Oh dear, where did the time go? I've been preparing for the May 10th weekend for over 2 months and I now that it's past it feels like all time has been warped. I went down to Irvine to celebrate my sister's Birthday on May 10th and met up with all my League of Legends friends on May 11th. A year ago, a few of my friends from UC Irvine started playing League of Legends and so I played with them to get them more familiar with the game. As I played with them, they found other friends that played the game and invited them into our games. Soon after, they invited their friends and we've ended up playing together almost every night in the past year and have grown quite familiar and close. The only problem was that I never got to meet them in person until just now. We met up at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa and at lunch before deciding to go to Irvine's Spectrum to play at the arcades within Dave and Busters. It's been so long since I've played at an arcade, but I realize they're really expensive (I spent $22). We then went back to Fountain Valley area to Karaoke at Elvis!? It's the same place I went to Karaoke when I was with Tomo no Kai in UC Irvine. We ate dinner, got some cake, and went to a friend's house to play fighting games on the PS3. It was a fun and memorable day for me, and it was great seeing my sister after a half year of not seeing her. But ever since I got back from that weekend, I've been lethargic and slow on work. It could also have to do with that 7 drive there and 7 drive back (I hate long car rides). I should be working on my portfolio and sending out job applications, but I've been working on another drawing (this time digital). I'm practically done, but I think I need one more day's work and I can complete it. After that, I really need to buckle down and send those resumés out. I especially want to complete everything this month so that I can fully focus and enjoy June where I'll be powering through my backlog and completing games.
I'm at a pretty good rate right now with up to 48 games completed. I finished Anarchy Reigns on PS3 and really enjoyed it. It had a great soundtrack and it was simple beat-em-up fun. Sonic Generations was especially fun. I haven't played a Sonic game that I enjoyed so much in the longest time. It was announced a few days ago that another Sonic game is in the works, but I'm not sure if it can live up to the quality of Sonic Generations. I finally completed Cherry Tree High Comedy Club after failing the first time and getting it right the 2nd time around. It was a light-hearted game that doesn't have too much replay value, but it was a really happy experience. It was almost like watching an animé. I finally gave up on Alpha Protocol after playing it for like 1-2 years off and on because it ended up just crashing every time I started it and I had just gotten to the last mission too. I watched every ending possible online and was surprised with the amount of endings the player could get. The game was semi-enjoyable with a lot of problems and flaws that made it difficult to play at times. I tried my best not to buy anymore games until I've finished more up, but after playing some fighting games at my friend's house when I was in SoCal, I wanted to get two of them that were fairly cheap. I ordered The King of Fighters XIII ($24) and Soul Calibur V ($14) for PS3 last week and plan on getting Dead or Alive 5 later as an "Ultimate" version is in the works for release this October.
I also ordered Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate ($25) for the 3DS despite not having finished or even started on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for the PS3. Because of that, I started it this weekend and had a lot of conflicting thoughts on it. On one side, I think it's well developed with quality working mechanics and a thought out design around it. At the same time, I feel like the game suffers from an identity crisis. It's supposed to be a "Castlevania" game yet the only thing that really feels like Castlevania is the use of the whip and daggers. The combat is "God of War". The Boss fight is "Shadow of the Colossus". The themes and platforming is Uncharted (although some levels looked exactly like Garshasp: The Monster Slayer). It takes the best elements of the Action-Adventure genre and stuffs it in this game. In terms of gameplay, it works really well and it's enjoyable. But as a videogame and Castlevania experience, it feels generic and forgettable. It was really cool hearing Patrick Stewart's voice narrating the game in the beginning. But as the story progresses, it became so overly forced in sounding epic that it starts sounding cheesy. The same with the music. It constantly plays at odd times with the most epic sounding strings and vocals that it's almost like a parody of epic games being epic. And don't even get me started on the main Character. I'm really hoping there's more progress in character development, because as of the end of chapter 2, I find Gabriel Belmont to be a very boring character with no personality. It's like watching Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. I think the game's fun and combat is a lot better than a lot of other action games I've played, but the game doesn't really stand out the way most Castlevania games do. As I've said before: this game suffers from an identity crisis! I think I'd feel a bit better if they just had this game stand as an independent IP and call it "The Lords of Shadow" rather than just stamping the Castlevania name to it. What really scares me is that the 3DS game "Mirror of Fate" will talk about Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Simon Belmont. I think I'm most disappointed with the music so far. As epic sounding and well composed they are, the music doesn't sound or feel like a Castlevania game and just follows the generic cinematic "Big" sound. So as you can see, I'm very conflicted with how I feel about the game. I'm having fun with it, yet I'm disappointed at the same time. Other than that, I pre-ordered Project X Zone for the 3DS and am excited to play it.
