Stretching myself thin

This month has been extremely productive, but exhausting.  I finally got around to doing one last example track for my portfolio.  It took a week of research, experimentation and picking out the instruments I wanted to use before I actually started composing.  What I originally wanted to do was make a semi-longer track that transition between different ideas to kind of tell a short story.  The narrative and ideas came out to be a bit longer than I expected and the track I made inspired me to split it into six separate ones to tell a somewhat longer story.  I’m already working on the 5^th track out of the six, so I’ve been making good progress.  The problem is how I went about my days this past month.

I have stopped watching animé entirely this month because of how much time I’ve been putting into working, exercise, and gaming.  I’ve explained what I’ve been doing with work.  For exercise, I decided to pick up Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo switch and have been utilizing it the past 2 weeks.  Despite all the push-ups, squats, and resistance band exercises I’ve been doing, I still felt like I needed cardiovascular exercise really badly.  Ring Fit Adventure has been a great stand in for not walking outside or going to the gym (since air quality has been poor outside and gym is closed due to Covid-19).  I also wanted a cardio workout to improve my sleep since it’s been so difficult to fall asleep the past year.  I think it would have helped if it weren’t for the fact I kept staying up so late every night.

With gaming, Genshin Impact is out and I’ve been playing it everyday if not to just to do daily quests.  Along with that, I’ve been still doing daily runs for Guardian Tales and Phantasy Star Online 2.  Playing through these 3 games has been wearing me down and I haven’t been completing any games the past few months.  So initially, I was playing Genshin Impact at 2AM when it resets to do my dailies, but then I wouldn’t feel satisfied and end up playing something else right after up until 5-6AM before I head to bed.  It was becoming a really awful habit and so I’ve changed it where I do dailies during the day and play other games at night.  I still haven’t really fixed it since I still go to bed around 3-4AM, but it’s a little better.  Minecraft Steve and crew were released for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and I played a bit of that.  Cagliostro released for Granblue Fantasy Versus and I ended up playing quite a bit more of the game again just to try to get better.  I spent quite a few hours in RPG mode farming for materials to make weapons, reviewed and practiced characters I was already learning and figuring out new ones.  I discussed with a friend I was playing with that I was a bit disappointed in myself for having over 100 hours in Granblue Fantasy Versus and was still playing at a basic level.  So I’ve been trying to learn and expand my knowledge, abilities and understanding of the game.  I also did a bit of that in Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r] since I wanted to learn a few new characters.  Besides that, playing games like Yakuza 0, Halo 1 in the Master Chief Collection, Tangledeep and Rivals of Aether with mods on has kept me up quite a few nights.

I really am trying to improve myself this month in every aspect: music composition/production, gaming with self-improvement and learning new things, and health with implementing cardio exercise and trying to sleep at more reasonable times.  It’s become a bit overwhelming, but only a bit.  While I don’t feel pressure or stress from it all, I do feel like my motivation is starting to wane in everything I do.  This is contradicted with the motivation to do more with all of them.  I already have plans on what to work on next after this current project, but I really have to focus on putting the portfolio together and start searching and applying for job.  There are a TON of games I want to play and get through, but a lot of time is taken from just doing dailies on the three main games I’ve been playing everyday (approximately 1-3 hours per day).  I want to work out harder and actually try to lose weight and get a toned body for once.  But when it comes time to do any of them,  I feel tired just thinking about it.

For November, I need to focus on really putting my portfolio together and get myself prepare for job applications.  Other than that, I should also focus on restructuring my daily life and finding a good balance between everything so I can be more efficient and enjoy what I’m doing more.  If thing go well, maybe I can enjoy a month of relaxation in December.

Jam Packed Month

I'm going to keep this short.  This past month blasted by so quickly as opposed to March where it felt like a crawl for some reason.  I decided to take a break from audio work in April to focus on other things.  I organized computer files, cleaned my room, did some drawing, played some games, setup stepmania so I can get some cardio, and I just finished working on a remix I started yesterday.  Just with videogames, this week has been crazy.  Trials of Mana remake released last Friday, Zooey became available on Granblue Fantasy Versus on Monday, the newest Sakura Wars released on Tuesday (which I still haven't had the chance to play yet), and Streets of Rage 4 released today.  I don't know if I'm going to be getting back into audio work in May, but I'd like to relax a bit more and do other things some more first.....like reading.

Quarantine is still happening, more people are losing their minds, and things don't seem to be getting better.....

Audio work from end of March and the three things I uploaded today:

Summer so far

This past month and a half have been kind of rough.  I got sick in the beginning of June with my allergies acting up at the same time which lead to a cough that lasted for weeks.  Shortly after E3, there was news on the disappearance of Desmond "Etika" Amofah and a few days later it was reported that he had taken his own life.  Earlier in the week, I was told that a relative of ours from China was in town and will be joining us for dinner.  I was excited as I haven't seen them in 13 years.  But immediately after, I was also told that their mother had passed away the night before.  It was shocking and devastating to hear such news.  So as happy as I was to see them, I didn't know what to say and felt feel sorrow for their loss.  Yesterday, news broke out that a man had gone to the Kyoto Animation Studio building, poured flammable fluid all over the building and lit it on fire.  From the last update, 33 people had died and 29 more were sent to the hospital including the suspect.  It was sad enough to hear such an event occurred in Japan (Japan is supposed to be really safe!), but the amount of lives it claimed and affected is unnerving.  Whatever drove that man to do such a thing can't be justified.  Those affected didn't deserve this.

Originally, I wanted to make a post talking about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and SolSeraph, but I feel like this isn't particularly the time to do so.  I've been so busy that I haven't really had time to do things like make posts about the games I've played.  I had agreed to help a friend out on a project he was working on and I've dedicated these past 2.5 weeks towards that work.  I can't really talk about it much, but I can say that I went through a list of 300 mobile games to test and analyze.  Whenever I did have time, I've been playing through the new games I got during Steam Summer Sale.

So for the past three days, I've been just sorting out my thoughts and figuring out what to do from here.  In terms of entertainment, Fire Emblem Three Houses releases next Friday, EVO 2019 is a week after that, Astral Chain releases at the end of August, Daemon X Machina comes out two weeks after that, and Code Vein comes out at the end of September.  So my plate is pretty full in terms of Videogames the next three months or so.  In terms of productivity, I think I want to start going to the gym again this upcoming Monday.  I know I've been ignoring my health again with going to sleep late and not exercising.  I'm going to try to finish up the remix I was working on before the end of the month.  Then I need to figure out what I want to do next because there's just too much I want to do right now.  I want to be able to revisit my previous work and remaster them, work on new remixes, work on original work for my portfolio, learn and create animations that I've had ideas for years now, record my past piano arrangements, etc.  I feel my mind wandering and feeling unfocused ever since I got back from Japan earlier this year.  It still feels like a dream, having gone to Japan and experience what it had to offer there.  I have been able to focus enough to work on improving mastering, but I feel like I'm not getting enough work done this year.  But the fact that I'm still motivated to learn, improve, and produce work is enough to get me on the right path.  I don't know my exact plans yet for the rest of the year, but I'd like to finish that remix first more than anything.

April ended too quickly

I'm actually surprised by how focused and productive I've been the past month.  Much like last year, I wanted to spend the month of April reading and I wanted to make a better effort this year than I did last year.  Although I've only finished 1.5 books, I did stick to the reading this month by reading 3-4 hours a day.  I started with a book written by a family friend called "The Lu Family Saga".  It talks about the many revolutions and wars China went through in the past century and her family's involvement in it.  It was a surprisingly easy read as it was about a history I wasn't very familiar with.  Right after finishing that book, I went back to continuing reading the Hellgate: London trilogy of books I bought over a decade ago.  I had recently finished playing the Hellgate: London videogame for the first time and felt inclined to finish the books.  I was halfway through the 2nd book before I stopped nearly 10 years ago since I last read it.  I'm currently on the 3rd and last book and think I can finish it sometime next week.  It was surprising to me that I remember all the characters and what happened before.  Still, that's only 1.5 books I finished and I had planned to read quite a few more books.

How I managed each day this past month was reading the first half of the day and then working on practicing "mastering" audio work the last half of the day.  I keep saying "I'll stop early today to play some games" everyday but never managed to do so.  After learning about being able to master my audio tracks last year, I really wanted to practice and learn how to use the program to make my music sound better.  So I've been going through my previous work and try to remaster each one.  I haven't finished that many as two particular tracks had me going back to them for 3 weeks because I was always unsatisfied with something.  I'm definitely getting better and it's making it easier to get through, but I can certainly tell I have a lot more to learn.  Which, by the way, here is my remix from December:


This was the most complicated video I've created for a music upload.  I experimented and learned a lot.

