it "The Lords of Shadow" rather than just stamping the Castlevania name to it. What really scares me is that the 3DS game "Mirror of Fate" will talk about Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Simon Belmont. I think I'm most disappointed with the music so far. As epic sounding and well composed they are, the music doesn't sound or feel like a Castlevania game and just follows the generic cinematic "Big" sound. So as you can see, I'm very conflicted with how I feel about the game. I'm having fun with it, yet I'm disappointed at the same time. Other than that, I pre-ordered Project X Zone for the 3DS and am excited to play it.
Besides Project X Zone, I'm excited about Dynasty Warriors 8. There doesn't seem to be that many games that I'm looking forward to this year. The one game that I really care about and want is Phantasy Star Online 2. Where the heck is it?
Sega is still being tight-lipped on a release date for the Western release of PSO2 and it's maddening! It's already been confirmed that it's been postponed past Spring, but postponed until when? I guess I can always go back to Phantasy Star Universe and try to complete it. It's been difficult to ever since I lost my save data back in the computer crash I had in the beginning of 2012.
I feel like I'll be getting really busy these next few months.
I'm at a pretty good rate right now with up to 48 games completed. I finished Anarchy Reigns on PS3 and really enjoyed it. It had a great soundtrack and it was simple beat-em-up fun. Sonic Generations was especially fun. I haven't played a Sonic game that I enjoyed so much in the longest time. It was announced a few days ago that another Sonic game is in the works, but I'm not sure if it can live up to the quality of Sonic Generations. I finally completed Cherry Tree High Comedy Club after failing the first time and getting it right the 2nd time around. It was a light-hearted game that doesn't have too much replay value, but it was a really happy experience. It was almost like watching an animé. I finally gave up on Alpha Protocol after playing it for like 1-2 years off and on because it ended up just crashing every time I started it and I had just gotten to the last mission too. I watched every ending possible online and was surprised with the amount of endings the player could get. The game was semi-enjoyable with a lot of problems and flaws that made it difficult to play at times. I tried my best not to buy anymore games until I've finished more up, but after playing some fighting games at my friend's house when I was in SoCal, I wanted to get two of them that were fairly cheap. I ordered The King of Fighters XIII ($24) and Soul Calibur V ($14) for PS3 last week and plan on getting Dead or Alive 5 later as an "Ultimate" version is in the works for release this October.
I also ordered Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate ($25) for the 3DS despite not having finished or even started on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for the PS3. Because of that, I started it this weekend and had a lot of conflicting thoughts on it. On one side, I think it's well developed with quality working mechanics and a thought out design around it. At the same time, I feel like the game suffers from an identity crisis. It's supposed to be a "Castlevania" game yet the only thing that really feels like Castlevania is the use of the whip and daggers. The combat is "God of War". The Boss fight is "Shadow of the Colossus". The themes and platforming is Uncharted (although some levels looked exactly like Garshasp: The Monster Slayer). It takes the best elements of the Action-Adventure genre and stuffs it in this game. In terms of gameplay, it works really well and it's enjoyable. But as a videogame and Castlevania experience, it feels generic and forgettable. It was really cool hearing Patrick Stewart's voice narrating the game in the beginning. But as the story progresses, it became so overly forced in sounding epic that it starts sounding cheesy. The same with the music. It constantly plays at odd times with the most epic sounding strings and vocals that it's almost like a parody of epic games being epic. And don't even get me started on the main Character. I'm really hoping there's more progress in character development, because as of the end of chapter 2, I find Gabriel Belmont to be a very boring character with no personality. It's like watching Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. I think the game's fun and combat is a lot better than a lot of other action games I've played, but the game doesn't really stand out the way most Castlevania games do. As I've said before: this game suffers from an identity crisis! I think I'd feel a bit better if they just had this game stand as an independent IP and call it "The Lords of Shadow" rather than just stamping the Castlevania name to it. What really scares me is that the 3DS game "Mirror of Fate" will talk about Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Simon Belmont. I think I'm most disappointed with the music so far. As epic sounding and well composed they are, the music doesn't sound or feel like a Castlevania game and just follows the generic cinematic "Big" sound. So as you can see, I'm very conflicted with how I feel about the game. I'm having fun with it, yet I'm disappointed at the same time. Other than that, I pre-ordered Project X Zone for the 3DS and am excited to play it.
Besides Project X Zone, I'm excited about Dynasty Warriors 8. There doesn't seem to be that many games that I'm looking forward to this year. The one game that I really care about and want is Phantasy Star Online 2. Where the heck is it?
Sega is still being tight-lipped on a release date for the Western release of PSO2 and it's maddening! It's already been confirmed that it's been postponed past Spring, but postponed until when? I guess I can always go back to Phantasy Star Universe and try to complete it. It's been difficult to ever since I lost my save data back in the computer crash I had in the beginning of 2012.
