I feel tired...why am I tired?

I'm feeling rather lethargic recently, but I haven't been working THAT hard this month.  I've been getting my portfolio straightened out and it's finished!  Or so I thought.  I might be applying to a position that involves working with sound effects and not music.  So now I've got to find some of the work I did with sound effects, which makes me nervous.  Sound effects isn't exactly my forte and I enjoy working with music more.  But it's been exactly 3 years as of this month since I've had a real job, so I need to take advantage of the opportunity now that it's available.  On the bright side, my resumé has been updated and looks stronger.  I've also updated my LinkedIn account, though I really need to add a picture to it.  I guess I mainly feel tired whenever I think about having to look for job openings and going through the whole process of applying since I've done it so many times in the past 4 years.  But once I've gone through some job searches, I want to get back into working with some more projects while I wait for a response back.

I finally have a PS Vita!  Yay!  And then a week after, fans complain that the PS Vita is being ignored entirely by Sony during the Gamescom Convention.  I said I'd buy a PS Vita if Phantasy Star Nova or Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus was being released here in America, and the latter was announced for a physical copy release.  It was quite the day when I decided to buy one, because it was apparently sold out EVERYWHERE.  I went around the city to three different GameStops and 2 Targets and picked up Ragnarok Odyssey ACE and Hyperdimension Neptunia PP while a PS Vita slim Bundle was nowhere to be found.  I decided to go home and buy one from Amazon because I still saw it available 2 days prior that day.  I get on Amazon only to find out that they're sold out and the sellers listed were posting it for $250 rather than the original $200.  I looked online in other stores and every store was sold out other than BestBuy.  So I ended up ordering it online from BestBuy while I bought Ys: Memories of Celceta and Persona 4 Golden along with a PS Vita Slim Grip on Amazon.  Amazingly, I got the PS Vita 2 days after and got to play it over that weekend.  I tried Hyperdimension Neptunia PP for about 40 mintues before I switched it back to Ragnarok Odyssey ACE and decided to take it one game at a time.  I've already accumulated 38 hours on RO ACE in the past 3 weeks and love it!
And I love it even more when my grip came in because it's not comfortable holding the PS Vita, just like the PSP.  The grip makes it less portable, but it's a world of difference in ergonomics.  But the device is not without faults.  It took way too long to just set up the system to play.  The device has WAY too many arbitrary functions and makes me wonder if they would have saved more money if they hadn't spent so much on certain things (besides the applications, there's the backside touch sensor that's rarely used).  It's quite evident that Sony isn't making a huge profit out of the Vita because they're not restocking it in stores and they're not promoting it as often as they should.  I also don't like how the battery life is barely 5 hours.  I have to recharge my PS Vita every 1-2 days while I recharged my 3DS every 6-8 days when I first got it (meaning when I was playing it every day).  Despite its shortcomings, I really like my PS Vita and really enjoy Ragnarok Odyssey ACE as my first game for it.  I can't wait to play all the other games I'll be getting for it.

One game I played a whole bunch recently was Dishonored.  I had heard so much about the game but never really looked into it because I had always planned on getting it when it was cheap enough.  I had purchased it back in Steam Winter Sales 2013 but didn't get around to playing it until the summer time.  I finally played through it all in July and loved it!  I played it through two more times just to try out new things.  First time around, I played it entirely stealth.  Second playthrough, I went as aggressive as possible and killed everyone I came across.  On my last run, I tried to get through the game as fast as possible while killing as few people as possible (which ended up being 4-5 people, I think) and finished at around 3 hours when it took me 18 hours the first time to beat it.  The game's a beautiful mix between Action and Stealth and works so well together.  Dishonored was a really good game and I enjoyed playing it enough time to play it 3 times in a row.  And then I played a bunch of games that I thought was okay or boring.  I finally got through ICO and thought it was okay.  The game's solid with its design and concept, but I was only mildly entertained by it.  The Swapper was also okay.  Although the idea behind the game and level designs were great, I got kind of bored after a while.  Platformines started off being really fun, but became really stupid as I finished it.  It's also one of the very few games where I had to mute the music because it was so distracting and annoying that I couldn't keep it on anymore:
I finally got through Arcania: Gothic 4 and Arcania: Fall of Setarrif this week.  I bought those two games back in Steam Summer Sale 2012.  The game was full of graphic glitches, the combat was boring, the voice acting was really off in a lot of parts, and I was always at a loss of where to go next.  Throughout the entire time, I was wishing I was playing Divinity 2 or Two Worlds 2 instead.  I considered quitting the game many times but was stubborn and kept to it.  Arcania wasn't a very good game, yet I kind of had a fulfilling adventure from it.  Traveling around the open world, meeting all sorts of quirky characters, and fighting a bunch of enemies all felt like an adventure from a fantasy novel.  So in a sense, I enjoyed the experience of adventure and didn't enjoy the gameplay so much.  It's hard to describe the game's worth, but I supposed I can say that I don't regret playing through it.  I also understand why people were so upset with Fall of Setarrif after I finished it in 2.3 hours.  It's essentially a more conclusive ending to the original game, but it wasn't that great.