Because of reading and my work habits this month, I realized it's taking a bit of a toll on me.  I haven't been exercising, I'm making less time for playing games, and I feel more drained.  I'm hoping to balance this a bit during May.  I plan on working on a new remix I have a strong idea for while taking the time to get through some more games.  I feel restless with the games I'm playing and I'm in that mode where I feel like I'm playing more to complete a game rather than to have fun with it.  Maybe that's true and I just need to put a bit more time into games since I really want to.  I can tell my brain is looking for that stimulation as I've been staying up late at nights the past week just to play a bit more.  I'd rather not ruin my sleep schedule that I've worked so hard on trying to correct.  Besides that, I'd like to get back into exercising of some sort.  If I don't go to the gym or go out walking, I'm hoping I can do some floor exercise mini-games while I'm playing games.

If things go according to plan, May should prove to be an entertaining and productive month.

Readjusting

It's been almost 2 months since I've returned from Japan and I can hardly stop thinking about it.  I think I've finally readjusted to being back home.  I felt like I've been extremely busy the past two months and yet I also feel like I've accomplished very little.  Having returned from my trip, I spent an entire month organizing the stuff I got into my room and game room, transferring photos, making a slide show, chronicling my trip, creating a scrap book, and posting a shorten summary of the trip here on this blog.  It was a lot of fun retracing everything I did and remembering the moments that made the trip special, but I also felt like I spent way more time doing it than a normal person would.  Maybe it felt like I wasted a lot of time doing all of that all throughout February and parts of March, but perhaps I'll be glad I did it when I revisit those memories in the future.

Aside from post-trip stuff, I contacted someone I was recommended to speak to to see if there's any connections they have with game developers or publishers that could reference me to a job.  I wrote up a new resume and generalized it and had them reach out to their connections while I personally applied to the company Corsair.  Afterwards, I continued working on the video for my remix I made back in December.  I'm mostly finished, but would like to make a few changes before uploading it.

Besides work stuff, I've tried to really focus on some games and finish some up this past month.  I was able to complete 12 of them with the big ones being Splatoon 2, Devil May Cry V, and Accel World vs. Sword Art Online.  I did get a few new games this month, despite trying not to buy anymore than I can handle at the moment.  I immediately played and got through Devil May Cry V, as mentioned.  I picked up the physical version of Dragon: Marked for Death and got around half way through the game.  I'm really enjoying it a lot and expect to play quite a few hours of it.  I picked up Watch Dogs 2 when I learned from my friends that there was 4-player co-op and it was super cheap (I got it for $8.09).  I haven't even played Watch Dogs 1 yet, but I installed it and hope to play it soon.  Besides that, I picked up Risk of Rain 2 and Fighting EX Layer over this past weekend.  Risk of Rain 2 just released for Early Access and also offered a buy 1 get 1 free copy to give to a friend.  I unlocked all the characters available so far today and so I'll count it as a completed game for now because I really don't know when the game will be fully released.  Fighting EX Layer was half off and also released Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury/The King of Fighters as a DLC.

That's it for now.  For April, I'm hoping to get a lot of reading done, get through some light audio work in, and finish even more games than this past month.

Looking Forward to Summer 2018

There's only 2 weeks of May left and I have a lot on my mind.  My last music project was Burning Fighters which was the first remix for the Shoot-em-Up album which I uploaded in the beginning of April.


I haven't been working on any music since then aside from practicing some guitar and piano.  I spent all of April trying to read.  I borrowed Romance of the Three Kingdoms from a friend and tried my best to sit down and read through all 4 books.  I'm not even done with the first one.  I guess I could be spending more time throughout the day reading it and I'd be done by now.  I've been trying to get back into exercising regularly again and it always feels like it takes up a lot of time after I've finished, eat lunch, and take a shower.  I had planned on getting back into working on music in May, but I've also been focused on wanting to finish certain games as well.  Interestingly enough, a friend recommended his friend to me for Videogame music composition/production.  He's working on a game independently and wanted original music for it so we set up a deal with each other and now I'm just waiting for more information on what he needs.  In the meantime, I'll probably still be reading and getting back into my own music work.

As for finishing games, I was adamant on finishing BlazBlue Central Fiction's story mode as BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle was releasing soon.  Although they probably don't have anything related to each other, I felt it necessary to finish up the game before then.  I knew it was going to take me a while, but it wasn't nearly as long as previous games since it had a lot less content.  I really liked the whole story and it's become one of my favorite ones in videogames.  With each passing game, I've come to love BlazBlue more and more.  Although a bit cliché and finding a lot of parallels to its counterpart game Guilty Gear at times, the characters of BlazBlue stand out with its eccentric designs and striking colors.  Backgrounds have a certain depth to it that sets the stage of its lore.  The music is obviously good as it is composed by Daisuke Ishiwatari of Guilty Gear fame.  The music often reflects the characters' personality and/or theme rather well while still managing to keep it catchy and memorable.



To give some examples, Ragna is a hardheaded combatant who keeps things simple and fights wildly.  So his theme has a simple melody and the rhythm is rough and aggressive.  He's also known to be a beginner friendly character to start out with because of his simple move sets.  So the art design, music, personality, and gameplay of the character all work together cohesively to create this image that stands out and is memorable.



Here's another easy example. Taokaka is a playful character that has a childlike behavior.  The music portrays this through its fast tempo and very happy melody.



This is one of my favorite songs.  Bang's character is loud and fails to be inconspicuous which is ironic as he's a ninja.  He is filled with pride leading a life of righteousness and serving justice to all who do wrong.  The way the guitar wails and sings matches Bang's personality well in the same way he yells and makes his presence known.  The tune honestly sounds a bit like a sentai hero theme song where the protagonist is filled with justice and hope for everyone.

Other than the story, art, and music, BlazBlue's gameplay was something that also felt new to me when I first play it nearly a decade ago.  Each character has a unique mechanic or "gimmick" that stands out from the rest of the roster.  Unlike other fighting games where learning one character might make it easier to learn the rest of the cast, each character is so different that you really have to find the time to sit down and find out each individual attack and their potential for each situation.  This might seem discouraging to newcomers and casual players, but there's a stylish mode which simplifies the combat so that it's enjoyable for the player but not so optimal that it breaks competitive gameplay.  In other words, there is a lot of depth to the characters.

I was thinking of doing a full rant on BlazBlue's story mode, but considering that it's a series that took me potentially 100+ hours to finish, I think I'll just simply say that "I loved it and can't wait to see more in the future".


As I stated in the beginning of the post, there are only 2 weeks of May left.  BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle releases on June 5th and that'll probably start my summer slack in which the events of Summer will distract me from productivity.  The schedule is really weird this year as it usually has the events back-to-back from each other: E3, Steam Summer Sale, EVO, and Awesome Games Done Quick.  This year, Steam Summer Sale and Summer Games Done Quick over lap each other right after E3.  Then nothing happens all of July (not counting Comic Con since there's never news that I care about during that event).  Finally, Evo begins at the beginning of August.  Maybe I'll try to stay productive in July.  So before June 5th, I'd like to get some work done and finish up a few more games before then.

The year of not getting dog'd

"Don't get dog'd" is a phrase I use often, usually in videogames.  It essentially means "don't get blindsided" (by a dog or something similar to a dog).  Dogs in videogames as enemies can be annoying.  They're fast, hard to hit, have unpredictable movement patterns, do a lot of damage (or outright kill you), and can overwhelm you in large numbers.

In the Chinese zodiac, 2018 is the year of the dog and I'm really hoping this will be a great year.  8 is a lucky number in Chinese (and Asian culture in general).  But seeing how it's the year of the dog, I joked early on in the year of being careful not to be "dog'd".  Just because we have that 8 in 2018 doesn't mean we should be overzealous.

I didn't get any work done this month, but I have been working on a medley remix that'll be the first song in the shoot-em-up remix album I mentioned 2 years ago.  It's taking a long time because I had a lot to fix, alter and import before I could actually get around to remixing it.  Throughout the month, I worked on this remix, went to Jury Duty, spent a week cleaning the house in preparation for Chinese New Year, spent time with my sister, and got caught up with some new games.  It's been a busy month in February and yet it felt so short.  I'd really like to get this current remix done, perhaps work on a few more and then get around to working on original content.  I really want to make the effort to create original content and do some more job searching this Summer and Fall.

With the release of Dynasty Warriors 9 and Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet this month, I knew I'd be pretty busy with videogames.  I was spending most of the early month trying to get through Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada, which I pre-ordered last year, in preparation for Dynasty Warriors 9.  I had a feeling if I didn't finish the game, I'd be swept up in DW9 and not play it.  I didn't finish it and I really did end up playing quite a bit of DW9 in terms of hours (around 15 so far) and haven't had the chance to go back and finish it.

Dynasty Warriors 9, unfortunately, has a lot of flaws and problems with it that didn't meet my expectation for the game.  It's not optimized to run at a steady frame rate and was running below 20 fps on the first day (a patch was released on the 2nd day that fixed the frame rate issue a little).  The English voice acting is atrocious and is almost as bad as Dynasty Warriors 3.  Among those two glaring issues are repetitive objectives, lack of dynamic level designs, questionable cutscene animations, and some poor looking models for NPCs that are speaking.  Despite all this, I've been having a lot of fun with it.  It's immersive, the open-world aspect makes for a much more relaxing experience since I can take on objectives at my own pace, and there's all sorts of neat little mechanics you can take advantage of such as assassinating enemies with a bow and arrow.

