Man, what a crazy month it's been! It's funny that I say that since I haven't really gone anywhere. I decided to take a break from work in July and had planned that for June but kept busy in order to keep up with work. I'm so sad July is coming to an end since it's been so much fun for me. In the beginning of the month, a friend from LA drove all the way up to visit me and hang out for a few days. I played a bunch of games on Wii, PS3, and PC with him and showed him around Old Sacramento. It was a short visit, but it was definitely worth seeing him again since the last time I got to hang out with him was 3 years ago before I graduated from UCI. Project X Zone for the 3DS finally came in the mail, but I didn't get the chance to play it until 2 nights ago since I've been so busy the past 3 weeks. On July 11th, Summer Steam Sales and EVO began. On that weekend, I watched all the matches on Twitch Stream while playing the Open Beta for Firefall. There were a lot of exciting matches and this was the first year I watched all of EVO.
Source: Youtube Channel IGN
The match between Justin Wong vs. ChrisG on Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was the one I really wanted to see happen and it did when Justin was knocked into the loser's bracket. When it was 0-2 and Justin was down to his last character, I just expected him to lose and thought it was a one-sided match with ChrisG doing some excellent plays. But then Justin surprised everyone with a crazy comeback with Storm (which he has done before) and won 3 rounds in a row and climbed his way all the way out of loser's bracket and into the finals with 2-2 but lost in the end. Still, it was such an exciting experience watching him beat all odds and get so far. I enjoyed watching most of the finals, but for specific games, I was looking forward to watching Persona 4 Arena, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Street Fighter x Tekken since those are games I generally don't get to see tournament plays for. I played Firefall and Path of Exile with a friend while watching the streams that weekend.
Then the week continued with more sales from Steam. I had ordered a discounted Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate 3 for 3DS and went out to buy Dynasty Warriors 8 on the first day it came out (July 16th) for the PS3 in between the sales. And right when the sale started, there was a Humble Weekly Bundle of Spiderweb Software's 15 games. I also forgot to mention that during my friend's visit from LA, we went to GameStop and I finally got a copy of Baroque for the Wii for $5 and Odin Sphere went on sale for $5 on PSN this week so I picked that up last night. Needless to say, I acquired a plethora of new games and have been excitedly playing through a good number of them in the past 2 weeks.
To go through some of the games I got on steam, I finally purchased Defiance for $13.59 and thought it was a good price for a game I can hop onto once in a while to mess around in and kill stuff. I didn't feel very good about a $30 on it during the free weekend I tried it a few weeks ago, but $13.59 isn't too bad of a price. I had a lot of trouble getting God Mode to work and then found a way to play it without it crashing by turning all the graphic settings to low. It's definitely a multiplayer intensive game, but I can't connect to anyone's game which means no one plays it or match making sucks. Still, it's a fun third-person shooter that cuts to the chase and let's me jump into the action. The one game I'm really happy with is Rogue Legacy. It's an Action-Platform Adventure game with RPG and Rogue-like elements such as level progression, equipment acquisition, randomly generated levels, and extreme difficulty. It reminds me a lot of Castlevania post Symphony of the Night type games and I think that's where it really pulls me in. I'm also really happy with The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, a sort of diablo-ish game with a unique skill tree and ability mechanic. Along with me buying a bunch of games during the sale, a lot of my friends have been buying games too and I've been able to play a bunch of games with them because of it.
And the month isn't over just yet. One of my friends is treating me to Videogames Live tomorrow and it will be the first time I'm seeing it in concert. There's still so many games I want to play and get through. My plan for "relaxation" originally was to beat as many games as possible with one of them being Starcraft 2. Well, that didn't happen as I haven't even touched it yet. I just ended up buying a bunch of games and playing whatever I felt like. Surprisingly, I jumped up from 53 completed games to 70 since the last time I posted last month. What makes me sad about July ending soon is what I have to get back into for the next month: back to arranging my portfolio, searching for job openings and submitting resumés and cover letters, possibly going to court for jury duty (most likely, ugh), and getting work done. Hopefully I was able to relax enough this past month to actually help me keep focused for the next month.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
The Future of Gaming looks bright!
E3 has already gone and past and still no word from Sega of when Phantasy Star Online 2 is coming out in NA. It was reported on Kotaku today that they reached out to Sega and they replied back saying it's still delayed. It's been nearly a year since it launched in Japan. In fact, they have Episode 2 on its way!
It's time for me to fall back on Phantasy Star Universe and get through the story once and for all. As mentioned last month, I had to start over because I lost my save file from the computer crash of early 2012.
Anyways, last week was a super busy week of following coverages of E3 and finding out all I could about the newest games coming out. There were a LOT of interesting games showed this year. It was actually overwhelming. One particular game that's a new IP that stood out for my friends and I was Tom Clancy's The Division.
It looks like it has similar elements to games like DayZ where the player must find food and other sustenance to survive. Players can group up with friends to take on missions together that seem to happen spontaneously in an open-world environment. It has some RPG elements where players can upgrade skills and give buffs and heals to team members in the midst of a fire-fight. Someone with a tablet/iPad can join in as a UAV and scout out enemies for team members and tag them into visibility. At the end of the video it showed the group of players suddenly in contact with another group and engage in open-world PvP. The only problem right now is that it's set out to release only on consoles, but many PC gamers are rallying for a petition to see it released for the PC as well. I can go on and on about the rest of what I saw on E3, but it'll take too long. I spent all 5 days last week covering it.