After completing ICO, I've finally started Final Fantasy XIII-2.  The gameplay is the same and so it's not that exciting; however, I find the story of the game to be compelling and interesting compared to the first one.  I'm enjoying it.

In terms of animé, I've been watching Love Live! School Idol Project.

I remember seeing the game on iOS and downloaded it to play it and thought it was only okay.  You get songs really slowly, and the songs aren't as memorable.  But then a friend recommended that I watch the animé and so I did after I finished "Is the Order a Rabbit?"  I really enjoy the show!  I haven't been paying that much attention to animé since it's already hard to enough to keep up with videogames, but there certainly are a lot of shows I want to watch.  I still lean more towards Slice-of-Life and comedy animé, though.  I'm not sure if I can handle watching anymore depressing shows.  Even so, I feel like I should really watch Attack on Titan and Evangelion (both original and new).

I really do feel tired and just want to play games and watch animé all day, though.  But I think it's a really bad time for me to be doing that right now.  I want to stay productive.  Even if I can find a job opening to apply for, I still want to spend the day making more music and working on projects.  The idea of being able to play games freely and enjoy myself at this time does sound very inviting, though.

Reflecting the past 2 years

It's been nearly 2 years since I've graduated.  Exactly 2 years ago, I was up at 4am in the morning writing about the first game jam the Videogame Development Club had that I hosted and did music for, my horrible spring break of sickness and allergies, my unhappiness with school and not being able to build a proper portfolio, trying to look for a job, and suffering from sleep deprivation.  It seemed like I was very bitter back then.  2 years later, I still don't have a proper portfolio, worked for 8 months and then got laid off, and up till now I'm still looking for a job.  Here's another update in the industry: Sony is laying off 10,000 employees around the world while Electronic Arts is laying off 500-1000 employees.  Blizzard already did their 600 along with other studios such as Obsidian Entertainment.  At this point, I'm just applying whatever is available and have several back-up plans.  One of my back-up plans, which I hope I don't have to resort to, is going back to school.  At the very least, I'd be going back to Sac City College to study simple programming, game design, 3D modeling or graphics design.  My ideal plan is to continue working on my music and independently developed games be recognized within the industry so that I can either: A) have my game picked up by a publisher or B) have a developer hire me for my skills as a game designer, music composer/producer, or simple concept artist.  I like my ideal plan.  I get to work with something I like and I have much more freedom of what I want to do.

Anyways, just a while ago I ended up buying around 8 games after I promised myself I wouldn't buy any games as of the new year until I completed a handful of games.  But because of spring sales, I was too tempted and ended up buying quite a few.  There's Dead Island, Sonic the Hedgehog, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends, Red Dead Redemption GOTY edition for PS3 with Dragon Quest VIII, Eternal Poison, and Tales of Legendia for PS2.  I haven't really touched any of them except for Dead Island which I specifically got to play with a friend.  It's a pretty fun game I suppose, but the game has a lot less content than I thought.

I tried out TERA Online over the weekend and really enjoyed it.  I like the whole "action" aspect done right in an MMORPG.  Sadly, the game is going to be monthly subscription based and so I won't be getting it.  I am eagerly awaiting for Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 because of it.  Besides those 2 games, I'm awaiting Dragon's Dogma for PS3.  I have too many games right now, so I'm still trying to resist.  One game I want to look out for is Cherry Tree High Comedy Club coming out on Steam.

It seems like a really laid-back, humor driven game.  I like animé-ish looking games.  I'm off for now.