In between the release of Dynasty Warriors 9 and Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet was a Steam sale for the Lunar New year, which I wasn't expecting.  I picked up 4 games and the soundtrack to Furi with one of the games being Gang Beasts.  I've been still playing online multiplayer games with my friends with revisiting Left 4 Dead 2, playing some more Rainbow Six: Siege (which has been a lot of fun), finally getting around to playing Dragon Age: Inquisition multiplayer, and Gang Beasts.  Gang Beasts is a party game with floppy people trying to throw each other off platforms.  It's hilarious and I hope we get to play it some more.  Puyo Puyo Tetris released today and my friends picked it up along with me so we plan on playing that tonight.  It's been a fun month playing these games with my friends and we're eagerly awaiting the release of Monster Hunter: World for PC as a few of our friends picked up the PS4 version and have been playing it this past month.

Just this past Friday was the release of Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet and I had pre-ordered it for PC.  I was very excited to play it, for whatever reason (kind of reminds me of Phantasy Star Online, it's a third-person shooter, and it's Sword Art Online related).  It sadly doesn't support ultrawide screen and I can't even play it fullscreen without it bugging out while widowed causes the mouse to bring up my taskbar from the bottom if I aim down too far.  Tutorial took quite a few hours to get through.  But when I finally got through all the dialogues, cinematics, and character introductions, I had a blast.  The game reminds me of the way Cyberdimension Neptunia's gameplay felt in how things were set up, but with a much higher quality.  The presentation of the environment is beautiful, albeit empty.  The game does have some flaws here and there, but nothing that really takes away from making the game fun.  I've put in about 17 hours so far and it feels like nothing (like I've barely done anything) so I think I'm having a lot of fun with it.

With the release of Puyo Puyo Tetris today, I don't think there are any other games I want to pre-order until the end of May when Dark Souls Remaster releases.  So I'll be using the next 3 months to catch up on my backlog and enjoy the games I have now.  I know I've mentioned it quite a few times already, but I'm really looking forward to this year.  The next three month working hard on my projects while catching up on backlog, then Dark Souls Remaster and BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle releases late May, early June respectively, E3, Steam Summer Sales, Summer Games Done Quick, EVO, and then hoping I can get some interviews or land a job during the fall.

My work in 2017

Here's what I worked on and uploaded in 2017:

Let's talk about Metroid Samus Returns [SPOILERS]

Oh man, I didn't expect to be so incredibly busy these last two months.  Right after finishing the Super Mario Medley Remix, I started working on the Ghosts 'n Goblins Medley Remix and it took a lot of work.  Here it is:


It originally had 3 more songs than this, but I wasn't sure if I was able to meld it in well while making in interesting and short.  It was the first time I worked with sidechaining and I'm glad I finally have that skill in part of my repertoire.  It was a nightmare balancing and mixing the tracks this time around as it reach up to 32 tracks.  But now that it's done, I'm taking the rest of December off from working to catch up on other things and relaxing.  One of the things I need to catch up on is writing about games because there are a LOT of games I want to talk about.  I think the only way I can reasonably do this without taking all of December to write about them is by keeping them short and writing many at a time.  In fact, it'd be great if I can finish them all today so I can focus on playing and finishing up some games for the rest of December.  It will be difficult to write about most of the games in detail anyways as the experience and memories of them aren't as fresh as when I had finished them.

So first up is Metroid: Samus Returns for the Nintendo 3DS.


I was obviously excited for the game as it has been over a decade since the last 2D Metroid game and I absolutely love Metroid.  But when I saw that MercurySteam was co-developing the game, I got worried because of their work on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate on the 3DS.  I also really didn't want to compare the experience to the fan-made game Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R) released last year, but it's impossible not to since both game's objective was the same: to recreate Metroid 2.  Having played AM2R kind of set the bar of expectation and what I wanted out of a Metroid game.

Pros of Metroid: Samus Returns:
+ Beautiful 3D graphics, environments and creatures
+ Sound effects were of high quality
+ Combat has a nice flow to it
+ Interesting new abilities and uses for them
+ Not particularly short or long gameplay time
+ Had speed running in mind for level design
+ Last boss almost ruined the experience for me, but the true last boss made up for it

Cons of Metroid: Samus Returns:
- Few and unmemorable boss fights
- Music were high quality and had some familiar tunes, but was mostly unmemorable
- Melee counter gets old and tedious half-way though and free-aiming can be annoying
- Area Themes were weak; it made everything kind of meld and feel the same
- Backtracking had little purpose and felt more tedious than rewarding
- Boss fights are tedious and drawn out unnecessarily
- Hard mode offers nothing new except for enemies doing more damage

Things AM2R did better:
+ Quite a few memorable boss fights that were challenging and exciting
+ Strong sense of area themes and atmosphere
+ Smarter level designs that made exploration interesting
+ Metroid fights were fast-paced, exciting, but still challenging
+ Controls were nicer with better air movement
+ Lots of "moments"
+ A true challenge in Hard mode with new AI movements, less resources, and higher damage


I played through Samus Returns three times: Casual run on Normal Difficulty, 2nd run on Hard, 3rd run as speedrun on Normal.  I felt iffy about everything the first run, more sure the 2nd run, and certain on how I felt about the game the 3rd run.  To boil it down in general terms, I found the game to be mildly entertaining and enjoyed it, but it was sadly an unmemorable experience that seems to be outclassed by the experience I had with AM2R of which I played 5 times.  Invincible enemies that need to be flipped with melee counter or invincible indefinitely, Metroid fights with invincibility states, the digger bot with a few repeating patterns with a small window of vulnerability and the Metroid Queen having long attack patterns with invincibility state made everything feel tedious like it's wasting my time.  If it weren't for the True Boss fight with Proteus Ridley at the very end of the game, I would've been pretty angry about how the game ended because the fight against the Metroid Queen was long and boring.  I liked the fight against Proteus Ridley in terms of presentation, from its familiar and exciting music to the fast-paced combat that didn't involve invincibility states.  In all honesty, the actual fight itself wasn't spectacular as it's pretty easy to learn his pattern after a few tries and he becomes really easy.  So while I'm glad they finally made another 2D Metroid and having enjoyed it, it was honestly the least memorable 2D Metroid game in the series.

Let's catch up on Videogames (4-24-17)

These past four months have been gone by so quickly that I haven't had the chance to really sit down and reflect.  I've been still experiencing problems with health and have checked with the doctor.  I'm going to be getting my eyes checked to see how bad they are, if they really have gone bad, and will also get my head scanned to make sure is nothing wrong with it.  I've already had my blood drawn for a test panel and I'll find out what the doctor thinks in about 2 weeks.  Otherwise, I'm still able to carry out my daily routine with work, exercise, and relaxing.

Last month, I shared the first three remixes I've finished so far this year and have come to a sudden halt this past month in productivity as I re-evaluate everything I'm doing and will be doing in the following months.  I'm trying to do a bit of drawing before I go back to music after this week.  I was originally going to start working on recording all my past piano arrangements, but I think I need to put some priority into creating original compositions so I can use them as part of my portfolio and update it for this summer.  I might try to do the piano recordings and remix projects in-between all the new work, but I don't want to burn myself out or start too many projects I can't finish, because that has happened in the past.  I'm just going to have to experiment and see what works and try to get the most out of my work in the following months to come.

Next month is extremely important in terms of productivity because motivation always plummets around June and doesn't come back until mid to late July.  Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3), Summer Steam Sales (S3), and EVO have always been the biggest events that I'm excited for every year, and sometimes Summer Games Done Quick (SGDQ) can be a distraction.  E3 is particularly important this year with the release of the Nintendo Switch.  I am anticipating an announcement for a Super Smash Bros. port of some sort and new games.  Although I have plenty of games to keep me busy, I'm looking forward to Summer Steam Sales to pick up some new co-op games to play with friends.

I don't think I've had a chance to talk about any of the games I've played in the past 4 months.  Thankfully, most of the games I've been playing have been really good and I've been so busy with work and playing them that I haven't really had the chance to talk about them.  I'm going to briefly go through ones that particularly left an impression on me.

[Just Cause 1 & 2 - PC]

A friend got me Just Cause 3 this past Christmas and so I decided to speed through the first two games of which I've bought long ago.  Despite being the same characters and similar concepts between the three games, they feel very different from each other.  The main character in JC1 had a suave Spaniard sort of personality, a brash and gung-ho Mexican sort of character in JC 2, and a laid-back Mediterranean kind of persona in JC3.  Traveling was annoying in JC1.  The amount of game crashes and annoying combat encounters in JC2 along with the requirement of so many side missions to progress eventually led me to skip most of the game and just watched the ending.  So far, JC3 has a nice balance in traversing and combat.

[The Evil Within - PC]

I finished up The Evil Within in the beginning of the year and was really impressed by the overall experience.  The presentation was trippy and tense, but it never took away from the gameplay and made for an engaging horror-survival experience.  I had started a new-game plus, but the amount of unskippable cut-scenes and lack of new content eventually had me give up to move onto new games.  I liked it though.  One of the better Horror games I've played in a long time.

