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.