Real Summer Break

I'm getting a real break now that I no long have a job (again) and am once again looking up companies that are hiring. Although I'm no longer employed, I'm still diligently working on my videogame blog everyday and still working on music along side with applying for jobs. I did a music cover of "Skream - Where You Should Be" (instruments, voice, and everything) and posted it on Facebook, so that's one thing I finished. I'm thinking of working on my own games starting after my sister and friends go back to school. At the moment, I just want to spend time with them while I still can. Besides that, I'm obviously playing games and working on finishing some of them. I'm STILL not done with Metal Gear Solid 3, and so I think I'm going to finish that today (on the last boss). I borrowed God of War Collection from a friend and I'm finishing up GoW 1 on that disc. I also bought Dragon Age 2 since it was $25 at Target (I got the last copy there too). Besides that, I've been playing all sorts of games on my PC, mainly because of the steam games. I've reached up to 56 hours on Terraria and have slowed down on how much I play it. I found out last night that my VVVVVV save file is gone because of the update to v2.0 and its new features, soooo I might play that over again since I never got to 100% it. Although I said I would take a break from FPS 2 months ago, I have bought games like FEAR collection, Medal of Honor: Airborne, and Section 8 Prejudice. Section 8 Prejudice was a surprising delight to play, but barely anyone is on the servers playing anymore for multiplayer. I've been enjoying some "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" when it's not crashing. For some reason, it would crash and say that an error has occurred. I'm still working on Torchlight in wait for Torchlight 2 and Diablo 3. I want to get into my bigger games such as the Assassin's Creed series, Fallout 3, Bioshock 1 & 2, and definitely Mass Effect 1 & 2. It's been nearly a year since I bought ME 1 & 2, and so I think it deserves some more attention from me. Besides that, I have barely touched my Wii (except to occasionally play "Valhalla Knights: The Eldar Saga") and so I want to beat most of the games I have. Even with all these games, I'm still looking forward to so many others that are coming out: Phantasy Star Online 2, Diablo 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls, Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Torchlight 2, Final Fantasy XIII-2 and versus, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which came out this week), Mass Effect 3, Assassin's Creed Revelations, and oh oh COUNTER-STRIKE GLOBAL OFFENSIVE

I wasn't expecting a new Counter-Strike game, but I heard about it just a few weeks ago. Today, trailers went up and some gameplay was shown. It's not a new iteration as much as a make over with new textures, animations, weapons, maps, modes, and such, but I'm still excited about it. Apparently, all the other Counter-Strike games went on sale today on Steam. I think I might get the older ones again for old times sake.

Anyways, wish me luck in finding a job or striking it big with my indie games (if I ever do get it out there).

A taste of what Summer could be like

These past 11 days were pretty amazing in terms of Steam Deals. Steam is a gaming service platform that was originally initiated to distribute Valve's, the creators of the program, games on it. Steam eventually became on of the biggest contributors to digital distribution for PC gaming not only for big name publishers, but a lot of indie developers as well. More than often, Steam has special sales that would bring down the prices of games to insane discounts. Most all games I've bought have been under $10 with the few exceptions where I spent more than $20 for each game. The past 11 days have been the summer sales where a majority of the games on the platform has a discount with each day, 12 games get a even bigger discount. One of the games I was really happy to buy was an indie game called Terraria (which I could've bought at a retail price of $9.99, but meh, I got it for $2.49) which is practically a 2D version of Minecraft.

I've tried Minecraft before and really liked it, but resisted buying in fear that I would spend too much time building stuff and neglecting all my other games that needs playing and finishing. But when I saw Terraria, it was a lot harder to resist. Terraria is more combat and exploration based while Minecraft is more constructing and social based. I really like the game thus far, but I will limit myself on how much I play it just so I can get some projects done and allow some time to play other games.

Anyways, one of my friends came back home and so I've been getting the chance to hang out with her and my other friends. It's been giving me more opportunities to get out of the house when so much of my work requires me to sit in front of a computer or desk. It reminds me of the past summers where we just hung out, played outside and didn't have to care too much about responsibilities. It's also been nice to find some time to play online games with friends and to just sit back and relax (I even read a little recently!). I still haven't really found the time to watch animé again, but I'm trying to make some time for reading as it's probably better for me (especially my eyes) if I take a break from monitors and television sets. It makes me so happy when I'm able to enjoy all that I can during the weekends. But once Monday hits, it's back to taking care of work again.

I haven't heard back from the two teams I've been working with for the game projects, I'm probably going to need to contact them again soon. Other than that, I feel like I'm starting to neglect on my music as well as my art. I'm probably going to try working with some more music and quickly jump back into game development again just because it's the easiest way to get me drawing again. On writing, I don't know if I want to work anything beyond my job and blogging because that's already tiring enough (and a lot of writing for each day). I've been doing the blogging on weekends as well for the past two weeks because of the steam sales. The problem is, I still haven't found the time to really give exposure to my blog and so traffic is still at a minimum. More than that though, I want to build up my online portfolio so I can start using it for job searching. I've been working so long and hard now that it's hard to face trying to switch to another job, even if they do hire me. Problem is I haven't heard from any other company other than Activision recently, and even then they said that it's only a possibility.