[DOOM - PC]

DOOM is amazing!  It's violently beautiful with a satisfying combination of movement, combat and aesthetics.  I'm not much of a Doom fan and I particularly found Doom 3 to be boring.  So when I first heard that there was a new DOOM game coming out, I wasn't exactly excited until I saw gameplay for it.  It looked fast-paced, brutal, and exciting.  It looks like they delivered what I expected and I really enjoyed it.  The quick movements, challenging bosses, and explosive combat was all so satisfying and refreshing from all the slower paced, tactical FPS games that are popular now.

[VA-11 HALL-A - PC]

VA-11 HALL-A has become one of my favorite indie games with its engaging story, endearing characters and amazing soundtrack.  I had a whole rant ready to talk about how awesome the game was, but one thing led to another and I just never got the chance to do so.  It's a unique take on the Visual Novel genre without the mechanics being too obscure (like XBlaze was) and it just immersed me into the futuristic dystonia.  I might have missed out on playing the game entirely if it weren't for a friend picking it up for me during Christmas.

[Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight - PC]

The series certainly has come a long way.  The first game was frustrating.  The 2nd game was a bit difficult to navigate.  The 3rd game finally felt somewhat decent, but was short and still felt like a fan-made game.  Momodora: RUtM felt like a complete game and was just a beautifully crafting game with simplicity and challenge.  I played it twice and had started a third run on Hard mode only to stop because it felt like it was going to take a while to get through and I wanted to start new games.  I really liked this one though.  It's one of the better Metroidvanias to release on Steam.

[Fire Emblem Heroes - iOS]

Although my interest in this game has begun to wane, I have been religiously playing it everyday since its launch.  I had imagined the game to become a rather shallow and incomplete experience of the main games; however, I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging the experience was as it delivers bite-sized campaigns that are short and fun, but still requires some strategy.  If anything, playing the game makes me want to play one of the main games, of which I own a few of but haven't actually played through yet.

[Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 - 3DS]

This was a lot of fun.  I don't really like the ending because it left me feeling a bit empty and sad like the first one did, but the overall experience was fast-paced and enjoyable.

[Deathsmiles - PC]

I finally picked up Deathsmiles along with all the soundtracks for less than $10.  The game sure has aged well and is still a lot of fun.  Treasure really did know how to create exciting shoot-em-ups.

[Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni - PS Vita]

I finally got through the game and I'm just disappointed with it.  Although it had better graphics and environment than Senran Kagura, it just pales in comparison.  Combat felt a bit shallow, music was only okay, story was okay, characters were incredibly annoying, and the whole game felt so slow.  I can only hope for another Senran Kagura game right now because Valkyrie Drive has really disappointed all expectations for it, of which I kept pretty low already.

[Blaster Master Zero - 3DS]

A remake of the original!  I don't like the new music as much as the original, but the edited story and revamped gameplay was awesome.  If there was something I had to critique the game for was that there wasn't a difficulty setting.  The game felt too easy, especially since the original was so unforgiving.  Still, I enjoyed the game a lot.

[Sword Art Online Memory Defrag - iOS]

This is probably one of the best Hack-n-Slash games I've played on a touch-screen mobile device because of its unique tap, hold, and swipe mechanics over traditional controls on display made it a much more bearable experience.  Much like Fire Emblem Heroes, my interest in the game has started to wane since I finished the main campaign.  I was really happy I got a cheerleader Yui though!

[Rivals of Aether - PC]

It finally got out of Early Access and I played a decent amount of it.  Online play is sadly unplayable 90% of the time as most of the matches reach 100-200+ ping.  It's a fun Super Smash-like game with a high skill cap and it'd be nice if I had a friend I could play it with.

[To The Moon - PC]

I finally played it.  The gameplay was boring and it was sometimes kind of slow, even for such a short game.  But I liked the story and the music was pretty good.  I'm looking forward to the sequels that explains more about the characters.

[Hyper Light Drifter - PC]

I'm actually glad the game wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be.  It might be because I was playing Nioh at the time and that game is much more difficult, but playing Hyper Light Drifter was a nice challenge that never became too frustrating (except that one time I got super lost and didn't know what to do next).

[Homefront: The Revolution - PC]

I had bought the game on a whim at a low price because I was craving for a First-Person Shooter.  Many times throughout the game, it felt like it was trying to be like other games such as Dying Light or STALKER.  It never quite feels like it does anything special or better than what it's trying to mimic from other games, but I still found it entertaining and ended up enjoying the game a lot more than the first one (which was short and mediocre).  This was decently long enough and was pretty fun at times.

[Nioh - PS4]

59 hours later, I finally got through this brutal Action-RPG.  Nioh was a lot of fun with its faster-paced combat and challenging enemies.  I'm actually afraid that it might have ruined my experience for other games like it, and I still have Dark Souls 2 & 3 and Bloodborne to get through.  There's actually more I can still get out of the game such as playing with a new class or getting through New Game+, but I have so many games queued up right now that I can't imagine playing it anymore.  Lots of raging and yelling was required to get through it.

[Trigger Happy Havoc Danganronpa - PS Vita]

What a crazy game.  You're stuck in a school with 14 other students with no way out and have the condition of being able to leave if one of the students can get away with murder.  The first four chapters were a bit too predictable, but I liked getting to know each of the characters.  Then the story goes a bit crazy and unpredictable, and those last few chapters in the game left such a good impression that it was the defining moments of what makes the game so memorable.  I'll be playing the 2nd game soon.

That was still quite a list and there were specific games I really wanted to get into details with, but I just don't have the time right now.  It's nice to be able to even write just a little right now to reflect on how much I've already experienced these past four months.  I'm really hoping to get some real work done this next month and hopefully I can get some more games completed in-between.

First 3 Remixes of 2017

There's much I want to rant and discuss, but I'm stretched for time and want to make the most of this week.  I just want to be able to share the first 3 remixes I've completed and uploaded this year:






I've been keeping myself busy these past three months and it's left me with less time to write and reflect.  Still, I feel as if I'm not getting enough done each day.  The year has been a slight struggle, but not bad so far.  Until next post!

Autumn Approaches

I really shouldn't have started my last post with "I'm feeling pretty good lately" because about a week later, I wasn't feeling that way.  I started to experience hunger feelings with some slight burning, sharp pains around where my heart is, and numb to occasional sharp headaches everyday.  It wasn't as bad as all the other times I felt ill in the past year, but it did affects during the time my sister was visiting.  I always seem to fall ill around the time I see her.

Anyways, Summer ends in 3 days and it makes me feel a bit sad.  I'm not sure what to look forward to nowadays other than release dates of games I really want.  Summer has all the events I'm excited for and it's always a bit sad to see it end each year, so it's been the one season in the year that I'm usually excited for now.

It's been a crazy 3 weeks since my last post, and it all passed by so quickly.  I had found some VSTs that mimic the soundchip used in the NES and decided to experiment with it and create an original song inspired by Mega Man using the VSTs:


I started up my remix of Elegant Summer right before my sister came home.  I wanted to finish and upload it before the Summer ended, but I don't think that's viable anymore unless I rush it, and I don't want to rush this one.  I also got word back from the company I applied a job position for and was declined and won't be making it to interviews.  I did mention in my last post that I certain I wouldn't be getting the job, but it was still worth it and I really liked the mock-up I created from it.  There's another position open that I could apply for, but it's not exactly what I want to do.  Still, it's an opportunity and I'll take it.  So I'll be working on that in the following weeks.

In the first two weeks of September, I mainly spent it composing Swift Man, starting up the Elegant Summer Remix, and playing lots of God Eater Resurrection.  I forgot to mention last post that I had started with God Eater Resurrection that came free with the purchase of God Eater 2 Rage Burst.  I am up to 68 hours on GE:R so far and have a bit more to go before completing all missions.  I really like the game.  It has a good story, fun characters, exciting combat, and lots of depth in character builds.  And then in the past week, I spent time with my family with my sister visiting us.  We went out to dinner a few times, watched half a dozen movies, played some games, caught up with each other, and went shopping (well, they went shopping while I just walked around with them).  I haven't watched movies in a very long time, and so this is the most amount of movies I've watched in years.  We watched X-Men Apocalypse, which I didn't like very much.  I requested to watch Red Cliff since I've always wanted to watch it but never did.  It was split into two movies and each one was 2.5 hours long.  It had some slow moments, but it really immersed the viewer into the world of Ancient China.  The battles were well choreographed and exciting.  I enjoyed it.  My sister wanted me to watch Pop Star and Spy.  Pop Star was not only funny, but is a great critique in our modern day society.  Spy was hilarious and well worth the watch.  I also wanted to watch Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV.  It was pretty much what I expected.  The graphics were incredible, but the story was typical and the pacing was slow.  My sister left yesterday to go back to her home in SoCal and got back to work today.  She seems really stressed about work, even when she was home with us during her visit.  I hope she can finish what needs to be done in the next 3 months so that she'll be able to relax during Christmas time.