Last month, I mentioned that I bought Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate for the 3DS. I went and played through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and got through it. All my complaints about it still stands and I enjoyed playing it despite being disappointed by it at the same time if that makes sense. I started playing Mirror of Fate and it's just making me cringe as I get through the story and play the game because of how drastically different it is from the Castlevania I usually love and play. It's fun in its own way, but like Lords of Shadow for the PS3, I have a lot of problems with it. I'm trying to finish it up quickly so I get back to Etrian Odyssey IV and complete that game as well. I still have Kid Icarus uprising to play and Project X Zone pre-order which will be out next week.
Speaking of next week, I didn't even realize how quickly my birthday is coming up. I've been so busy playing catch-up with my work that the past 4 months just flew by like it was nothing. I didn't really have anything planned and don't even know if my friends were available to hang out, but I had set this Saturday to go eat lunch, go back to my place to play some fighting games and eat dinner and end the night with Counter-Strike: Source. I couldn't really think of anything big to do nor is it really important right now. Being able to hang out with a few of my friends sounded good enough for me as I try to balance out my unorganized schedule. I'm trying to do so many things at once with drawing, music, fixing up my portfolio, looking up new jobs, and working towards my own game developments as well as my more personal but unnecessary goals such as completing games to my crazy backlog. I'm at 53 right now just from the 48 I reported last month. Castlevania took up most of the time, but I think I'll be able to complete some more in the following weeks. Also, I got a beta invite to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 5 days ago and didn't even realize it until I checked my email today. I'm downloading the test client right now and getting ready for the next beta run this Friday. I've been too tried and busy to try out betas for any game nowadays. DotA 2 will finally be out of beta sometime this Summer and become an official game available on Steam as a free-to-play game. It's strange to call it a beta considering that I've spent 170 hours on it already. That's more than what I have on Team Fortress 2!
I really want to spend some focused time on beating some games such as Starcraft 2, so I'm probably going to spend July playing games. But I feel that might be unproductive, so I'll probably be doing drawing and music in-between. That just means I need to work extremely hard these next 3 weeks to finish up my portfolio and look at some potential jobs to apply for. As tiring and busy as it was last week, getting to see all the new games that's in development really excited me and made me happy in a way. I'm happy that so many interesting games will be out in the future, but the ones I really want to play I have to wait so long for. I can't wait for Super Smash Bros.!
It's time for me to fall back on Phantasy Star Universe and get through the story once and for all. As mentioned last month, I had to start over because I lost my save file from the computer crash of early 2012.
Anyways, last week was a super busy week of following coverages of E3 and finding out all I could about the newest games coming out. There were a LOT of interesting games showed this year. It was actually overwhelming. One particular game that's a new IP that stood out for my friends and I was Tom Clancy's The Division.
It looks like it has similar elements to games like DayZ where the player must find food and other sustenance to survive. Players can group up with friends to take on missions together that seem to happen spontaneously in an open-world environment. It has some RPG elements where players can upgrade skills and give buffs and heals to team members in the midst of a fire-fight. Someone with a tablet/iPad can join in as a UAV and scout out enemies for team members and tag them into visibility. At the end of the video it showed the group of players suddenly in contact with another group and engage in open-world PvP. The only problem right now is that it's set out to release only on consoles, but many PC gamers are rallying for a petition to see it released for the PC as well. I can go on and on about the rest of what I saw on E3, but it'll take too long. I spent all 5 days last week covering it.
Last month, I mentioned that I bought Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate for the 3DS. I went and played through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and got through it. All my complaints about it still stands and I enjoyed playing it despite being disappointed by it at the same time if that makes sense. I started playing Mirror of Fate and it's just making me cringe as I get through the story and play the game because of how drastically different it is from the Castlevania I usually love and play. It's fun in its own way, but like Lords of Shadow for the PS3, I have a lot of problems with it. I'm trying to finish it up quickly so I get back to Etrian Odyssey IV and complete that game as well. I still have Kid Icarus uprising to play and Project X Zone pre-order which will be out next week.
Speaking of next week, I didn't even realize how quickly my birthday is coming up. I've been so busy playing catch-up with my work that the past 4 months just flew by like it was nothing. I didn't really have anything planned and don't even know if my friends were available to hang out, but I had set this Saturday to go eat lunch, go back to my place to play some fighting games and eat dinner and end the night with Counter-Strike: Source. I couldn't really think of anything big to do nor is it really important right now. Being able to hang out with a few of my friends sounded good enough for me as I try to balance out my unorganized schedule. I'm trying to do so many things at once with drawing, music, fixing up my portfolio, looking up new jobs, and working towards my own game developments as well as my more personal but unnecessary goals such as completing games to my crazy backlog. I'm at 53 right now just from the 48 I reported last month. Castlevania took up most of the time, but I think I'll be able to complete some more in the following weeks. Also, I got a beta invite to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 5 days ago and didn't even realize it until I checked my email today. I'm downloading the test client right now and getting ready for the next beta run this Friday. I've been too tried and busy to try out betas for any game nowadays. DotA 2 will finally be out of beta sometime this Summer and become an official game available on Steam as a free-to-play game. It's strange to call it a beta considering that I've spent 170 hours on it already. That's more than what I have on Team Fortress 2!
I really want to spend some focused time on beating some games such as Starcraft 2, so I'm probably going to spend July playing games. But I feel that might be unproductive, so I'll probably be doing drawing and music in-between. That just means I need to work extremely hard these next 3 weeks to finish up my portfolio and look at some potential jobs to apply for. As tiring and busy as it was last week, getting to see all the new games that's in development really excited me and made me happy in a way. I'm happy that so many interesting games will be out in the future, but the ones I really want to play I have to wait so long for. I can't wait for Super Smash Bros.!
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