Besides Project X Zone, I'm excited about Dynasty Warriors 8. There doesn't seem to be that many games that I'm looking forward to this year. The one game that I really care about and want is Phantasy Star Online 2. Where the heck is it?
Sega is still being tight-lipped on a release date for the Western release of PSO2 and it's maddening! It's already been confirmed that it's been postponed past Spring, but postponed until when? I guess I can always go back to Phantasy Star Universe and try to complete it. It's been difficult to ever since I lost my save data back in the computer crash I had in the beginning of 2012.
I feel like I'll be getting really busy these next few months.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Art April getting nowhere
Much like Music March of last month, I'm getting nothing done. Unlike last month, I actually have been working since the beginning of the month. I thought it'd be fun to draw a large picture of a bunch of League of Legends characters reflecting my friends and myself within as a warm-up for the month. What was supposed to be a small project has turned into a 3 week long task I have yet to finish. It's turning out pretty good, but it wasn't the objective I had in mind this month. I'm hoping to finish it up today and move onto other projects, mainly cover art for the music I need to upload for my portfolio. It's been a peaceful month for me otherwise. Sadly, it hasn't been for those at the Boston Marathon and those relating or knowing those who were there. In short, there was a bombing attack at a marathon where 3 fatalities and over 100 injuries were done. The police officials said they got a suspect in custody, but it really shocked many people to see how young the suspect was. It's frightening.
I haven't been completing as many games as I thought I would this month. I'm at 37 right now, but I'm hoping to reach 40 by the end of the month. I have a few arcade-like games that I could probably finish up. I've been playing a bit more League of Legends again this month as more of my friends are on it this month. If not, I'm still playing DotA 2. Seeing my games pile up, I'm thinking of having May a month of working on submitting job applications and building my portfolio while June will be spent working through some of those games to shorten the list a bit. I've gotten into a Rogue-Like RPG called Eternal League of Nefia (Elona) by recommendation from a friend. I've known about the game for years, but never really tried it out. There's a chance I might have played it before, but don't remember and I probably didn't know what to do. In any case, I had a bit of help going through some parts of the game from my friend and I got hooked.
In Elona, there's a lot of customization for your character. Lots of random encounters happen throughout playing that favor the player or screw them over. Certain dungeons randomly generate each time you go in while other randomly generate once per character. It's difficult to describe what makes Rogue-likes fun, and they usually look boring in gameplay videos. I actually didn't like Rogue-likes too much in the beginning, but once I started to understand how they worked, it got a lot more entertaining. Rogue-likes are rarely made in main-stream gaming, but a lot of indie games seem to fall back on the mechanics of Rogue-likes lately. One Rogue-like that's coming to consoles is The Guided Fate Paradox for the PS3; I'm looking forward to that game. I don't really have that much to report in terms of games other than that I've been playing Elona. I highly doubt I'll finish the game and will probably resort to cheating to complete it. But for now, I'm just enjoying the game as it is and experiencing the open-world gameplay as much as I can before I do so.
I've actually been music hunting this month and have found a lot of videogame music that I like. I played some of my fighting games last Sunday and realized that new characters were unlocked on Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on its own. I also remembered that I like the music in the game and decided to find and listen to them. A friend of mine was talking about the special arranged tracks that came with the limited edition of Zone of the Enders HD pack and how he hated how all the songs from the game were "Dubstep-ified". I was curious so I went onto Youtube to listen to some of them to compare to the originals. Sadly for him, I really liked the remix for Beyond the Bounds. It holds the essence of the original song, has a lot of energy, and accentuates all the right parts for a dramatic effect.