Mystery Chronicle: One Way Heroics released last week and I've been waiting for it all Summer.  The game has some stuttering problems, can't be closed in-game (gotta Alt+F4) among other problems, but the extra content and a more updated/polished graphics are worth it.  The game's still a lot of fun as the original One Way Heroics, but there's some aspects from the original that I still like more (such as status of other players, the retro-like charm, and smoother map scroll).  Besides continuing God Eater Resurrection, I'm still playing Resident Evil Revelations 2 and just finished my 3rd run of campaign about 2.5 hours ago on Survival difficulty.  Bosses and certain enemies would kill me between 1-2 hits.  It wasn't too bad, but decently challenging.  It unlocked another difficulty level after that one, but I'm not too keen on playing through it.  I might consider playing Countdown mode.  Otherwise, I'm going to play Raid mode a bit more and finally call it quits on it.  Resident Evil Revelations 2 exceeded my expectations and I really enjoyed it.

As sad as it is to see Summer come to a close, I'm looking forward to playing more fun games and working on new projects.  It's been a rough year, but at least the gaming side of things have been great.

Torn between my work and finding one

I've been feeling rather anxious this month.  I want to be able to continue doing my own work and producing audio and other projects, but I should really be looking for a proper job right now.  I was hoping that Camera Obscura would bring about some sort of recognition to help bolster my resumé, but the game seems largely ignored and sales don't seem all too great.  What I'll probably end up doing is looking up for any open positions and then applying for them while hoping for the best and then go right back into working.  I just finished my first piece of audio work two days ago for the year and it annoys me that it took me this long just to get one remix done.  I started on three of them but stopped production on the first two when I realize I couldn't really achieve what I wanted out of them.  I had finally dove back into "The Guardian Legend Remix Project" which I had planned out back in 2007.  I brought back my notes out from then and realized the way I think of music is very different and is a lot more diverse.  I finished an orchestrated rendition of the title screen theme and was actually disappointed with how it turned out.  It doesn't sound as nearly as grand or free flowing as I imagined it.  I don't want to dwell on it anymore because it's the middle of March and it was the very first audio I've produced this year and I just want to produce more.  In other words, I'm moving on.  Then there's the case of wanting to work on other projects.  I want to make a game and I've been wanting to forever.  I remember how much time and effort spent on making games on my own back in High school, so I know it's not going to be easy to find the time to do so now.    I also want to start up a new comic and do an animation project or two since I have ideas for them.  I keep building up ideas but never really have the time to create them.  I have so many ideas from when I was kid up until now all built up with it being materialized so slowly.  But at the very least, I'm able to make it happen.  I didn't know I'd be working with music, art or videogames.  That's stuff I used to just imagine.  All I can really do now is take it one step at a time, and I think I want to work on my audio projects first.  But I'm finding it difficult to work with a clear conscience when I should be looking for a proper job and working at it right now considering I'll have graduated five years ago as of this June.  At the very least, I'm making more stuff I can show to employers rather than applying empty handed with no material to show.

In terms of gaming, I kind of slowed down on completions this month.  It's probably because I've started so many long lasting ones.  I didn't really finish FEZ as I gave up on completing the game.  It got boring.  The game's beautiful and the mechanic for the 2D/3D perspective is really cool, but it just wasn't enticing to play after the first two hours (I played 4 hours before I gave up).  Momodora 3 was significantly shorter than I thought, and so I completed it 3 times (or was it 4?).  It was a fun little action-platformer.  Guacamelee was fun at first, but then it got frustrating and I just wanted to finish the game (of which I did).  It was an interesting Metroidvania that had a unique combat system.  I liked it for the most part, but the game really frustrated me near the end.  Wrack finally went on sale at a price I was willing to pay.  I got through the short campaign and thought it was pretty solid classic First-Person Shooter.  I actually think it does a better job of being a old-school shooter than the new "Rise of the Triad" did.  I think the game did frustrate me at some points, but I don't recall what it was.

Megabyte Punch was an interesting yet unsatisfying action-platformer.  It plays like Super Smash Bros. with the ability to switch out parts and specials like other robot games (of which I can't really give an example of at the moment).  Here are some of the problems I had with the game:
- The reach of attacks are pitiful.  It's like you're playing a Pichu.
- In the last half of the game (adventure mode), you get juggled like crazy by enemies
- Enemies have ridiculous priority over your attacks, even if it's the same exact attack
- Adventure mode is really boring after a while
- Some enemy attacks are overpowered with its speed, damage, and priority
Despite all my complaints, I finished adventure mode to the end.  The game left me with a pretty poor impression of it.  Abyss Odyssey still does the best job of utilizing Super Smash Bros. mechanics.

I also finished Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed for the PS Vita earlier this month.  I kind of made the mistake of playing the game on the hardest difficult (that was available, I unlocked an even harder level after finishing it) and so I an aggravating experience playing the game.  I often get stuck in a corner and get juggled into a strip and die on the spot.  The game is as weird as a lot of people speculated with stripping the clothes off of "man-made vampires", but it wasn't anything too risqué.  The game definitely felt cheap with the clunky animations and low-res textures, but the game was still mildly entertaining.  I really didn't like the side quests and decided to skip all of them after the first two chapters as I got really bored of them.  The main game was alright and I was able to have fun with it, even though the difficulty drove me crazy.  I was getting taken down with one hit every time and enemies were incredibly aggressive.  I thought it was pretty cool walking around what is to be considered a rather faithful recreation of Akihabara.  Once I completed the game, I started over with New Game+ on the easiest difficulty.  It felt like a totally different game.  It was a lot less stressful to play, that's for sure.  I might revisit the game later, but I have moved onto a different game on my PS Vita for now.

I think I'm most happy about completing Hyperdimension Neptunia this month, though.  I bought that game 3-4 years ago and just didn't have the patience to get through it until now.  With the remakes coming out, I really wanted to get through the series this year.  I really like the theme, art style, story, music, etc. for the franchise because it's colorful, happy and fun.  The problem with the first game was that combat was really slow and the combo system was rather tedious after a while.  But the dialogues and events were so humorous and delightful that it kept me going.  After I finished the game, I wanted to start Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2.  But I decided to take a short break and play something else first.


In February, I started Valkyria Chronicles on PC.  I kind of knew I wouldn't be able to finish it within the month.  I knew it was a long game, but I'm able to enjoy it even if it's taking so long to complete.  This month, I started Sleeping Dogs to play alongside Valkyria Chronicles because I've been wanting to play it for the longest time and decided not to wait any longer.  It's fun!  I don't I've been so into a GTA-like game before (other than Saint's Row the 3rd and 4).  On PS3, I started Time and Eternity.  The game got really low ratings and I was weary about getting the game, but I couldn't help it when I knew Yuzo Koshiro did the music.  I can see the flaws and downsides to the game, but I really like the combat system so far.  It's a lot more engaging than most traditional RPGs.  And as far as I know, the game isn't that long for an RPG.  I'm not sure what I want to play after finishing it as I have a lot lined up for PS3, but perhaps I'll playing an Action game next.  On PS2, I finally started Persona 3 FES.  I know it can be a short game from what I've been told, but so far it's super slow.  I've engaged in one fight, and it was tutorial.  I think I've played at least 2 hours of it so far.  Hopefully it gets more interactive from here on out.  On 3DS, I started up Final Fantasy Theatrhythm Curtain Call.  I'm getting kind of bored of it already, if not frustrated whenever I get near the end of a song and then fail.  I played a few songs on the easiest difficulty and then decided I'd only play the hardest difficulty and fall back on a lower difficulty if I cannot handle it at all.  Even then, I'm starting to get bored of the game and not want to play considering how many songs are in it this time around.  I might give up on it soon and start up Bravely Default.  On DS, I started Megaman ZX a while back and haven't really played it.  It's not as fun as the Zero series.  On PSP, I'm still working on Final Fantasy Dissidia and the game pisses me off every time I play it.  It's on such extreme ends on whether you win or lose a match.  I'm not sure if I want to fully complete this game either because I'm not fully enjoying it.  On PS Vita, I started Soul Sacrifice after I finished Akiba's Trip.  It has a strong sense of atmosphere and presentation.  The game is unique, but it's sadly already starting to get boring/frustrating with fights lasting 15-20 minutes.  Out of all the Monster Hunter-like games I've played on PS Vita, I think I liked Freedom Wars the most in terms of a Single-player experience.


I think that's enough ranting for now, haha.  I'm hoping to get some more audio work done this month.

Success and laziness

It's been a half-fulfilling month this February as Camera Obscura is finally out for sale on Steam, but I haven't been able to put out any other work the rest of the month.  The news of Monty Oum early this month really shook me up since I always wonder how much work I can really get done in my life when Monty barely just started.  Yes, I know he did an incredible amount of work in the past 8 years, but I say "barely just started" because I know he had a LOT of ideas he still wanted to share.  Despite wanting to get work done, I just wanted able to produce anything this month.  In the first half of the month, I focused on getting everything ready for the launch of Camera Obscura.  This meant putting together the soundtrack, test running through the game and setting the time goals, and error reporting.  Then I finished up another Cover Letter to a potential job opportunity and turned that in.  The last half of February, I could have gotten something done and I wanted to at least create one track of audio work.  That didn't happen.  I started 3 different projects and couldn't really finish any of them because I felt I didn't have the necessary time or resources to do so.  Other than that, I've been pretty distracted by the games I've been buying and playing.

