Summer doesn't officially start until 2 days later, but with all the kiddies out of school and my friends graduating, it pretty much feels like summer has begun. I'd love to kick back and relax like I usually do for Summer and be reminded of all the great memories I've had in the past Summers, but I think I have to work equally hard to get anywhere this year.
What a weekend I just had...Word of advice: never eat junk food all in one day. Just this past Friday, I set course to Los Angeles to watch the graduation ceremony for my sister (I'm so proud of her). On Friday, I ate a dog in a blanket (a hotdog covered all the way around), a Cheeseburger and fries from Wendy's, something called a hearty bowl from Jack in the Box on the way down to L.A. and by dinner, I wanted to get a salad at BJ's brewhouse but was tempted to get a chili-cheese hamburger. That night, I felt throbbing pain from my stomach and tried my best to ignore and hoped that I would feel better by morning. The next day, I still felt sick and ended up throwing up in the bathroom during my sister's reception. I felt conscious enough to watch my sister's graduation ceremony and take lots of pictures for her afterwards. So throughout the rest of the trip, I felt sick, broken and tired. I got the chance to meet up with friends from Irvine which I was really happy about. When we finally departed to return home last night, it took us nearly 8 hours to get back when it generally takes 6 hours. I still feel tired and somewhat in pain right now...
I've been getting really lazy, which I believe I mentioned before. I haven't gotten new instructions for sound effects yet so I'm just waiting. For the other project I was supposed to do music for, I think I've come to the decision to not continue it. It's not really helping that much more than what I was doing before and I think I should really take the time this summer and gather my stuff to create a portfolio (finally). I really need to start advertising to the industry and show that I could be very valuable to a serious gaming project. I also want to push forward on the things I want to focus on (and have always wanted to work on since jr. high/high school) and start creating those games and producing those videogame music remixes.
Besides Diablo 3 and League of Legends, I don't really feel like I've played much anything else. I've been playing "From the Abyss" on the DS and I'm finding it quite entertaining, even if it's a bit lacking in content and dynamics. I guess I'm still working on my backlog of games, with one of the main focus on PC being FarCry 1. The game was really fun in the beginning, but it got to a point really early in the story where everything kills you in one hit or quickly which results in having to start over from the last check point (no creating save points). It's become really frustrating and very much a study game as I find out some of the poor design choices that were implemented into the game. I'm surprised at how highly regarded this game is/was seeing how I'm having very little fun from it anymore. I heard FarCry 2 is significantly better and I can wait to complete 1 so I can move onto 2. This summer seems kind of boring in terms of new releases of games; however, I think I'll be saved by an upcoming Steam Summer Sales. I know there's a ton of games I haven't played yet and I think it's going to grow a bit more after the Summer sale ends. I can't believe that Cherry Tree High Comedy Club isn't out on Steam yet. That was one game I was highly anticipating to release on Steam so I can get it during the Summer Steam Sales, but there still hasn't been any word on when it will come out. I know I'm going to spend quite a bit on this year's sales. There's a lot of games I'm looking forward to getting that I didn't before because of it's higher retail price and because of my backlog. I haven't really lightened the load on my backlog all that much, but I feel ready to get more games nonetheless. One of the games I'm hoping to get a good deal on is Fortune Summoners:
This video was recorded and uploaded by a friend. It has a sort of Castlevania-ish feeling to it and is one of the reasons why I'm so interested in it. I've finally delved quite deep back into RPGs now, but I've still been getting and playing a LOT of FPS. It's like I can't get away from shooters (the industry feels the same). So I think a change in pace with games like Fortune Summoners can help me take a break from the sheer amount of FPS and RPGs I've been playing.