I feel like I'll be getting really busy these next few months.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Art April getting nowhere
Much like Music March of last month, I'm getting nothing done. Unlike last month, I actually have been working since the beginning of the month. I thought it'd be fun to draw a large picture of a bunch of League of Legends characters reflecting my friends and myself within as a warm-up for the month. What was supposed to be a small project has turned into a 3 week long task I have yet to finish. It's turning out pretty good, but it wasn't the objective I had in mind this month. I'm hoping to finish it up today and move onto other projects, mainly cover art for the music I need to upload for my portfolio. It's been a peaceful month for me otherwise. Sadly, it hasn't been for those at the Boston Marathon and those relating or knowing those who were there. In short, there was a bombing attack at a marathon where 3 fatalities and over 100 injuries were done. The police officials said they got a suspect in custody, but it really shocked many people to see how young the suspect was. It's frightening.
I haven't been completing as many games as I thought I would this month. I'm at 37 right now, but I'm hoping to reach 40 by the end of the month. I have a few arcade-like games that I could probably finish up. I've been playing a bit more League of Legends again this month as more of my friends are on it this month. If not, I'm still playing DotA 2. Seeing my games pile up, I'm thinking of having May a month of working on submitting job applications and building my portfolio while June will be spent working through some of those games to shorten the list a bit. I've gotten into a Rogue-Like RPG called Eternal League of Nefia (Elona) by recommendation from a friend. I've known about the game for years, but never really tried it out. There's a chance I might have played it before, but don't remember and I probably didn't know what to do. In any case, I had a bit of help going through some parts of the game from my friend and I got hooked.
In Elona, there's a lot of customization for your character. Lots of random encounters happen throughout playing that favor the player or screw them over. Certain dungeons randomly generate each time you go in while other randomly generate once per character. It's difficult to describe what makes Rogue-likes fun, and they usually look boring in gameplay videos. I actually didn't like Rogue-likes too much in the beginning, but once I started to understand how they worked, it got a lot more entertaining. Rogue-likes are rarely made in main-stream gaming, but a lot of indie games seem to fall back on the mechanics of Rogue-likes lately. One Rogue-like that's coming to consoles is The Guided Fate Paradox for the PS3; I'm looking forward to that game. I don't really have that much to report in terms of games other than that I've been playing Elona. I highly doubt I'll finish the game and will probably resort to cheating to complete it. But for now, I'm just enjoying the game as it is and experiencing the open-world gameplay as much as I can before I do so.
I've actually been music hunting this month and have found a lot of videogame music that I like. I played some of my fighting games last Sunday and realized that new characters were unlocked on Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on its own. I also remembered that I like the music in the game and decided to find and listen to them. A friend of mine was talking about the special arranged tracks that came with the limited edition of Zone of the Enders HD pack and how he hated how all the songs from the game were "Dubstep-ified". I was curious so I went onto Youtube to listen to some of them to compare to the originals. Sadly for him, I really liked the remix for Beyond the Bounds. It holds the essence of the original song, has a lot of energy, and accentuates all the right parts for a dramatic effect.
The other tracks were okay, some were pretty good, while a few really were terrible. This one just stood out so much though. It's an amazing remix. Oh, I forgot to mention that Dynasty Warriors 8 is coming out this July. It made me really excited and a bit worried. DW7 was absolutely phenomenal within the DW series, so I'm not sure if DW8 will live up to it. It seems that a lot of other artists helped with the music, which worries me a bit as well. The only other DW I know that MASA had other contributing artists work on the music was DW6, which wasn't as great. The music for DW7 was amazing as well, so high expectations are made. I'll be giving the soundtrack to DW8 a listen and see for myself, but I won't be able to play the game until July (I'm probably getting it first day). I guess there isn't much else to update this month. I didn't watch a single episode of Sword Art Online or any other animé either. I'm hoping to get more art and music projects done in the following month.
I haven't been completing as many games as I thought I would this month. I'm at 37 right now, but I'm hoping to reach 40 by the end of the month. I have a few arcade-like games that I could probably finish up. I've been playing a bit more League of Legends again this month as more of my friends are on it this month. If not, I'm still playing DotA 2. Seeing my games pile up, I'm thinking of having May a month of working on submitting job applications and building my portfolio while June will be spent working through some of those games to shorten the list a bit. I've gotten into a Rogue-Like RPG called Eternal League of Nefia (Elona) by recommendation from a friend. I've known about the game for years, but never really tried it out. There's a chance I might have played it before, but don't remember and I probably didn't know what to do. In any case, I had a bit of help going through some parts of the game from my friend and I got hooked.
In Elona, there's a lot of customization for your character. Lots of random encounters happen throughout playing that favor the player or screw them over. Certain dungeons randomly generate each time you go in while other randomly generate once per character. It's difficult to describe what makes Rogue-likes fun, and they usually look boring in gameplay videos. I actually didn't like Rogue-likes too much in the beginning, but once I started to understand how they worked, it got a lot more entertaining. Rogue-likes are rarely made in main-stream gaming, but a lot of indie games seem to fall back on the mechanics of Rogue-likes lately. One Rogue-like that's coming to consoles is The Guided Fate Paradox for the PS3; I'm looking forward to that game. I don't really have that much to report in terms of games other than that I've been playing Elona. I highly doubt I'll finish the game and will probably resort to cheating to complete it. But for now, I'm just enjoying the game as it is and experiencing the open-world gameplay as much as I can before I do so.