I only finished half the amount of games compared to last month, but I got through some pretty interesting games.  At the end of January, I finished up Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 which turned out to be pretty fun.  It still has an identity problem like it did with the first game with the addition of stealth and open-world exploration and everything, but the game felt a bit more unique.  I don't think it's as consistent as the first one since there were many problems throughout the game, but I felt like I enjoyed it a little more because it had personality.  Granted, the ending was pretty dumb considering that it's supposed to be the end of the Lords of Shadow series (SPOILER, it was a cliff hanger).  I got through games like Super Panda Adventures, Gauntlet, and Crysis 3.  They were all sort of entertaining, but nothing worth talking about.  I got through the game Transistor pretty quickly and really enjoyed that game.  The combat mechanics were unique and intuitive and I'm even considering playing it a second time around if I can find the time for it.  I also got through Shovel Knight which turned out to be a lot better than I thought it'd be.  I've played a lot of retro-style 2D Action-Platformers only to end up disappointed and this was one of the few times I really liked it.  I finally got around to finishing Fantasy Life and really liked the story and music, but the gameplay was still pretty shallow and didn't really make me want to play it all that much after finishing the main story.  I got around to playing through Bound by Flame as well.  It was really tough in the beginning and I died a LOT.  But somewhere along the way, the game got really easy.  I read on forums and comments for the game and a lot of people thought the game was incredibly difficult (which in a way it kind of was).  Especially the last few parts.  I found it to be incredibly easy because of the build I created the perks I picked up.  It's an Action-RPG, and I suspect a lot of people focused on melee builds if not a magic build.  I went for a Rogue-type build (which was called Ranger path in the game) and focused on my daggers and crossbow.  Near the end, I was getting so much resources that I could make 100 bolts for my crossbow and not care (in the beginning, getting even 10 bolts was really good).  So near the end of the game, I pretty much made a huge stack of crossbow bolts and ran around the enemies while shooting them.  I was able to beat everything without being touched.  It was a very unrefined game, but I had fun playing it.  I really wanted to find the soundtrack to the game, but there wasn't one.  I played three different 2D Action-Platformers (aside from Shovel Knight) this month that really pissed me off.  One was Castle in the Darkness, of which I bought when it released since it was so cheap.  It's supposed to be a retro-style, hardcore Metroidvania of sorts.  At first, it was really fun and enjoyable.  But then it got to the point of sadistic level design and boss fights and I just couldn't stand the game anymore.  I got through the game and settled for an "okay" ending and then looked up the "best" ending.  Near the end of the game, the character felt unreasonably weak while bosses were ridiculously strong with crazy patterns that I couldn't keep up with.  Outland is that one platformer that uses the polarity mechanic from Ikaruga as its basis for creating levels.  There wasn't anything terribly wrong with the game, but it felt rather underwhelming and I just didn't have as much fun as I thought I would with it.  And then the last boss was so incredibly tedious and frustrating that it left a bad impression when I finished.  Finally, I got around to playing The Bleed Pixels after installing it for over half a year.  I remember watching a bit of it when "Awesome Games Done Quick" was going on (it's a charity stream of speed runners beating games as fast as possible to raise money for the prevent cancer foundation) and thought it was time for me to finally get through the game.  Holy smacks, this game was rage inducing.  The platforming felt funky, enemies were small and obnoxious, and the game had the worst rendition of "ice floor" mechanics I have ever played in a 2D platformer.  I really liked how hard the game was and thought some of the level designs were really smart, but some of the design choices were so infuriating that I couldn't stand the game any more.  All three of these platformers got me to rage, yell and complain, but I was stubborn and finished them through.  I liked some aspects from each of the game, but I also hated them.

There's two more games I want to talk about.  The first being Freedom Wars which I finished just last week (feels like it's been a while already).  It's another Monster Hunter-like game made by the same creators of God Eater Burst.  Freedom Wars was really unique and had a strong sense of atmosphere and setting.  You're a "sinner" in the game, who has been sentenced 1 Millions years to community service, in a post-apocalyptic world where people live underground and go up onto the surface to fight other regions for resources.  You meet other "sinners" along the way and work together to fight off oppositions, rescue "civilians" who are valuable resources in engineering and science, and fight off giant robot-like creatures called "abductors" while scraping them for materials.  The game is extremely slow in the beginning with a LOT of talking in the first 3 hours of the game.  But once I got into the meat of the action, it was a really exciting experience.  I still can't get over the first time I heard this song when I was rescuing a civilian:

It was suspenseful and exciting.  Even near the end of the game, I didn't get sick of this one particular song.  I love it!  It really added to the experience when fighting an abductor as they stand 10 times taller than you.  In the game, you use guns, explosives, and large melee weapons to take them down.  You can't really "jump" per se with a button as the main mechanic for getting around the game is the "thorn" which allows you hook onto different surfaces and enemies to pull yourself to them or to drag down a large enemy and strike them when they're on the floor.  Single-player has a bleak yet interesting story to explains the world that they players live in and simulates multiplayer with NPCs helping out.  Each character has a robot-like helper called "Accessories" to fight alongside them and single-player allows the player to add in 3 NPCs to help out on a mission.  So in total, you'll have 8 fighters out on the field again numerous enemies or a few gigantic enemies.  The game can get pretty ridiculous because of its difficulty, though.  Right from the very beginning, I was knocked down in 2-3 hits.  I was shocked on how difficult the game got right from the very start.  Later on, enemies have a ridiculous amount of health and they all one-shot you.  Even worse when there's a mission that has 2-3 abductors out at once.  Extra missions and end-game content is pretty intense as each mission can last anywhere from 10-45 minutes just fighting one enemy sometimes.  The game, in all honesty, was very mediocre.  The graphics, the gameplay, the content, etc.  They were all very average.  But the experience was so unique and immersive that it left a really good impression on me.  I loved the game, even if it can get pretty BS at times.

The other game I wanted to talk about I finished just 2 nights ago and only started this week after I finished Freedom Wars.  XBlaze - Code: Embryo is a Visual Novel and a prequel to the BlazBlue series.  I love the story to BlazBlue, so I was very interested to try out XBlaze.  I was thinking it might talk about the 6 heroes and the Black Cauldron, but it seems the story takes place 150 years prior to the events of BlazBlue.  In the past, I've always wondered what the attraction to Visual Novels were.  Then I played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and realized that reading can be really fun in a game if the story is really good or if the gameplay was interesting (of which the Ace Attorney series excelled in both).  XBlaze - Code: Embryo has a weird gameplay mechanic where, instead of making choices when presented to you like in most traditional Visual Novels, the player chooses to read certain articles when they're available on their "TOi" device.  It aggregates different articles depending on the interests of its user.  Depending on which articles you read, different things happen in the story.  There aren't THAT many different routes in the game and is closer to a Kinetic Visual Novel (Straight read through, no choices) than a traditional Visual Novel.  Despite the weird game mechanic, I was hooked to the game.  The characters were full of personality (or lack thereof which made them interesting) and the story kept me wanting to know more.  It might be a bit lengthy to explain the whole story, but I guess I can shorten it to say that the main character was part of an incident that led to the disappearance of 200 people.  10 years later, there are people that want to work with him with other wanting to control him to solve the mysteries that keep happening in his hometown as they all seem to have some link to that incident.  I really liked the cast of characters in the game despite them falling into usual tropes in Japanese fiction.  It's a lot like watching an animé and it kind of is like watching one if you put on auto-read.  The game are mostly still images with some animation in lip-synced speech and blinking.  That's something I'm really liking in a lot of games now with 2D images is when the characters are animated with breathing, talking, blinking, and movement while there's dialogue.  I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that every ending in the game made me sad.  They're good endings, but there's no such thing as "best ending" in this one.  I'm already feeling a bit sad from the detachment from the game now that I've finished it.  It was a really interesting and involving experience.  As its relationship to the BlazBlue series, I could say that you don't need to know a single thing about BlazBlue and you can still enjoy the story for XBlaze.  Though, it's pretty exciting when you hear key words from BlazBlue like Murakumo, Kusanagi, and Takamagahara.  If anything, it only explains one major topic at the very end of the game that explains something very important about BlazBlue.  A sequel for XBlaze is already in the works and an announcement for a Western release was put out yesterday.  The sequel is called XBlaze - Lost: Memories.  I'm looking forward to it.


I'm kind of sad that I still haven't gotten a single audio track produced these past 2 months, so I'm hoping I'll be a busy with them in March and come out with something.