To be honest, I'm a little scared about this summer. I really want to work hard and finally get my foot into the game industry by the end of this year, but I also want to be able to enjoy my Summer like I usually do. I should never focus entirely on work. I've done that too many times in my life and ended with regret. I need to find that balance between productivity and play to survive this summer and year.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Fighting the Lords of Hell
Diablo 3 was finally released on May 15th, and it was a very painful wait. Throughout the years, I had placed the thoughts of Diablo 3 in the back of my head and didn't give much care as I didn't want to get overly excited over a game that might not come out in years (or ever with cases like Starcraft Ghost). When Diablo 3 finally had a release date, I still tried to remain calm and did so until May 1st when I decided to pre-order it online. Ever since that day I pre-ordered it, all I could think about was Diablo 3. It's like all that crave and anticipation that was bottled up in the past 4-5 years suddenly started pouring out. Many players who bought the digital form or picked it up on Monday midnight of the launch couldn't log in the first few hours (I heard it was 5 hours) and many players were upset. My game left the pickup at 5AM Tuesday morning and I was hoping to get it in the afternoon. I waited the entire day and didn't receive till around 8-9PM, and even then I had to install and update it which took over an hour. When I finally started up the game, the graphics were so majorly messed up that I couldn't even play. May 15th, 2012 was one of the longest Tuesdays I've ever had. I finally figured out how to fix most of the graphics problems by uninstalling all the drivers off the laptop and re-updating it to the newest one. A lot of the graphics are actually still messed up, but at least it was playable.
Anyways, Diablo 3 has been eating a lot of energy away from me as I feel lazy and reluctant to work. I'm still getting my main priorities in check, but extra work has been ignored for the most part these past 2 weeks. I finally finished through Normal after all my friends maxed out at level 60 on their characters and got to Inferno already (There's 4 levels of difficulty for Diablo 3: Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno) and just started playing Nightmare. My main is a Demon Hunter and I knew I was going to play one the second I saw the announcement trailer for that class. I've made a character for each class already and really enjoy the unique gameplay for each of the classes. I think I've gotten to a point where I feel okay making a review now, so I'll probably write it sometime soon.
Other than my daily posts on Superpad Unplugged, I've been called back to do some sound effects work for our upcoming game "Camera Obscura" set to launch on Steam. Sound effects is a difficult task to accomplish for the entertainment industry and I feel as if it might be even more challenging than doing music. It seems easier since sound effects last no longer than a few seconds, but getting it right seems to be much more difficult to achieve. I'm so close to finishing the Street Fighter Mix, but I've been so lazy about completing it that it still sit there as incomplete. I revisited an older project I had: Mach Rider Remix, and started thinking of a different way to mix it. I was going to make it sound more rockish, but I think I might go more electro with it. I'm working on so many music projects that I'm starting to feel limited in the resources I have. I really don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to buy new VSTs and programs if I'm not consistently making money at the moment. I feel like I could be doing a lot more productive work, but I can never get into the work mood after the main priorities have been completed.
So I finally completed some games, one of them being E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy for PC. It's a FPS/RPG open-world Action-game, and everything about it sounded really cool in the description and videos. After getting through the game, I felt like I didn't even experience 10% of what I saw in the videos or what was described on the game page. It was a painful playthrough of figuring out how the game worked with its terrible menu interface, convoluted game mechanics, and poorly designed combat. It crashed a lot, had a ton of glitches, and the story wasn't interesting at all. I have to praise its graphics and environment though. It was very atmospheric and immersive. The other game I finished was Samurai Warriors Katana for Wii (about time). I had this game forever, but I just didn't have the patience to sit down and play through it. It's an arcade, gun-rail like action game. There were a lot of parts I liked in the game where I'm just slashing at enemies and shooting them from afar. The problem is that out of the 8 weapons the player can choose from, only two were really useful: the spear the identified weak points and the musket which didn't require reloading. There were quite a few "mini-games" between the action that made it less than entertaining but rather more infuriating. There were 4 main campaign stories and once I finished the last one a 5th one appeared but wasn't playable unless I cleared all the previous mission with a certain score. It was semi-entertaining, but not enough for me to play through the whole game again and so I declared that I finished the game from there.