Despite that, I think everything is starting to look better. I'm getting work done, I'm getting to hang out with friends, there's some free time to relax, but I do have to admit trying to keep an active lifestyle is hard (been going to the gym, but I want to swim more since it's summer).

Missing Summer Break

It's near the end of June and Summer has begun. The difference now is that I don't get a summer break and I continue to work. I also don't get vacation time either. My birthday came and went faster than any weekend I've had in the past half year since I started working. I didn't do anything that special, but at least I had fun.

The day before my birthday, I just called over 6 friends over (4 of them made it), connected an extra PS3 one of my friends brought over and played Call of Duty: Black Ops the whole day. We had some pretty exciting matches online, and it was so different being able to yell out and coordinate with each other rather than trying to guess what other players are doing online. We played some Zombie mode too, and it was the first time I played with 4 players. It was still difficult and we didn't really get that far (I think round 16 was as far as we went). My parents cooked an incredible dinner and I had my aunt's family come over to join us. At night, we got our computers together to have a LAN night. Before we started, two of my friends presented me with a pair of Sennheiser headphones as my birthday present which I was surprised with and very happy with since I recently had two headphones break. We played Global Agenda (GA), which became free-to-play now, and I really enjoyed it. I've had GA since last July, but didn't play that much since it always took so long to load and it was graphically laggy for me. But I really wanted to play it with some friends and it was really fun. Unfortunately, one of my friend's laptop kept crashing and he didn't get to play that much. He was so tired that he himself crashed at around 1AM. We tried playing with random players for mission mode, but I realized that players are a lot more inexperienced than before because of the transition to free-to-play. I couldn't believe how bad some of the people were playing and kind of miss the quality of players the game once had. The good thing is that it's much more populated now. I think I'll be playing GA more, and I should after spending $35 to buy it last year. We switched over to good old Counter-Strike Source and played for a while, but my other friend got tired too (considering it was already 3AM). I continued to play GA with my friend who wasn't tired yet, as I was, and got him to level 10 so that we could play Player vs. Player. The first match was pretty bad and our team mates were rather uncooperative. The 2nd match we had was really fun though. Everyone was at the capture point, a lot of fighting was going on, and it was much more involving than the first match. By the time we finished, it was 4:43AM and we were both tired. I was thoroughly satisfied being able to play Global Agenda, it was a lot of fun. I kind of wish we had more time to play Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, but we ended up playing some more Counter-Strike Source the next morning. I played some Crysis 2 with my friend who knocked out first the night before and switched off on multiplayer while preparing to go play Tennis. Crysis 2 is a lot of fun, and I think I'm going to get it the next time it drops below $30. When we went to play Tennis, it was rather hot. Okay, it was VERY hot! I wore dark clothing and I forgot to bring water with me. There wasn't that much shade at all on the court and I haven't exercised for 3 weeks ever since I got sick. So after barely 30 minutes, I stood under the patch of shade I could get under and watched my two friends play. Unfortunately, my father wasn't feeling well, sooo we didn't go out for dinner that night. I barely remember what I did after dinner; I think I watched Dragon Ball Z Abridged videos and then went to sleep. Yeah, my birthday wasn't very special this time, but at least I had a bit of fun.

In news of games, I'm not even sure where to start. I guess I can talk a little about the stuff from E3 last month. E3 wasn't spectacular, and there wasn't that many games that were announced that no one didn't already know about. I guess one of the coolest news was the announcement of Nintendo's new system, the Wii U. It has a touch screen controller with a camera and microphone as well as a motion sensor device, and a traditional key layout with two joysticks, 4 face buttons and 4 shoulder buttons. The system will also support graphics synonymous to the Playstation 3. For games, most of the ones I'm excited about has already been announced before. I'm really excited for Dark Souls, Battlefield 3, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (kinda sorta), Blacklight Retribution, Elder Scroll V: Skyrim, and the one game I haven't heard until E3: Dragon's Dogma.

Most of these games won't be out until the end of this year or later next year. There also many other games that's worth mentioning that was shown at E3 such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect 3, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, 3DS games and such, but I'm still working on the predecessor's of those games so I'm in no rush to look at those games yet.