I've actually been music hunting this month and have found a lot of videogame music that I like. I played some of my fighting games last Sunday and realized that new characters were unlocked on Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on its own. I also remembered that I like the music in the game and decided to find and listen to them. A friend of mine was talking about the special arranged tracks that came with the limited edition of Zone of the Enders HD pack and how he hated how all the songs from the game were "Dubstep-ified". I was curious so I went onto Youtube to listen to some of them to compare to the originals. Sadly for him, I really liked the remix for Beyond the Bounds. It holds the essence of the original song, has a lot of energy, and accentuates all the right parts for a dramatic effect.
The other tracks were okay, some were pretty good, while a few really were terrible. This one just stood out so much though. It's an amazing remix. Oh, I forgot to mention that Dynasty Warriors 8 is coming out this July. It made me really excited and a bit worried. DW7 was absolutely phenomenal within the DW series, so I'm not sure if DW8 will live up to it. It seems that a lot of other artists helped with the music, which worries me a bit as well. The only other DW I know that MASA had other contributing artists work on the music was DW6, which wasn't as great. The music for DW7 was amazing as well, so high expectations are made. I'll be giving the soundtrack to DW8 a listen and see for myself, but I won't be able to play the game until July (I'm probably getting it first day). I guess there isn't much else to update this month. I didn't watch a single episode of Sword Art Online or any other animé either. I'm hoping to get more art and music projects done in the following month.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Music March, what happened!?
This month passed by so quickly! I felt like I accomplished very little in what I wanted to do. So this month, I was planning to work really hard on music, but the first 15 days of March was mostly taken up by doing sound effects for Camera Obscura, going over to my grandma's to check up on her after her accident (check last post), and by getting sidetracked I suppose. I actually uploaded my Street Fighter Medley mix on facebook 2 days after last month's post and decided to be done with it and move onto other projects. Half way through this month, I buckled down and worked on the Mach Rider remix I had planned out ever since Jr. College about 5-6 years ago. I had always planned to make it a rock/electronic remix, but over the last 1.5 years I decided I wanted to make it into a Bass 'n Drum remix. I finished it and was really happy with "what" it sounded like but was dissatisfied with "how" it sounded. Mostly, I wasn't happy with how weak the beat sounded and how quiet it was. So I finally decided to learn how to do post mastering and realized I could easily do it in Audacity, which is free and something I already had. So after a day of listening to ambiguous videos and tips from the internet, I messed around with the settings on Audacity and finally grasped the very basics of equalizing, compression and amplify allowing me to raise the volume, bass, treble, and overall quality of a track without making it sound distorted. I also found out that I've been exporting MP3s at half the quality I could have been. Furthermore, high quality audio takes up a ridiculous amount of hard drive space! I tried to keep my audio files in the highest quality and realized it can take up 300-700 MB just for a few minutes of audio! Still, it was good to know I can make my songs sound even better. The problem is that I have the obligation to return to all my previous songs and rework them so they sound all just as good. So in the end, the Mach Rider turned out really great (though it could probably be even better if I knew what I was doing). Still, that's just 1 song out of the entire month and now I'm scrambling to work on more these next 2 days before I start "Art April" and switch over to drawing. Today is seriously a busy day for me: change bed sheets, writing this, working on an art project, reworking my older songs, experimenting with a new VST I got, etc. I'm really disappointed in myself as I hoped to get at the very least 5-6 type of music projects done this month (I was actually thinking more of 12, but I have to be realistic here). Still, I'm really happy I looked into mastering and learned how to handle the basics now.
So in terms of gaming, I'm actually making good progress...in a way. I jumped from last months 21 completed games up to 34 completed games as of last night. I'm actually hoping to make even faster progress of this after learning something scary about my back log of games. In the middle of the month, I decided to count up all the games I haven't completed yet and shared it with my friends since I usually complain to them about my backlog. There's a slight difference in numbers since I completed a few games in the past few weeks, but here it is:
Gameboy DS: 1 (Pokémon SoulSilver)
Gameboy 3DS: 1 (Etrian Odyssey IV)
Gamecube: 8
Nintendo Wii: 13
Playstation 3: 22
Playstation 2: 29
PC: 150
As you can see, my list of PC games have grown into a sort of monstrosity that needs to be put down. Despite the large number of PC games I had (it was 148 when I counted), I have bought 7 games for super cheat because of spring sales and completed 5 games in the past 2 weeks. Thus I ended up with a count of 150 games at the moment.
