Intermission

Hello all! It's already spring and almost April! Man, time is going by so quickly. I have completed the music to one of the projects I'm working on and am waiting for it to be published on Steam and XBLA. The other project I'm on seems to be dwindling down on momentum and might cancel eventually. With that, I'm kind of out of work to do that needs my immediate attention. I've been falling behind on doing my game write-ups so I don't have any tactile proof of what I've learned from games I've played. I counted it up and I'm up to 122 completed games now! Still, my backlog is a monster I can't put down so I have a lot more to go through. I'm still not done with the Street Fighter Mix and it's driving me nuts that I haven't yet. I'm currently working on a digital drawing that's taking much too long for its quality, but that just means I need a lot more practice. As always, I've been searching for a job within the Interactive Entertainment Industry to no avail. Open positions are limited and companies are laying off more than hiring lately. Blizzard recently reported a lay off of 600 employees across their company, most of them not in development. It was sad to hear that one of my friends that had worked with Blizzard for 11 years was one of them. I'm sure he'll be able to find another job quickly if he wanted to, me on the other hand...

So speaking of Blizzard, a release date for Diablo 3 has been made! On May 15th, 2012, we will get to revisit hell in all its new technological glory as Diablo's 3rd iteration makes its return to the series since Diablo 2's expansion back in 2001. I'm really excited about it now that I've finished Diablo 2 (I'm still thinking of playing through Diablo 1). Guild Wars 2 should be releasing sometime this year too, and I think it's one MMORPG I'm willing to go out and buy to play. Besides those two PC games, I am eagerly awaiting for Warriors Orochi 3 and Dragon's Dogma for the Playstation 3 as well as The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii. There are so many new games that have come out or about to release that it's hard to keep up. To name a few: Street Fighter X Tekken, Ninja Gaiden 3, Mass Effect 3, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, Soul Calibur V, and Final Fantasy XIII-2. For some reason, all of those games received bad remarks from critics or fans of each of those series. I'm about to do a proper review of that on tomorrow's Superpad post.

One of my friends got me back into playing MMOs again so I've started playing games like Aion, Vindictus, Dragon Nest, Maple Story, Rift, and Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes. I quickly slowed back down on all those games and finally convinced my friend to play Dungeon Defenders with me since Steam had a 50% off sale for the game over the weekend.

I've had the game for a few months now but didn't play it extensively, so he was able to catch up quite quickly and have already gone past my level. It's a really enjoyable game as it's simple to understand and learn while still challenging and engrossing throughout playing it. There has been a few other games I've been trying to finish up such as Eternal Sonata on PS3, Castlevania: Judgment on Wii, Nightshade on PS2, and E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy on PC. I completed a game called Painkiller on PC, and it was pretty interesting. The game was super fast-paced Action FPS that felt a lot like Quake and Unreal Tournament. I really liked the environment in that game. I also finally sat down and completed Ninja Gaiden 3: The Ancient Ship of Doom for the NES. It was very difficult, but a lot of fun. Playing older games on the NES make me realize how much I miss action platformers. The charming graphics, catchy tunes, and simple yet challenging gameplay seems to be very difficult to capture in games nowadays. Even with games that mimic classic gameplay of retro games, it just doesn't feel the same. The boss battles in Ninja Gaiden 3 were easier than the ones from 2 and 1 except for the last boss. When I finally found the pattern for defeating the final boss, he suddenly appears with a true form that was tricky at first but I realize was even easier than the first form. Then after that, there was a "final" form that had a shield you had to destroy before being able to damage him. By that point, I was already going "PLEASE, let this be the last form..." Developers were rather sadistic in a lot of the older games. I mean, you have a limited amount of continues in Ninja Gaiden 3! If you die at the final boss, you go waaaaaay back to the last check point you were at just like in the first one. When you beat one form of the final boss, you don't regain any health back. Ninja Gaiden 3 was pretty fun, but I think the first two were more memorable.

I've been pretty much relaxing after I finish doing a blog post each day if I'm not working on music or drawing. I've still been looking for a job and sent out a few more applications whenever I see an open position. This is like an intermission I'm in right now since I'm not actively working like I was before and haven't started working on another project yet. I'm probably going to start making my own games now that I have the time so that I can add them to my portfolio. I probably won't make it as lead design yet, but maybe I can still reach out to a developer that wants music if I can't find a job as a QA Analyst. Oh well, now that my sister is home for spring break and my friend is still available to play games each day, I'm going to enjoy my little intermission for now and get back in gear right after.

Year of the Dragon

Happy Chinese New Year! (It was last month, just saying it now). So a few days right before Chinese New Year, my laptop went ballistic and I lost a ton of data. I was writing on Superpad Unplugged and suddenly a virus was blocked and my browser shut down. I thought it was just an error or a cookie was caught as a virus. I opened my browser back up and it did it again and a program called Windows Anti-Virus 2012 popped up and started scanning my computer and what I saw it do was delete my programs on my computer. I shut everything down and tried to execute a recover point only to have the computer freeze. I started it up again and realized all my major window components were gone. I didn't panic and was more annoyed with the situation and decided to move all my data (save files, work, recordings, etc.) to my Vista side (I dual boot XP and Vista). Weary that the virus might be still lurking in my files, I didn't back them up yet. I started up Vista and wanted to delete the XP partition and merge it with my Vista in order to get enough hard drive space to do back-up, virus scan and defragment. Unfortunately, something went terribly wrong in the process as it merged with my partition with all my games and formatted it which wiped out 3 partitions in one fell swoop. No need to explain the rest, but I was frustrated, mad, upset, devastated, and alone with the situation because no one would be able to know what I had just lost. Losing game saves doesn't sound like much to most people, but for me it was 300+ hours of progress spanning over 20-50 games. I'm most upset with losing my save file for Terraria as I put 101 hours into it (and everything is randomly generated in that game, so I can never get back what I had before). This also happened right before I was going to try out my new Wacom Bamboo Tablet and right before my final composition for one of the game projects I'm working on. XP and Vista no longer was able to install on my laptop and everything seemed corrupt. Luckily I had recently purchased Windows 7 (originally for my sister, but it didn't work on her Macbook) and tried installing it on my laptop. It's what I'm using now just to continue working and playing my games (mostly having to start over most of them).