The other tracks were okay, some were pretty good, while a few really were terrible. This one just stood out so much though. It's an amazing remix. Oh, I forgot to mention that Dynasty Warriors 8 is coming out this July. It made me really excited and a bit worried. DW7 was absolutely phenomenal within the DW series, so I'm not sure if DW8 will live up to it. It seems that a lot of other artists helped with the music, which worries me a bit as well. The only other DW I know that MASA had other contributing artists work on the music was DW6, which wasn't as great. The music for DW7 was amazing as well, so high expectations are made. I'll be giving the soundtrack to DW8 a listen and see for myself, but I won't be able to play the game until July (I'm probably getting it first day). I guess there isn't much else to update this month. I didn't watch a single episode of Sword Art Online or any other animé either. I'm hoping to get more art and music projects done in the following month.
I haven't been completing as many games as I thought I would this month. I'm at 37 right now, but I'm hoping to reach 40 by the end of the month. I have a few arcade-like games that I could probably finish up. I've been playing a bit more League of Legends again this month as more of my friends are on it this month. If not, I'm still playing DotA 2. Seeing my games pile up, I'm thinking of having May a month of working on submitting job applications and building my portfolio while June will be spent working through some of those games to shorten the list a bit. I've gotten into a Rogue-Like RPG called Eternal League of Nefia (Elona) by recommendation from a friend. I've known about the game for years, but never really tried it out. There's a chance I might have played it before, but don't remember and I probably didn't know what to do. In any case, I had a bit of help going through some parts of the game from my friend and I got hooked.
In Elona, there's a lot of customization for your character. Lots of random encounters happen throughout playing that favor the player or screw them over. Certain dungeons randomly generate each time you go in while other randomly generate once per character. It's difficult to describe what makes Rogue-likes fun, and they usually look boring in gameplay videos. I actually didn't like Rogue-likes too much in the beginning, but once I started to understand how they worked, it got a lot more entertaining. Rogue-likes are rarely made in main-stream gaming, but a lot of indie games seem to fall back on the mechanics of Rogue-likes lately. One Rogue-like that's coming to consoles is The Guided Fate Paradox for the PS3; I'm looking forward to that game. I don't really have that much to report in terms of games other than that I've been playing Elona. I highly doubt I'll finish the game and will probably resort to cheating to complete it. But for now, I'm just enjoying the game as it is and experiencing the open-world gameplay as much as I can before I do so.
I've actually been music hunting this month and have found a lot of videogame music that I like. I played some of my fighting games last Sunday and realized that new characters were unlocked on Tekken Tag Tournament 2 on its own. I also remembered that I like the music in the game and decided to find and listen to them. A friend of mine was talking about the special arranged tracks that came with the limited edition of Zone of the Enders HD pack and how he hated how all the songs from the game were "Dubstep-ified". I was curious so I went onto Youtube to listen to some of them to compare to the originals. Sadly for him, I really liked the remix for Beyond the Bounds. It holds the essence of the original song, has a lot of energy, and accentuates all the right parts for a dramatic effect.
The other tracks were okay, some were pretty good, while a few really were terrible. This one just stood out so much though. It's an amazing remix. Oh, I forgot to mention that Dynasty Warriors 8 is coming out this July. It made me really excited and a bit worried. DW7 was absolutely phenomenal within the DW series, so I'm not sure if DW8 will live up to it. It seems that a lot of other artists helped with the music, which worries me a bit as well. The only other DW I know that MASA had other contributing artists work on the music was DW6, which wasn't as great. The music for DW7 was amazing as well, so high expectations are made. I'll be giving the soundtrack to DW8 a listen and see for myself, but I won't be able to play the game until July (I'm probably getting it first day). I guess there isn't much else to update this month. I didn't watch a single episode of Sword Art Online or any other animé either. I'm hoping to get more art and music projects done in the following month.
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