I had completed Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D since my last post after 28 hours of playing it. I mostly enjoyed it, but there were many groan-worthy moments throughout the game where I wasn't having as much fun. Still, I rushed through it so I could start playing Code of Princess. It took around 4-5 hours to complete the game the first time around, and I was able to play through story mode 3 more times with different characters. At first, there were many things I didn't like about the game: graphics lagged when the 3D was on and lots of things were going on (explosions, lots of enemies, etc.), voice acting were sometimes pretty bad, attack variance were limited, and no branching story paths. I guess I was comparing it a bit too much to Guardian Heroes (Code of Princess is developed by 2 of the guys who worked on Guardian Heroes) when I first started playing. But the more I played Code of Princess, the more I loved it. The game felt pretty easy for the most part, but was a big challenge during boss battles and later in additional quests. I fell in love with the light-hearted humor and the animé styled character designs. The music is absolutely amazing and reminds me of how older games were like. I think I might like it more than Guardian Heroes!
I ended up playing the game up to 20 hours while acquiring all the characters, finishing all the additional quests, and beating the game a few times with several characters out of the 50+ that was selectable before I decided to set it down and start playing Etrian Odyssey IV. Code of Princess was totally worth buying and worth my time. It's one of the games I'll consider a classic for the 3DS. In between completing Code of Princess and now, I was able to complete Garshasp: The Monster Slayer, Torchlight 2, Inside a Star-Filled Sky, Dead Pixel, 007 Goldeneye, and Titan Attacks. To make a short run through of them:
-Garshasp was pretty good/bad at the same time but made for a good study game
-Torchlight 2 was really fun and significantly better than the first one
-Inside a Star-Filled Sky was dumb in which I gave up really quickly after understanding how the game worked
-Dead Pixel was short but fairly entertaining
-007 Goldeneye is an interesting take on the original N64 game and I mostly enjoyed it other than the ending part of the game where it had a VIP/Escort mission, quick-time event boss fight, and an annoying problem with graphics lag due to the explosions which made aiming and seeing anything clearly difficult
-Titan Attacks is reminiscent of Space Invaders with influences from Galaga, Asteroids, and other classic Arcade games. It was an okay game, but I didn't feel like playing it anymore after beating it one time through.
So now, I'm mostly focusing on Etrian Odyssey IV which I'm really enjoying. Other than that, I'm slowly taking on all the other games I have while resisting buying any more games. I have no updates on Animé since I haven't been watching any at all. I think I watched one episode of Sword Art Online since my last post. I really need to finish that series. I suppose that's it for now. Hopefully I'll be a lot more productive in April with Art than I was in March.
So in terms of gaming, I'm actually making good progress...in a way. I jumped from last months 21 completed games up to 34 completed games as of last night. I'm actually hoping to make even faster progress of this after learning something scary about my back log of games. In the middle of the month, I decided to count up all the games I haven't completed yet and shared it with my friends since I usually complain to them about my backlog. There's a slight difference in numbers since I completed a few games in the past few weeks, but here it is:
Gameboy DS: 1 (Pokémon SoulSilver)
Gameboy 3DS: 1 (Etrian Odyssey IV)
Gamecube: 8
Nintendo Wii: 13
Playstation 3: 22
Playstation 2: 29
PC: 150
As you can see, my list of PC games have grown into a sort of monstrosity that needs to be put down. Despite the large number of PC games I had (it was 148 when I counted), I have bought 7 games for super cheat because of spring sales and completed 5 games in the past 2 weeks. Thus I ended up with a count of 150 games at the moment.
I had completed Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D since my last post after 28 hours of playing it. I mostly enjoyed it, but there were many groan-worthy moments throughout the game where I wasn't having as much fun. Still, I rushed through it so I could start playing Code of Princess. It took around 4-5 hours to complete the game the first time around, and I was able to play through story mode 3 more times with different characters. At first, there were many things I didn't like about the game: graphics lagged when the 3D was on and lots of things were going on (explosions, lots of enemies, etc.), voice acting were sometimes pretty bad, attack variance were limited, and no branching story paths. I guess I was comparing it a bit too much to Guardian Heroes (Code of Princess is developed by 2 of the guys who worked on Guardian Heroes) when I first started playing. But the more I played Code of Princess, the more I loved it. The game felt pretty easy for the most part, but was a big challenge during boss battles and later in additional quests. I fell in love with the light-hearted humor and the animé styled character designs. The music is absolutely amazing and reminds me of how older games were like. I think I might like it more than Guardian Heroes!
I ended up playing the game up to 20 hours while acquiring all the characters, finishing all the additional quests, and beating the game a few times with several characters out of the 50+ that was selectable before I decided to set it down and start playing Etrian Odyssey IV. Code of Princess was totally worth buying and worth my time. It's one of the games I'll consider a classic for the 3DS. In between completing Code of Princess and now, I was able to complete Garshasp: The Monster Slayer, Torchlight 2, Inside a Star-Filled Sky, Dead Pixel, 007 Goldeneye, and Titan Attacks. To make a short run through of them:
-Garshasp was pretty good/bad at the same time but made for a good study game
-Torchlight 2 was really fun and significantly better than the first one
-Inside a Star-Filled Sky was dumb in which I gave up really quickly after understanding how the game worked
-Dead Pixel was short but fairly entertaining
-007 Goldeneye is an interesting take on the original N64 game and I mostly enjoyed it other than the ending part of the game where it had a VIP/Escort mission, quick-time event boss fight, and an annoying problem with graphics lag due to the explosions which made aiming and seeing anything clearly difficult
-Titan Attacks is reminiscent of Space Invaders with influences from Galaga, Asteroids, and other classic Arcade games. It was an okay game, but I didn't feel like playing it anymore after beating it one time through.