Reflecting on 2014

I wrote another list of resolutions on FB like I do every year to remind myself what I'm doing and what I want to do.  Here are this year's resolutions for 2015:
1) Take better care of myself.  I’ve been neglecting my health in 2014 like I did in 2012.
2) Start knocking down my projects list.  Mostly Music and Game Projects.
3) Get through more, buy less.  I want to get through the Persona and Disgaea series this year.
And to quote what I wrote on FB:

"This might seem like an odd list of resolutions to make, but I believe it will better myself in the life I want to live and how I want to spend that time throughout 2015.  I didn’t list “finding a job” this year because I realize that it’s not my intention of just landing a job, but finding what I excel at and actually doing it right now.  I had the mindset of “this is what I’ve done; please hire me” instead of “this is what I AM doing and what I COULD be doing for you if I was hired.”  I’m sick of waiting to be able to do what I want to do, so I’m going to go ahead and do them."

A few days before New Years, I received an e-mail that said "Congratulations, Camera Obscura has been Greenlit!"  I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it.  We submitted the game to Steam Greenlight back in January 2013 and I had lost all hope for the game every being greenlit by 2014.  Whether this will actually be my big break is irrelevant.  I need to work on follow up projects so that if Camera Obscura does find appropriate exposure and recognition in the industry, I can show that I've been staying active.

"Ultima Exodus: Heroes of Yore" project was definitely the highlight of my work last year.  I feel as if I still didn't do enough last year, though.  This project took up approximately 3-4 months, so I still had plenty of time to do more.  Instead, I felt burnt out and did regular mixes since I haven't touched my turn-table in a while.  So I want to use what I learned last year and multiply the amount of work by many fold.  I also liked the Deadly Premonition arrangement and Super Smash Bros. Remix I worked on.  Producing 24 audio tracks for the year isn't too bad, but I feel like I can do more.

Now for the fun stuff.  I want to reflect back on the games released in 2014.

Top 10 Games I played through 2014:
10) Arcana Heart 3: Love MAX!!!!! (Playstation Vita)
Honestly, I was really upset with my purchase of this game.  I already bought the original on PS3 digitally because it didn't have a physical copy.  But with the game entirely updated with balance changes, an extra story mode, and the fact that it will be a physical copy this time around, I decided to support the game and buy the Playstation Vita version for $40.  A week after I bought it, a new version of the game with a brand new character was announced.  Two more weeks after that, it dropped down to $25 for a sale.  As I played the game, I found out that about 5 of the characters' story mode freezes the game after you beat the last boss and it DOESN'T save the progress.  Despite all this misfortune surrounding this game, I still managed to have a lot of fun playing it.  I spent at least 15-20 hours on the game.  I really liked it when I played it on PS3, but I never really got to sit down and play through all the character stories.  It made it so much easier to do on PS Vita since I was able to play when I needed a break or just wanted to play one round since the PS Vita can be put on sleep mode for a long duration.  I also missed out on a lot of fighting games this year (A LOT) so this game might not have been on the list if I had played BlazBlue CP, Guilty Gear Xrd, or Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.  The game did leave quite an impression on me with its art, music, gameplay, voice acting and dialogue.  One of the character stories had a scene I found very memorable where Weiss asks Heart Aino for advice:

[Weiss]
Let me see...With no relation to either age or personality...a person who has been with you for as long as you can remember...from the absolute beginning...

Someone who has been there through good and bad...through success and failure. You can share everything and understand each other. What should one call such a relationship...?

Comrades, friends, best friends, lovers, spouses...They all seem to be slightly...different...in connotation. So my question is how can I express this relationship...?

[Heart]
Oh, that's easy enough to answer!
We call that "family"!

9) Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection (Playstation Vita)

I honestly shocked I played this as much as I did, which amounted to about 23 hours.  I was interested at first because I thought it was a music rhythm game.  It is not a music rhythm game.  It's a mix between a visual novel and a management simulation.  You train one of the four main characters of the series to become idols in order to fight back the growing popularity of idols as they're taking away the faith and powers of the goddesses of the world.  Then you have them perform on stage.  Honestly, the performing parts are extremely boring after a while as all you do is constantly move the camera around and uses stage effects when the crowd is cheering.  The most interesting parts of the game are the dialogues and the choices you make.  The game is filled with humor and personality.  It gave a more intimate look at each individual character from the series and I really liked that.  I could've played a lot more, but it felt like an Easter egg hunt for dialogues I haven't seen yet and the performance parts got really boring.  I enjoyed the game, but to an extent.

8) Ragnarok Odyssey ACE (Playstation Vita)
This was my first PSV game and I actually didn't really like the game at first.  I was actually expecting an open-world experience since it had the name "Ragnarok" and is tied to the Ragnarok Online universe.  Instead, it was a Monster Hunter clone like many other PSP and PS Vita games.  But it turned out to be really fun.  The different builds you can make are interesting, boss battles are challenging, and co-op mode is a lot of fun.  As much as I enjoyed it, I did feel that it was a tad bit grindy when it came to upgrading and the game would get so hard that it required a lot of grinding in order to progress.  I've only finished the main story and still have extra content I could play, but I had put it on hold to move onto other games.

7) Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls (PC)
This expansion gave me what I actually wanted in Diablo 3: an end game that randomly generated levels to run through and fight a boss at the end.  I do wish that there were more bosses for it, but maybe they can upgrade it later.  The new class, modes, and changes to the game revitalized the entire experience and I had a lot of fun playing Diablo 3 once again.  I always have the itch to play some more, but it's so hard when I'm trying to finish up other games.

6) Abyss Odyssey (PC)
I've been craving for a Metroid-vania game for a while and had bought a lot the past 2 years.  None really satisfied me, and Abyss Odyssey didn't exactly fulfill it either; however, the game turned out to be a lot more enjoyable than I could ever imagine.  It mixes Metroid-vania like exploration in randomly generated levels with Super Smash Bros.-like combat.  Almost every enemy you encounter in the game can be captured and used as a character, including the last boss.  The main problems with the game is online multiplayer is iffy with really bad connections and tons of glitches that happen when playing online and the fact that there isn't any real closure to the game as it keep updating with new material little by little with few variances.  I eventually started to run out of things to do in the game, but I'd probably still play it once in a while just because of how much fun it is.  It was one of the few games I pre-order in 2014 which included the amazing soundtrack for the game.

5) Killer is Dead - Nightmare Edition (PC)
I'm really glad I was able to get the game and find the time to play through it, because I had a lot of fun with it.  I've played a lot of hack-n-slashes and one of the hardest things to achieve in creating a good one is making the experience satisfying as Hack-n-slashes tend to feel repetitive when it doesn't feel rewarding.  Killer is Dead gets it right with fluid combat, decent pacing, challenging gameplay, and one heck of a presentation.  Things get weird in the game, but in a good sort of way.  The game is imaginative and thought provoking and I enjoyed it a lot.  I plan on playing through it again on a harder difficulty as soon as I find the time.

4) Azure Striker Gunvolt (Nintendo 3DS)
Besides Metroid-vania games, I've been craving 2D Action-Platformers and none seem to satisfy me.  But this game did.  Azure Striker Gunvolt was developed by the studio that worked on the Mega Man Zero series and so I had to check it out.  The game is significantly easier, yet it was challenging in its own way.  The pacing is extremely fast and definitely designed for those who enjoy speed-running.  The graphics are flashy and dynamic.  The music is not bad, especially the ones with vocals.  The game just felt so fun.  The only complaint I really have is how sad I felt at the end.  It's a rather sad story.

3) Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns (Playstation 3)
Okay Square-Enix, you win.  2014 was quite a tiring year as I got through Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII-2, and Lightning Returns back-to-back (essentially).  But it felt so worth it when I got to the end.  I thought the first game had okay gameplay with a not-bad story, although it was poorly presented to the player.  The 2nd game had an incredibly interesting story, but the same (if not worse) gameplay as the first one as it required a significant amount of grinding to be in the best shape your party could possibly be.  And the 3rd and last one, Lightning Returns, had the best overall gameplay with its unique combat system, but lacked a strong story of its own.  The game was a lot of fun up until I was only left with the "board" quests which mostly consists of farming, gathering, and other menial tasks.  It's an interesting adventure with Lightning trying to save the world, one person at a time; however, it doesn't have a strong overall story of its own.  What it did do was give closure to the entire series and I really liked it.  I liked it so much that I thought about the entire XIII series very differently.  Lightning Returns left a really good impression despite all the boring traversing and menial quests I had to get through.

2) Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus (Playstation Vita)

I already knew before I started playing the game that this was going to be 2nd on my top 10 games list this year judging from how much I enjoyed playing Senran Kagura Burst.  I honestly didn't think they would bring "Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus" over to North America, but it seems like all the games (other than the mobile game) will be brought over of which I couldn't be more happy to hear.  The game is no longer a side-scroll view beat-em-up, but a 3D-Action Brawler (making it even more similar to Dynasty Warriors).  A lot of changes have been made to the mechanics and characters for a much more varied and challenging experience.  One of my complaints on Burst was that it was either too easy or too hard based on damage.  But that has changed in this iteration as the AI is much smarter and a lot tougher to read and counter.  I was a bit skeptical on the inclusion of 10 new characters as I was afraid that it would stretch the attention of each individual character, and it did.  I feel like a lot of the characters could've had a lot more development and be presented better.  Despite that, the flow of the story and gameplay is much smoother and evenly paced compared to Burst as fans complained the reading parts (story) were too long in Burst.  I enjoyed the game immensely and manged to accumulate 53 hours of gameplay before I decided to move on to other games.  I am very excited for Senran Kagura 2 Deep Crimson and Senran Kagura Estival Versus.