A lot of exciting new things have been happening on Valve's Steam program recently. Daily Deals have been introduced, and so a selected game will been on sale each and everyday now alongside with the usual mid-week madness sales and weekend deals. Steam has also started supported Free-to-play MMOs from publishers like ijji and Perfect World on their platform. It's nothing too new to me since Champions online has been on Steam for a while and recently became free-to-play as well as Global Agenda. Aside from those two, there were 3 other games that were announced as being hosted on the program when they launched the support. There was Alliance of Valiant Arms from ijji (which I have played already with an ijji account) and the other two are Spiral Knights from Sega and Forsaken World by Perfect World (which I've been wanting to play but have had trouble getting the client). The biggest plus for me on this new structure is being able to download the clients of free MMOs with less trouble. Aside from support 3rd-party MMOs, Valve also announced transitioning to a free-to-play model as well. Everyone's speculation was that DotA 2 was going to be free when it released (and it's still possible). Just last week, Valve revealed that their incredibly successful First-Person Shooter game Team Fortress 2 was free-to-play. Looking at it now, I'm not surprised. Their micro-transaction store has been surprisingly successful and Team Fortress 2 is generally $10 anyways. With items costing $15-$200, they might as well turn it into a free-to-play game to attract more customers. I would say that Valve is being greedy with it, but they have provided the players with so much service and free content with some of the best quality gameplay in online gaming that I hardly care. They also FINALLY released the "Meet the Medic" video that fans have been waiting for years for. The only one missing at the moment is the Pyro.

I'd really like to get back into MMORPGs, but I also want to finish more of the retail games I have collected in the past few years. I tried out Eden Eternal during beta and it was pretty interesting. Once you reach a certain level, you can change into any class you want whenever you want. There still seems to be a lot of grinding though. Besides Global Agenda, I think the one MMO that will release that I'll want to get into is Guild Wars 2.

I seriously had no interest in the game until just a little while ago when I started to see some of the changes and new classes that they're adding to the game. The gameplay just intrigues me since it's Guild Wars 2 seems to want to aim for the "non-grinding" type of gameplay that its predecessors had. I never did finish Guild Wars Factions, and I would still really like to sometime soon. For other MMOs, I have barely tried out Spiral Knights and Forsaken World, so I'll be playing more of those as well as Vindictus which I have relentlessly have neglected, even after waiting for so many years for it to come out. There were a few other MMOs I wanted to try out, but I think I'm biting off more than I can chew. I know for sure that I'm doing that with retail games.

Last night was a very bad night to play FPS games. After a really long day of work and finishing up my other responsibilities, it was already 10:30PM. So I decided I wanted to play some FPS on PC to test out my new headphones some more, but updates were being downloaded and applied on Steam. So I started the night with Medal of Honor (2010) which I usually have no problem playing at all. Last night was just terrible as every shot I successfully landed didn't count as the server recognized that I was killed first. This continued to happen 5 games in a row. I understand that the game is laggy sometimes, but I've never had so many kills denied before. True, I was 2nd in the team every match, but I always ended up with a negative k/d ratio which is no good in my eyes. By the 6th match, it was already so dumb that I couldn't even move. I forgot about how badly implemented the spawning system was that players could predict exactly where you spawn and kill you before you even move. I gave up and switched over to Team Fortress 2 since I haven't played for so long. I was up to 5 kills and 5 deaths when suddenly the server shut down. I love Team Fortress 2, but one thing I really hate about playing it is how ridiculously long it takes to connect to server. I just gave up tryingn to connect to another server and moved onto playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. My team was really bad in trying to attack in "Rush" and we were kept at bay the entire time. When we lost and switched positions to defend, we couldn't do a thing at all. 2 Helicopters hovered above our base, spawn killing my entire team and me. A ship was constantly barraging our cases and a ton of men rushed in to set the charges with no one being able to get near. After dying 10 ridiculous deaths and being backed into our last base, I gave up on that too. I just wanted to play something simple and kill in-game at that point, so I started up Counter-Strike Source and got into a gungame. Counter-Strike can seriously be one of the dumbest games to play sometimes as some people can take 3 straight shots to the head from a shotgun and not die while a single bullet from a pistol can take me out. I couldn't tell whether players were using aim-bot or not since gungames immediately respawn a player after dying, but it was still very frustrating nonetheless. I ended up negative every match and was pissed as hell by then. My last hope was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Guess what? I couldn't connect to a single game. 10,000 players online and I couldn't connect to a single game, that is sad. I think after last night, I need to take a break from multiplayer FPS games as it has betrayed me in every way. I ended the night playing Dynasty Warriors 7 and it did make me feel a lot better. I'm still so amazed on how great Dynasty Warriors 7 turned out and am really glad I bought it. I think I should focus on retail games and MMOs for a while, it's much less rage inducing.