So now, I'm mostly focusing on Etrian Odyssey IV which I'm really enjoying. Other than that, I'm slowly taking on all the other games I have while resisting buying any more games. I have no updates on Animé since I haven't been watching any at all. I think I watched one episode of Sword Art Online since my last post. I really need to finish that series. I suppose that's it for now. Hopefully I'll be a lot more productive in April with Art than I was in March.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Pressure building up
The title is a bit misleading as pressure now is nothing compared to when I was in school or working. It's just time constraints here and there with everything I'm in I suppose. With a progress report on my New Year's Resolution, I have only completed 1 artwork and I only finished my first music project 2 nights ago. On the bright side, that first music project was an original track for Camera Obscura. And speaking of Camera Obscura, we have a demo now! For completed games, I'm up to 21 right now. So pressure #1, I don't have nearly enough music projects and art projects down as I had hoped so far. I plan to turn this around by having "Music March" and "Art April" and putting effort into my work. Pressure #2: I still have to build my portfolio and that takes time out of my day. I'm also not 100% complete with Camera Obscura so I have to balance my work around that as well. Pressure #3 is that Spring is approaching which means I have to start sending out resumés again to try to get a job. Job offers are slim, hire rates and narrow, and my patience with applying to dozens of studios with not even a reply is rather low now. It'd be nice to land an honest to goodness position in composing and producing music for a game I know that people will play: something I can be proud of. As much as I enjoy doing music for indie games like I am now, it's not promising me any employment and there's not income. Pressure #4: My grandma got in an accident recently and is injured but okay. Still, it makes me worried and uneasy which isn't a good mental state for me to be in when working. Finally, pressure #5: a pressure that isn't a problem at all and one I can enjoy: Too many games!
Despite completing 21 games thus far, I still have an enormous back-log of games to go through and new ones are coming out! Metal Gear Rising: Revengence and Crysis 3 just came out, but I definitely have to wait for those as I have close to 15 unfinished PS3 games not counting fighting games (if I include those, I think it's up to 20). Still, it's hard to resist new games and games on sale. This past weekend, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was a free weekend game on Steam and was on sale for $40. I've tried ignoring Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 as best as I can since Black Ops 1 disappointed me. But given the chance to play multiplayer, I really enjoyed it and ended up buying it yesterday. I'm getting worse with each passing Call of Duty game, possibly because the game is becoming more balanced and require a lot more skill. It's a good thing though, the game should be more fair and rely more on skill than the ability to exploit easy kills. I haven't tried campaign yet, but one of the main reasons why I bought it so I'll eventually check it out. Then last week, I was talking to one of my friends who worked at Atlus and he said he was able to get Atlus games cheaper for me if I wanted to buy them. Etrian Odyssey IV for the 3DS comes out tomorrow and even though I had a really rough time with the first game, I gave the 4th one a try since there was a demo. I loved the music (Yuzo Koshiro!!!) and graphics as well as the much improved menus and faster combat system. And so, I asked for a copy of that as well as trying to get "Code of Princess" (3DS) in which I love the music and art style for it as well. Both are going to be shipped out tomorrow, so I'll be able to play it sometime this week. I only have 1 uncompleted 3DS game at the moment, so I don't feel too bad about getting 2 more at the moment. But the one 3DS game I'm playing right now is "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D" so that might take a bit of time. I'm gonna try to rush through it this week. With that, there are a few more games coming out soon that is pressure me to complete more games. Castlevania for the 3DS is out early March while Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate comes out mid-March. I had the opportunity to play MH3U demo and really liked it. I need a game that can last me a long time that I can keep going back to and I think MH3U might be that game. BlazBlue: CS2 and Tetris 3DS are okay in that category, but I guess I want more of an Action-RPG sort of game for that and Heroes of Ruin had lost its flame after one completion. Besides that, there's games like Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires (PS3), Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm (PC), Pandora's Tower (Wii) and Project X Zone (3DS) coming out this year. Sure, I want to play more games this year; however, I want to spend less money than I did last year buying games.
On an ending note, I finished watching Season 2 of K-On and really enjoyed it a lot. The last official episode made me cry. A lot of the songs in season 2 were boring and forgettable unfortunately, but one song really stood out:
With K-On season 2 done, I went back to Sword Art Online...or so I say. I have yet to actually watch a single episode ever since I finished K-On, possibly because of I how busy I got with working on that song on Camera Obscura. Animé hasn't been my forté, but it's something I still try to follow and watch when I can. I think it's really good for my mental state of mind since it helps me relax and makes me happy. Still, I gotta be pumped up for work in the next few months.