1) Super Smash Bros. 3DS/Wii U
I'm not surprised that this became my #1 game of the year.  I was a little worried about the 3DS version as I didn't think the device could handle such a resource intensive game.  I was worried about poor online connection, uncomfortable controls, graphic slow-down and frame skips.  The game does have some of these problems, but they're usually not that bad.  If anything, Super Smash Bros. 3DS went far beyond my expectations and delivered an incredibly entertaining experience for both casual and competitive players.  There's the regular Smash mode, classic mode, All-stars mode, Smash-Run, Stadium mode, challenges to fulfill, trophy collecting, custom character creation, and online play has both casual play and competitive play.  With that, I've only finished Classic mode and Smash Run mode with every character and have been playing online with friends which racks up my gameplay time to 135 hours.  I still have All-Stars mode and Stadium to get through.  Aside from the amount of things you can do, the game itself feels really good.  All the attacks have this element that makes it so satisfying when you land them.  I wouldn't be surprised if we all were still playing this game 5 years later considering how Melee is still being played now after an entire decade.


Honorable Mentions of 2014:
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PC)
I couldn't keep away from CoD this time as it introduces jet-packs which adds a lot of vertical movement to the strategy.  Single-player was buggy with too many "walk with me, talk with me" scenes and a predictable story, but it was fun.  Multiplayer is a blast and can get really tough with all the new mechanics.

Titanfall (PC)
I was saddened with the fact that it doesn't have a single-player campaign, but I had fun with the few hours that I've played on it.  I honestly have more fun jumping around than actually shooting.  I hope more First-Person Shooters are this fluid in movement in the future.

Phantom Breaker: Battlegrounds (Playstation Vita)
A tiny little beat-em-up I bought because I thought it looked cute and mildly entertaining.  I've known about the Fighting game for a while now but I've never played it because it's Xbox 360 exclusive.  This little Beat-em-up spinoff has chibi versions of the characters with some simple combat mechanics.  It looks a lot like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World the Videogame, but I think I might like it more than that game.

1001 Spikes (PC)
While this game is infuriatingly difficult and one of the levels took me 3 hours to complete, I enjoyed it a whole lot.  It gets the retro aesthetics right (where many go wrong, especially with the music) and its difficulty is justified and fair.

Magicite (PC)
Magicite is 2014's Risk of Rain.  It was a lot of fun playing this with friends, although we've had a lot of connection issues and lag problems while playing online.  We actually stopped playing because of how poor online play can get.

Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F 2nd (Playstation 3)
More Miku, more music, more mechanics!  I haven't gotten to play much yet, but I like what I've seen so far.

Astebreed (PC)
I couldn't believe how exciting this game was.  I was tensed up the whole playthrough.  It's a shoot-em-up with dynamically changing perspectives with a lot of emphasis on action.  The game is short, and so I played a 2nd time on a harder difficulty and still really liked it the 2nd time around despite struggling with the extra challenge.

Vanguard Princess (PC)
I've already been playing the Japanese version before this released, but it was very cheap when it launched and translated in English, so I decided to support the game and localization team.  It's a fun and straight-forward 2D Fighter that I can pick up and play.

Ikaruga (PC)
I'm just glad they brought it to PC.  I finally got to play it, and it kicked my butt.  Thankfully there's free play mode so I can continue as many times as I want.

Strider (PC)
Fast-paced and stylish, Strider was a pretty fun game to play through.

Destiny (Playstation 3)
I know Destiny was a big deal in 2014, but I honestly didn't think the whole package was that great.  I played the main story with a friend and thought it was incredibly slow, forgettable, and uninteresting experience.  Even at the very end of the game, we both didn't know what the story was about.  I did try out the Strike missions (end game) and yeah it was a much more interesting experience which is probably what everyone is playing the game for: Endgame.  I only rented the game, but I might get it if it ever releases on PC, is on sale, and I can find at least 1 other friend to play with me.

Freedom Wars (Playstation Vita)
I feel like I should mention this game since I've had a lot of fun playing it.  The problem is that I'm only on Chapter 3 out of 8 which means I'm not even half way through the game yet.  It's another Monster Hunter clone, which got me worried.  But it's been very unique so far.  The atmosphere has a strong sense of immersion as to what kind of world this game takes place in, the combat is very challenging right from the start, using the thorn to hook shot and swing around everywhere is really cool, and the music can get pretty intense.  The beginning of the game is extremely slow, though.  So it does take 3-5 hours before you get into the fun stuff.


Games I got but didn't get through yet:
Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2
Freedom Wars
Dark Souls 2
Fantasy Life
Shovel Knight
Mercenary Kings
Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming
Conception 2: Children of the Seven Stars
Agarest: Generations of War Zero
Child of Light
Bound by Flame
Drakengard 3
Mugen Souls Z
Transistor
Xblaze Code: Embryo
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky
Akiba's Trip: Undead & Undressed
Sword Art Online: Hallow Fragment
Super Time Force Ultra
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call
Gauntlet
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
Valkyria Chronicles

Games I missed out on entirely (But hope to play one day):
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Assassin's Creed Unity
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Watch Dogs
Far Cry 4
Wolfenstein: The New Order
Tales from the Borderlands
The Evil Within
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
Infamous Second Son
Bayonetta 2
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare
Guilty Gear Xrd
Assassin's Creed Rogue
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
Thief
BlazBlue Chrono Phantasma
Demon Gaze
JoJo's Bizarred Adventure: All Star Battle
Tales of Hearts R
Kirby: Triple Deluxe
Battle Princess of Arcadias
Ultra Street Fighter 4
Tales of Xillia 2
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1
Infamous: First Light
Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Dead Rising 3 Apocalypse Edition
Fairy Fencer F
D4
Ar Nosurge: Ode to an Unborn Star
Hyrule Warriors
Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth
Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions
Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris


That's it for Videogames.  For animé, I just want to mention them briefly.  Rather than ones that released specifically in 2014, I'm just talking about ones I've watched in that year since I don't watch that much.

BlazBlue: Alter Memory - It was dumb, fight scenes were rare and weren't very dynamic, but the music was good.
Chuunibyou demo koi ga Shitai! - It was cute, funny, but it also made me tear up.
Carnival Phantasm - I liked it.  It was fun, humorous, and a good contrast from the 2 main series.
Hyperdimension Neptunia - For a videogame adpatation, I thought it was pretty good.  Cute, funny, and canon to the game, I thought it was a fun watch.
Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? (Is the order a Rabbit?) - I absolutely loved this show!  It was so cute and made me feel all warm and happy as I laughed through the series.  I really hope there's a 2nd season for this show.
Joshiraku - I thought it was okay.  I honestly started watching it because I saw the credits theme.  The jokes were often kind of lame, but I laughed whenever there was slapstick involved.
Kiniro Mosaic - I started watching this because of the "Desu desu desu" video I saw on youtube.  It's cute, but the pacing of the show was kind of slow.  I didn't like it nearly as much as "Is the Order a Rabbit?"
Kill la Kill - This was absolutely incredible!  It started off being over-the-top comedy action, but then it led to a cohesive and intriguing story.  It was funny, exciting, and even dramatic at times.  The voice acting, character development, music, animation style, etc. all felt so high in quality.  This show made me cry.
Log Horizon - It was slow, but interesting.  Supposedly, the whole first season was a setup for things to come.  I haven't watched the 2nd season yet.
Love Live - I might feel a bit iffy about the game, but the animé for Love Live was definitely worth watching.  It was light-hearted and really made you want to cheer the characters on as they confront their own struggles and find that they were able to do so together and became good friends.  This show also made me cry.
Sword Art Online - I liked this show, but it was also pretty heavy.  It was quite depressing at some parts and discusses the idea of life in how we interpret and deal with it.  This show got me emotional quite a few times in the first season.  2nd season was sort of a joke and I was told not to watch it.  I still did just so I know what happens.  I even ended up buying the Sword Art Online game for PS Vita near the end of the year when it went on sale.  I haven't played it yet.
Nichijou - This show was great!  It's practically all humor.  I was watching a lot of the clips from youtube and I was watching so many one day that I decided that I might as well just watch the show.  It's definitely one of those shows I couldn't mind watching over and over again.
No Game No Life - This was a very smart show.  That's one way to put it.  The writing for the story, the dialogue, the was a situation builds up are all so smart because I never know what's going to happen next.  There are so many writers that try to not be cliché but end up writing something incomprehensible or groan worthy because of it.  But No Game No Life kept things interesting throughout the show by keeping you wondering "what's going to happen next?" and then it does something you couldn't have expect.  The music was also outstanding and really made the show stand out alongside with its odd theme of brightly, purple/pink hued graphics.  This show also had the best depiction of a game of chess I have ever seen in any media.  I enjoyed this show a lot and hope that it gets a 2nd season.


That's it for now.  Can't wait to see what's in store in 2015.