Besides my regular everyday job for work, I have picked up two projects to work on over the summer. One of them got back to me yesterday and explained that the project will possibly slow down a lot more now which makes me think that it may not finish. I think I need a new rule on making music in that the game is at the very least playable or near finished before I agree to make music for it. The other project is one I previously worked with for the Game Jam Spring 2011 competition. The team wants to polish it up and host it on Xbox Live Arcade and needs about 7 more songs or so. Besides these two projects, I think I should consider dropping all other ones I had before to start moving forward and making my own games. I have yet to even touch the Starcraft 2 editor which I purposely bought to practice with. So I'm still practicing my art (barely) and still working with more music to prepare for my own game developments. I've been still trying my best to practice piano when I can, but I simply cannot play as well as I did when I was Jr. College which I practiced everyday back then (at least technically). I think I've gained a better understanding of playing music on the piano, but my dexterity and nimbleness has faded with the lack of practice. For guitar, I think I've actually improved a lot from what I used to be able to do. I'm thinking of doing some more demonstrations and practices that I have been doing on Facebook as an incentive to continue learning more. For violin, I have become more comfortable to use more parts of the strings and bow rather than staying near the top all the time. Can't say that I've improved that much more on violin though. I'll need to buy a new bow and I need to change my bent bridge. I'm hoping to go to guitar center sometime soon and finally get my first Electric Bass, which I've been wanting for a while now. So even now, I'm still staying very active in music. Writing is something I'm staying very active in with my blog: http://superpad.blogspot.com/ And it's also my main role for work to edit texts and create new ones. I'm really not sure what to do anymore since my future is so blurred right now. There's things I want to do in terms of career, and then there's things I want to do for enjoyment like playing games and reading books (yes, reading book. I feel like I can't since I feel like I'm wasting time reading a book when I really want to play a game). And then of course there are the things I need to do: have a steady job, build up experience in working, keep going to the gym to stay somewhat active, etc. I barely have enough time to work on game development, art, music, and reading/writing (not blogging). I guess you can say I feel trapped within my own life, but I suppose everyone does when they're stuck with what they don't want to do.

I think that's enough ranting for one post. June was rather short, and I feel like I've accomplished very little. I'm really glad a few of my friends are back home for the summer, that's for sure. It feels really sucky to be working throughout summer when it's so beautiful outside (well, not today since it's all cloudy and cold) and it reminds so much of my past summers of being free from responsibilities and allowing myself to be carefree. This may be the year of the rabbit (supposedly brings tons of luck to those born in that year, which is my year), but so far it's been pretty sucky which very few occasions where I felt honestly happy. Now that my birthday has passed, I hope things will get better for me.

Depressing...