Despite completing 21 games thus far, I still have an enormous back-log of games to go through and new ones are coming out! Metal Gear Rising: Revengence and Crysis 3 just came out, but I definitely have to wait for those as I have close to 15 unfinished PS3 games not counting fighting games (if I include those, I think it's up to 20). Still, it's hard to resist new games and games on sale. This past weekend, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was a free weekend game on Steam and was on sale for $40. I've tried ignoring Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 as best as I can since Black Ops 1 disappointed me. But given the chance to play multiplayer, I really enjoyed it and ended up buying it yesterday. I'm getting worse with each passing Call of Duty game, possibly because the game is becoming more balanced and require a lot more skill. It's a good thing though, the game should be more fair and rely more on skill than the ability to exploit easy kills. I haven't tried campaign yet, but one of the main reasons why I bought it so I'll eventually check it out. Then last week, I was talking to one of my friends who worked at Atlus and he said he was able to get Atlus games cheaper for me if I wanted to buy them. Etrian Odyssey IV for the 3DS comes out tomorrow and even though I had a really rough time with the first game, I gave the 4th one a try since there was a demo. I loved the music (Yuzo Koshiro!!!) and graphics as well as the much improved menus and faster combat system. And so, I asked for a copy of that as well as trying to get "Code of Princess" (3DS) in which I love the music and art style for it as well. Both are going to be shipped out tomorrow, so I'll be able to play it sometime this week. I only have 1 uncompleted 3DS game at the moment, so I don't feel too bad about getting 2 more at the moment. But the one 3DS game I'm playing right now is "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D" so that might take a bit of time. I'm gonna try to rush through it this week. With that, there are a few more games coming out soon that is pressure me to complete more games. Castlevania for the 3DS is out early March while Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate comes out mid-March. I had the opportunity to play MH3U demo and really liked it. I need a game that can last me a long time that I can keep going back to and I think MH3U might be that game. BlazBlue: CS2 and Tetris 3DS are okay in that category, but I guess I want more of an Action-RPG sort of game for that and Heroes of Ruin had lost its flame after one completion. Besides that, there's games like Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires (PS3), Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm (PC), Pandora's Tower (Wii) and Project X Zone (3DS) coming out this year. Sure, I want to play more games this year; however, I want to spend less money than I did last year buying games.
On an ending note, I finished watching Season 2 of K-On and really enjoyed it a lot. The last official episode made me cry. A lot of the songs in season 2 were boring and forgettable unfortunately, but one song really stood out:
With K-On season 2 done, I went back to Sword Art Online...or so I say. I have yet to actually watch a single episode ever since I finished K-On, possibly because of I how busy I got with working on that song on Camera Obscura. Animé hasn't been my forté, but it's something I still try to follow and watch when I can. I think it's really good for my mental state of mind since it helps me relax and makes me happy. Still, I gotta be pumped up for work in the next few months.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Straightening up
A lot has happened within the past month. My childhood friend and distant-cousin Jessica Lum, who has been fighting cancer for the past 2 years, had passed away on January 13th Sunday morning at 9:53AM. It was upsetting news when she first revealed that she had cancer and it made it even harder just a few months back when she started feeling the effects of the cancer take its course and had to be rushed to the hospital. It's hard to accept the fact that she isn't with us anymore. To me, she represented ambition and determination. I remember when we both got into college, we still kept in contact by sending text messages over AIM and we would share our dream careers. We both had the interest in the game industry, but she specifically wanted to get into photo journalism. I even remember saying "that's a really hard profession." But it was something she wanted and loved the idea of traveling around the world to learn something new. So it saddened me that her journey was cut short as she had accomplished so much in just the past few years. She's an inspiration to many people who've met her showing that we as humans are very capable to wanting something and achieving it so long as we work hard towards our goal. I will miss her.
As for me, it felt strange going into the year 2013. I don't know why, but it just felt so unreal. For some odd reason, I feel like this is going to be a really good year. I don't know why that is, but I should take advantage of that feeling and use it as a momentum for productivity. As usual, I made some New Year's Resolution:
1) Work on Art, be they fan art, comics, concept art, or in-game art. Reach 50 drawings.
2) Take my pursuit in music more seriously. Work on my projects, especially personal ones. Reach 50 Songs.
3) Finish one game project. Luckily, I just agreed to work with a team a few days ago. I'm looking forward to that.
4) Take better care of myself. It's evident that I've been neglecting my health in the last half year. So consistent exercise like 2 years ago, and sleep.
5) Can I beat over 107 games by the end of the year? I'm gonna try, my backlog is ridiculous. Also need to write more for these.