Dragon's Dogma finally released:
I'm still holding off on buying the game yet, but I really want it. I was worried when I saw a lot of negative reviews on it a day before it launched by critics. The average score has picked up and is in the green once again, so that has restored a bit of faith in the game for me. I hear there's day one content for it already, and so Capcom's shenanigans seems to still ensue. In the meantime, Diablo 3 is keeping me pretty well occupied as I try to get through some of my other games on the side when I'm not playing it. I already seemed very lax enough at the moment, yet I'm hoping to have a peaceful and enjoyable summer this year as I continue to get through some of my work and climb through some of my backlog.
Anyways, Diablo 3 has been eating a lot of energy away from me as I feel lazy and reluctant to work. I'm still getting my main priorities in check, but extra work has been ignored for the most part these past 2 weeks. I finally finished through Normal after all my friends maxed out at level 60 on their characters and got to Inferno already (There's 4 levels of difficulty for Diablo 3: Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Inferno) and just started playing Nightmare. My main is a Demon Hunter and I knew I was going to play one the second I saw the announcement trailer for that class. I've made a character for each class already and really enjoy the unique gameplay for each of the classes. I think I've gotten to a point where I feel okay making a review now, so I'll probably write it sometime soon.
Other than my daily posts on Superpad Unplugged, I've been called back to do some sound effects work for our upcoming game "Camera Obscura" set to launch on Steam. Sound effects is a difficult task to accomplish for the entertainment industry and I feel as if it might be even more challenging than doing music. It seems easier since sound effects last no longer than a few seconds, but getting it right seems to be much more difficult to achieve. I'm so close to finishing the Street Fighter Mix, but I've been so lazy about completing it that it still sit there as incomplete. I revisited an older project I had: Mach Rider Remix, and started thinking of a different way to mix it. I was going to make it sound more rockish, but I think I might go more electro with it. I'm working on so many music projects that I'm starting to feel limited in the resources I have. I really don't want to spend hundreds of dollars to buy new VSTs and programs if I'm not consistently making money at the moment. I feel like I could be doing a lot more productive work, but I can never get into the work mood after the main priorities have been completed.
So I finally completed some games, one of them being E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy for PC. It's a FPS/RPG open-world Action-game, and everything about it sounded really cool in the description and videos. After getting through the game, I felt like I didn't even experience 10% of what I saw in the videos or what was described on the game page. It was a painful playthrough of figuring out how the game worked with its terrible menu interface, convoluted game mechanics, and poorly designed combat. It crashed a lot, had a ton of glitches, and the story wasn't interesting at all. I have to praise its graphics and environment though. It was very atmospheric and immersive. The other game I finished was Samurai Warriors Katana for Wii (about time). I had this game forever, but I just didn't have the patience to sit down and play through it. It's an arcade, gun-rail like action game. There were a lot of parts I liked in the game where I'm just slashing at enemies and shooting them from afar. The problem is that out of the 8 weapons the player can choose from, only two were really useful: the spear the identified weak points and the musket which didn't require reloading. There were quite a few "mini-games" between the action that made it less than entertaining but rather more infuriating. There were 4 main campaign stories and once I finished the last one a 5th one appeared but wasn't playable unless I cleared all the previous mission with a certain score. It was semi-entertaining, but not enough for me to play through the whole game again and so I declared that I finished the game from there.
Dragon's Dogma finally released:
I'm still holding off on buying the game yet, but I really want it. I was worried when I saw a lot of negative reviews on it a day before it launched by critics. The average score has picked up and is in the green once again, so that has restored a bit of faith in the game for me. I hear there's day one content for it already, and so Capcom's shenanigans seems to still ensue. In the meantime, Diablo 3 is keeping me pretty well occupied as I try to get through some of my other games on the side when I'm not playing it. I already seemed very lax enough at the moment, yet I'm hoping to have a peaceful and enjoyable summer this year as I continue to get through some of my work and climb through some of my backlog.
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