I ended up using my traumatic experience to create my last composition for the last level for a game I'm working with a team on. It was supposed to sound dangerous and somewhat hopeful, but it turned out to be dark and depressing. Still, the team seemed to have liked how it turned out which I'm happy for. I'm currently working on refining the tracks and creating arrangements before we finally publish the game on Xbox Live Arcade.

I'm back on track with writing my game write-ups and the game designs for each one. It's very good study and I hope I can use it on my upcoming projects when I finally make my own games (it needs to happen!). Also, I finally tried out my tablet but have yet to finish anything to show that I've indeed used it yet. I'm hoping to finish it tomorrow, but I'm not sure how long it will take me. I need to draw more this year and get better if I want to create any games this year.

I seem to be having a bit of a gaming crisis right now and I'm not sure if it's because I have too many (I really hope not) or if it's because newer games just don't interest me like older ones too. I'm more keen to believe that the latter is true as I spent last weekend playing through Gargoyle's Quest 1 & 2 and Demon's Crest. I never knew there was a 2nd Gargoyle's Quest, but I did play the 1st and 3rd (Demon's Crest) when I was 5 and 7. 1 was impossible for me when I was 5 since I couldn't even get past the first level. Demon's Crest was also very hard but also scary to me back then. Well, the first I played at a cousin's house and Demon's Crest my dad returned rather quickly so I never had the chance to play them again. I have all three now and decided to play through them. I had a lot of fun, especially with Demon's Crest! I think what has changed the way I see and play games is the fact that I'm thinking more like a game designer now and I'm so critical on so many things. I didn't like Gargoyle's Quest 2, even though it was very similar to the first which I really enjoyed. If I played them a few years ago, I would've probably thought all 3 were pretty entertaining with Demon's Crest be more fun than the others. Now I look at them and point out the concept, level designs, gameplay flow, aesthetics, poor design choices, etc. Ah, here I am ranting about a game that most people might have not even have heard of when I should've just said "I played 3 retro games last weekend." Sorry~

Anyways, all three games are Action-Platformers with very light RPG elements and were released on the Gameboy Classic, NES, and Super NES respective to the release. Revisiting these old games remind me that I still love videogames very much, and it's always a scary thing for one who loves it so much to start thinking that they're "boring" or not "interesting" anymore. I say this because a lot of people I meet in the game industry say "I don't have time for games anymore" or "I don't really find them fun if I'm working on them day in and day out" whenever I ask "what have you played recently?" I know a lot of game developers emphasize having a passion for videogames and many still do love them, but I've also met a lot of developers or those in the business of videogames having no interest in them. I don't want that to happen to me...=\

So I've been giving PC games a rest since losing my game files was too depressing (well, other than playing League of Legends since the only thing I lost from that were my masteries sheet). On Playstation 3, I've been switching off a whole slew of games: CoD: Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, Dark Souls, TES5: Skyrim, Hyperdimension Neptunia, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Way of the Samurai 3, BlazBlue Continuum Shift, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, and Devil May Cry 4. I finally finished all 4 story modes on Dynasty Warriors 7 and loved it immensely and I completed Bayonetta which I found to be a much greater game than I could possibly imagine. Whenever I'm done with work for the day and I look at all those games, I get the feeling of not wanting to play any of them and sometimes the feeling of wanting to play all of them. I just can't really determine if it's my own mind being exhausted or if current day videogames don't interest me as much. It's strange, I get so hyped up and excited whenever I see a trailer to a new game but don't have that same feeling when I get it and play it (at least not anymore).

With the amount of games I have on consoles as well as the heavy purchases I made during the Steam winter sales, I'm reluctant to buy any new games until I'm at least somewhat caught up in my backlog. Still, there are so many new games that's soooo tempting to get. Final Fantasy XIII-2, Soul Calibur 5 and The Darkness 2 just came out. BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend comes out this up coming Tuesday. Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning just came out and I even tried the demo out for that game. Then there's Syndicate, Asura's Wrath, Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2, Street Fighter X Tekken, Mass Effect 3, Tales of Graces f, Ninja Gaiden 3, and Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City all within the next month. I think the game that I'll probably have the hardest time resisting to buy (besides Diablo 3 and Phantasy Star Online 2 as I've mentioned multiple times in the past), is Warriors Orochi 3:

I was elated and excited upon hearing that the game will be brought over to North America (as it was previously announced that it wasn't). The Warriors Orochi series is probably Koei's best spin-off of the Dynasty Warriors series with a unique team system and the cross over between Dynasty Warriors (Ancient China during the 3 Kingdom Era) and Samurai Warriors (Feudal Japan of the Sengoku Era). In Warriors Orochi 3, there will be even more cross-overs with Tecmo merged with Koei now. So there are characters from Ninja Gaiden, Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War, Warriors: Legends of Troy and now Dead or Alive as well as Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll will also be in the game. I'M SO EXCITED!

Well, that's it for now. I'm hoping to get some more work done tomorrow and hopefully have all music done for the current game project done by the end of the month.