As you can see, I'm being more ambitious and putting numbers on how much I want to accomplish this year. For number 3, I sadly had to decline the project because of a legality issue within the NDA they wanted me to sign. I stopped making "finding a job" a resolution and am going to let it happen when it does as I continually apply for more jobs. So far, I have drawn one picture which I used for the cover art in my music uploads (look below). I haven't done any music projects yet, but I have quite a few lined up ready to be done. Starting from January 2nd, I started going to the gym again and exercising as much as I can now. I go to the gym 3 times a week and try to go out for walks on days I don't go and just finished 4 weeks of exercise thus far. The only problem is I still haven't fixed my sleep schedule which is still really bad for my health. But I definitely want to take better care of myself. A healthy body will lead to a healthier mind. As of last night, I have completed 9 games. It doesn't exactly show that I will beat last year's record of 107 games, but it's good progress. I wonder what I'll learn in game design this year. Last year, I think I learned a lot on game controls, user-interface accessibility, and level design.
So our game Camera Obscura has been put up on Steam Greenlight.
Alongside that, I had uploaded 3 of the songs I made for the game on Youtube. It seems a lot of Steam community members really like the music and game concept but has problems with the graphics. This will be a very difficult aspect to satisfy. We also got a response from the Indie Game Festival judging and we didn't get anything. No wins in any category and no honorable mention as a finalist. On the other hand, it seems our progression to getting the game greenlit is doing pretty well. The problem is, will it sell when we finally put it out? So aside from working and finishing up on Camera Obscura, I really need to get more of my own projects out and make my portfolio.
In terms of games, I don't know exactly what I've been playing. I've been kind of all over the place. I bought and completed the eXceed series which was pretty fun. I finally installed and played through Dear Esther and really hated it. It was a hiking simulation essentially; it's an interactive narrative if you will. It was about 1.5 hours of walking around an island and listening to a guy talk. I got to special world 8 of Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS before I decided that I didn't want to play it anymore (you have to collect more special coins from previous levels just to play the last levels of the special levels). I finally finished Bioshock after who knows how long (I think it's been 2 years?) and thought it was an okay game. I finished Orcs Must Die! and really liked it, but didn't want to keep it around any longer. Saint's Row The Third I had installed just to play with a friend and we ended up completing it 2 nights ago. The game was incredibly over the top and ridiculous which I loved. It made the Grand Theft Auto series seem kind of plain. Last night, I finished Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD which was a good nostalgia trip. Right now, I guess I'm trying to complete Summoner's Fortune and Realms of Ancient War on PC, Eternal Sonata on PS3, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy on 3DS, and 007 Goldeneye on Wii. I'm mainly focusing on PC games since it has the largest backlog right next to Playstation 2. I didn't think I was going to look forward to any games this year, but I was pleasantly surprised when it looked up what was possibly coming out this year:
PC:
-Neverwinter
-Phantasy Star Online 2
-Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm
Playstation 3:
-Dark Souls 2
-Final Fantasy XIII - Lightning Returns
-Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Wii / Wii U:
-Pandora's Tower
-Bayonetta 2
Nintendo 3DS:
-Project X Zone
-Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate
-Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate
There's actually a lot to look forward to this year, but I think I mostly care about Phantasy Star Online 2 and Project X Zone (I still can't believe they're bringing it over to stateside, I'm so excited!).
I feel like I haven't talked about animé in forever. The last animé I recall watching was Acchi Kocchi, which I absolutely adored. A lot of my friends are encouraging me to watch an animé called Sword Art Online and I told them I'd watch it once it's entirely done. Well, it's entirely done and I've managed to watch 2 episodes so far. It reminds me of .Hack Sign, but takes an interesting turn on the story in how it pans out. Essentially, a bunch of gamers are stuck inside a virtual world and can't get out unless they complete the game. Should they die in the game or someone tries to pull the game helm off, the player will die in real life. I've gotten sidetracked and ended up recently watching an animé called "Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou". I think the only animé I've watched that had that much nudity in it was Mahoromatic Maiden. I didn't mind the nudity as the writing, humor, art style, characters and story all blended so well for an entertaining show. The show focuses on a boy who wishes to become a High Priest to make a difference in the world and protect the people within it. Upon arriving to a magic school, he was deemed qualified as a future Maou. A Maou (Demon King) is said to bring destruction and annihilation to the human race. It wouldn't called it a classic animé, but I really enjoyed it. I then went on to finally watching the 2nd season of K-On, which I've wanted to do for years. I eventually get around to watching Sword Art Online, but I think I might be a bit more focused on K-On. It's shaping up to be a crazy year, so I better straighten up and work hard.
As for me, it felt strange going into the year 2013. I don't know why, but it just felt so unreal. For some odd reason, I feel like this is going to be a really good year. I don't know why that is, but I should take advantage of that feeling and use it as a momentum for productivity. As usual, I made some New Year's Resolution:
1) Work on Art, be they fan art, comics, concept art, or in-game art. Reach 50 drawings.
2) Take my pursuit in music more seriously. Work on my projects, especially personal ones. Reach 50 Songs.
