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.!