Not to say I'm entirely depressed since I'm am enjoying freedom while friends are going back to college for another year of school, homework, studying and tests.  I do miss UC Irvine for the social outings I did.  I'm pretty much done with one of the game projects and am looking at finishing the others on my own; however, my time has been taken up quite often recently by things like looking for job offers, updating my resume, posting availability everywhere that relates to the game industry.  Job hunting has definitely been depressing since the economy is bad, people aren't hiring, and the game industry is sinking.  A lot of the business in the game industry is turning to China since their economy is now booming with success.  Japan is unfortunately falling behind in the game industry with quality games diminishing.  At the Tokyo Game Show this past week, Keiji Inafune of Megaman Renown expressed his concern about the game industry in Japan saying: "I think Japanese gaming is dead," Inafune told the New York Times. "When I say these things, I'm called a traitor. But I love Japan. I want to save it."  Kotaku's rebuttal to his quote is that Japan is still flourishing with companies like "Nintendo."  I was thinking the same exact thing when I read the article about the interview with Inafune, but I also understand what he is concerned about.  Nintendo alone is not going to hold the industry in Japan by itself, and it is evident that they're becoming an international company rather than just a local one.  Nintendo didn't even attend TGS and put all their efforts into E3 instead to get international attention.  Nintendo took the show when I was there, as people waited 1-4 hours in line to play ANY of Nintendo's titles and merchandise.  What's happening is that the most well known companies such as Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, Atlus and others may still be around, but are slowly losing their once numerous support they had just a short while ago.  Within 4 days of the release of Halo: Reach (which looks incredible), Microsoft confirmed that 31 million players were playing on X-Box Live.  According to Inafune, the much anticipated Resident Evil 5 sold 5 million copies from release.  What happened?  I bought the game and already beat it with my sister and admit that it's not like the older RE games, but it's good.  Inafune's concern is that Japan is 5 years behind the market in the gaming industry in terms of technology, graphics, and trend.  I don't think that's the case.  Part of the huge success of China's market in the gaming industry at the moment is because of free online games.  This popular trend started in Korea and has made most of their profit in Japan, China, Singapore, and Malaysia, not Korea itself.  The average person in Asia doesn't have the same luxury we do in the United States to buy so many unnecessary goods and entertainment.  With free online games, you could choose to pay small amounts of money to buy items and perks for your characters in the game.  This method of marketing is called "micro-transaction."  There are literally billions of people in Asia, and when you add up all those small payments of $5, they become millions.  More over, China are having more research and knowledge in the game industry which allows companies from the U.S. and Europe outsource all their jobs to China for dirt cheap.  All the entry-level positions, available positions, and business partners are being given to people in China so that people here and Europe don't have to pay as much!  It's just like the industrial revolution of the past and corporate companies of the present!  Well, it can't be China alone that's causing the diminishing sales of Japanese games, so what else?  The economy is bad, and people try to save money.  What are people doing in the United States?  They're also playing free online games from Korea and China.  Japan has a few as well localized in America.  American companies saw this trend and thought to use it within their market, thus Zynga.  They have made Billions just on their design on Facebook (which I find evil and ingenious at the same time).  That, and people buy one game and play it forever.  When did this happen?  Last year, with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  The game is $60 and is STILL $60 because Activision knows that people will still buy it.  People can complain how broken the game is with all their bugs, noobtoobing, and imbalanced gameplay, BUT the game is fun nonetheless.  It can't be denied that MW2 is a good game as several million players still log on and rack up hundreds of hours onto it each month.  It's the same with World of Warcraft.  It's over-rated to a lot of people, but ultimately it's fun and is $15 a month compared to $60 a month.  For me, I've been playing free online PC games for the longest time, but have recently gotten back to playing PS3, Gamecube, PS2, and Wii more now since I am trying to learn more about games, design, the industry and everything in-between. 

Okay, so from that ridiculously long rant, what am I trying to say?

-The economy sucks and the game industry is poor, no one will hire me!  They rather pay a few dollars an hour to someone in China.  That, or every other position is senior level with a requirement of 5-10+ years of game industry experience.

-I'm not getting any money, games are expensive and I'm trying to play a lot of them since I've missed out on so much because of 18+ years of school.  And I keep losing time each day to play them because I keep having to look for job positions and send out resumes.

-Family and friends are nagging me each time I see them to get a job.  I know they care for me, but it's depressing being reminded that I have no work experience and will have a difficult time finding a job with the possibility that I might have to move far away in order to find a job.

Man, this is turning out to be a really long blog.  But yeah, it doesn't really stop there:

I had the opportunity to beta test 2 more games: Legendary Champions & Final Fantasy XIV

[Legendary Champions - PC]

Made by a Chinese company and feels very much like a game made by Perfect World, but is not.  The game is based off the Three Kingdom history of Ancient China with the twist in story.  Cao Cao was backed into a corner in a battle against Shu and decided to use black sorcery to summon the greatest warriors of all time and space to fight for him.  So you have people like Mulan the female warrior, Sinbad the pirate, Beowulf with a chainsaw, etc. in the game as a summon for your character.  The trailer portrays the game to be rather exciting and intuitive.  It caught my attention when it said it has "DotA-like map style PvP gameplay."  Time for the break down: The graphics were outdated, but bearable.  The animations to the models were awkward during battle as characters and enemies teleport, slide while attacking, get glitched, or some other problem.  I loved some of the music in the game, but not all of them seemed very cohesive, and sound effects were rather generic.  The gameplay was sadly slow and repetitive.  In the first 30 or so minutes, I spent my time walking around the town and talking to everyone the NPCs directed me to and leveled up to 6 just from it.  When it was time to fight, I spent nearly 1-2 minutes fighting one enemy.  I chose a mender (healer) for my first character, but sheesh, a game shouldn't have the player whacking the same enemy for so long with the same 2 attacks available for them.  When I finish a quest to kill 10 bears, I get another quest to do the same for another enemy.  It then repeats itself in a mindless cycle of pointless killing.  Twelve Sky 2 did a much better job in keeping the player interested, even though it followed the same method of gameplay.