3) Finish one game project. Luckily, I just agreed to work with a team a few days ago. I'm looking forward to that.
4) Take better care of myself. It's evident that I've been neglecting my health in the last half year. So consistent exercise like 2 years ago, and sleep.
5) Can I beat over 107 games by the end of the year? I'm gonna try, my backlog is ridiculous. Also need to write more for these.
As you can see, I'm being more ambitious and putting numbers on how much I want to accomplish this year. For number 3, I sadly had to decline the project because of a legality issue within the NDA they wanted me to sign. I stopped making "finding a job" a resolution and am going to let it happen when it does as I continually apply for more jobs. So far, I have drawn one picture which I used for the cover art in my music uploads (look below). I haven't done any music projects yet, but I have quite a few lined up ready to be done. Starting from January 2nd, I started going to the gym again and exercising as much as I can now. I go to the gym 3 times a week and try to go out for walks on days I don't go and just finished 4 weeks of exercise thus far. The only problem is I still haven't fixed my sleep schedule which is still really bad for my health. But I definitely want to take better care of myself. A healthy body will lead to a healthier mind. As of last night, I have completed 9 games. It doesn't exactly show that I will beat last year's record of 107 games, but it's good progress. I wonder what I'll learn in game design this year. Last year, I think I learned a lot on game controls, user-interface accessibility, and level design.
So our game Camera Obscura has been put up on Steam Greenlight.
Alongside that, I had uploaded 3 of the songs I made for the game on Youtube. It seems a lot of Steam community members really like the music and game concept but has problems with the graphics. This will be a very difficult aspect to satisfy. We also got a response from the Indie Game Festival judging and we didn't get anything. No wins in any category and no honorable mention as a finalist. On the other hand, it seems our progression to getting the game greenlit is doing pretty well. The problem is, will it sell when we finally put it out? So aside from working and finishing up on Camera Obscura, I really need to get more of my own projects out and make my portfolio.
In terms of games, I don't know exactly what I've been playing. I've been kind of all over the place. I bought and completed the eXceed series which was pretty fun. I finally installed and played through Dear Esther and really hated it. It was a hiking simulation essentially; it's an interactive narrative if you will. It was about 1.5 hours of walking around an island and listening to a guy talk. I got to special world 8 of Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS before I decided that I didn't want to play it anymore (you have to collect more special coins from previous levels just to play the last levels of the special levels). I finally finished Bioshock after who knows how long (I think it's been 2 years?) and thought it was an okay game. I finished Orcs Must Die! and really liked it, but didn't want to keep it around any longer. Saint's Row The Third I had installed just to play with a friend and we ended up completing it 2 nights ago. The game was incredibly over the top and ridiculous which I loved. It made the Grand Theft Auto series seem kind of plain. Last night, I finished Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD which was a good nostalgia trip. Right now, I guess I'm trying to complete Summoner's Fortune and Realms of Ancient War on PC, Eternal Sonata on PS3, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy on 3DS, and 007 Goldeneye on Wii. I'm mainly focusing on PC games since it has the largest backlog right next to Playstation 2. I didn't think I was going to look forward to any games this year, but I was pleasantly surprised when it looked up what was possibly coming out this year:
PC:
-Neverwinter
-Phantasy Star Online 2
-Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm
Playstation 3:
-Dark Souls 2
-Final Fantasy XIII - Lightning Returns
-Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Wii / Wii U:
-Pandora's Tower
-Bayonetta 2
Nintendo 3DS:
-Project X Zone
-Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate
-Monster Hunter 3: Ultimate
There's actually a lot to look forward to this year, but I think I mostly care about Phantasy Star Online 2 and Project X Zone (I still can't believe they're bringing it over to stateside, I'm so excited!).
I feel like I haven't talked about animé in forever. The last animé I recall watching was Acchi Kocchi, which I absolutely adored. A lot of my friends are encouraging me to watch an animé called Sword Art Online and I told them I'd watch it once it's entirely done. Well, it's entirely done and I've managed to watch 2 episodes so far. It reminds me of .Hack Sign, but takes an interesting turn on the story in how it pans out. Essentially, a bunch of gamers are stuck inside a virtual world and can't get out unless they complete the game. Should they die in the game or someone tries to pull the game helm off, the player will die in real life. I've gotten sidetracked and ended up recently watching an animé called "Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou". I think the only animé I've watched that had that much nudity in it was Mahoromatic Maiden. I didn't mind the nudity as the writing, humor, art style, characters and story all blended so well for an entertaining show. The show focuses on a boy who wishes to become a High Priest to make a difference in the world and protect the people within it. Upon arriving to a magic school, he was deemed qualified as a future Maou. A Maou (Demon King) is said to bring destruction and annihilation to the human race. It wouldn't called it a classic animé, but I really enjoyed it. I then went on to finally watching the 2nd season of K-On, which I've wanted to do for years. I eventually get around to watching Sword Art Online, but I think I might be a bit more focused on K-On. It's shaping up to be a crazy year, so I better straighten up and work hard.
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