The good thing about traveling in this game is that you start off with a horse, unlike Heroes of Three Kingdoms where you auto-route and walk for ten ridiculous minutes.  Sadly, there's still quite a bit of traveling in Legendary Champions that can't be avoided.  One thing I really loved about the game though was summoning your Champion and owning everything around you with one hit.  The problem was that you can only summon your champion for 1 minute and can't summon them again for half an hour.  I can't go on playing a game I enjoy playing 1/30th of the time.  I waited the entire summer for this game, and it disappointed me.

[Final Fantasy XIV - PC]

I may be very biased on this game.....because I LOVE FINAL FANTASY!  Yes, I know the huge gripes and complaints people had about FF13 and now FF14, but I still love it because it's Final Fantasy.  That doesn't necessarily mean I'll love the game itself.  So a spent a good amount of time customizing my character and going through the cut-scenes.  I never played FF11, so I wasn't sure what to expect of the battle system.  The fighting is still turn-based, but you can move around and plan it.  It was archaic, but somewhat satisfying.  I walked around town and realized I was going to be there for a while.  There's a lot of talking and roaming around, but nothing as bad as Legendary Champions or Heroes of Three Kingdoms.  I noticed the game was going to be more about the experience and story rather than the core game mechanics as all Final Fantasy games tend to be.  Graphics were breath-taking, animations were superb, sound is excellent and music was surprising enjoyable (I found myself humming to it while I played), gameplay is a bit slow; however, if I ever had the time and money, I'd probably invest it playing through the game.  Well, I like the game, but everyone that knows me knows that I don't play pay2play online games.  I'm glad I got to try it and say I at least know what it looks and feels like.  The disappointing part would probably be that my computer could not handle the game very well and so I graphically lagged a lot and had long load times.  If you're an avid online gamer or Final Fantasy fan, I say go buy it.

My friend and I had a theory that FF11 and FF14 weren't even Final Fantasy games to begin with but was transformed into one after Square-Enix picked it up for publishing.  Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is like that (coming out soon!).  I'm also guessing that Golden Axe: Beast Rider is like that (I'm playing through that right now).  Which reminds me of my 1 week - 1 completed game mission:

[Mirror's Edge - PS3]

I BEAT IT!  And I finished the game in normal mode without shooting a single person.  It was an incredibly difficult task, and I was very tempted to shoot everyone on the last part, but I resisted and came through.  The game is extremely fluid and graphically pleasing.  I could see a lot of the textures and models were downgraded just so it could fit the sheer amount of data into the game, which I find to be acceptable.  The presentation of the game is breath taking and immerses the player into the world rather well.  The story wasn't very deep or thorough, but it was satisfying and gratifying in the end.  I hear that a 2nd one is in the making.  I will consider buying it as I've really enjoyed the challenge, puzzles, action, story, characters, and the experience it gave.   I liked it so much, I think I might play through it again in the future.  But next time, I shoot everyone!

[Last week's Challenge: Golden Axe - Beast Rider]

I'm still working on it actually.  I could have finished it last week, but the game is so frustratingly bad and broken that I couldn't bear to sit more than 2-3 hours playing it.  So far, I hate it.  I'll get back more on it once I finish it.

[MAG (Massive Action Game) - PS3]

MAG is a first-person shooter played exclusively online with 64-256 players at once.  I've been looking out for this game ever since it game out an finally got it used for $40.  The game is rather challenging when there is limited communication between people (not everyone is going to buy a headset, I didn't).  New weapons can't be acquired unless you gain the skills to reach them, which can take a while.  I find the music to be unfitting for the game, but I also find it humorous, so it's okay.  The game plays similar to most fps games like modern warfare.  All levels play with each other, so it sucks when I'm level 6 with no items or weapons while I'm going against level 60 snipers with power scopes, little recoil, and extra health.  I've been spawn killed before, but it doesn't happen often.  Definitely not like Modern Warfare where you get spawn killed 10 times in a row and have carpet bombing, helicopters, grenades, knives and machine guns killing you the second you spawn where you had died.  The gameplay is slower than Modern Warfare since there is a countdown between deaths before respawn, and it varies in time.  I haven't figured out what makes it shorter or longer, but waiting can be bothersome when it's over 10 seconds.  Either way, I enjoy the progression of levels and large scale matches in the game.  In fact, I'm going to go play it right now since I didn't play anything the whole day yet.

Yup, it's been depressing lately.....