At one point this month, the temperature dropped down to around 20 F with most days being clear and sunny. Most Decembers are cloudy, rainy and moderately cold and not freezing. It eventually eased up right before my sister came back home for the holidays. It's been a fun 2 weeks with my sister, her boyfriend and our friends back home. It definitely made it hard for me to say "goodbye" once again when they left since the last time I saw them was a year ago. Despite trying to relax this month, I did do a little bit of work and plan on finishing them up in the upcoming month. I really don't know what's in store or planned for me in 2014 as I need to find a proper job and start taking my work a lot more seriously. To do that, I think I'm going to have to give up writing on Superpad Unplugged because it takes up too much of my time each day throughout the past 3 years. It makes me a little sad to give up such a daily routine as it really connected me to the daily media of the videogame industry and has made me really appreciate the time, effort and quality that editors in videogame media put into what we read. But I really need to make this change because I had planned to produce 50 artworks and 50 audio projects and came up with 14 on each side. I feel pumped up and passionate about my planned audio works and so I want to put more of my time into that. Honestly, I'm a little nervous about next year. Can I get a job that I want at a place I'm happy at? Will I still be able to work on my own projects when working? With moving away from home, can I still do everything that I did at home such as playing guitar, piano, and console games?
In the gaming side of things, I finally completed Dark Souls after 60 hours of gameplay time! I had completed it the night my sister came home. To give a short answer to what I thought about the game: There were parts of the game I didn't like that I felt was poorly designed, but ultimately enjoyed the game a lot. I also finished Kid Icarus Uprising for the 3DS and returned it to my sister. Both games had their frustrating moments in difficulty and design flaws, but they were both fun. Looking back at my records, I actually completed a lot of games this month: Risk of Rain, The Angry Videogame Nerd Adventures, Orcs Must Die! 2, Divekick, Hatsune Miku Project DIVA F, Darksiders (FINALLY), Ninja Blade, Electronic Super Joy, DuckTales (NES), Castle of Illusion (Genesis), and DuckTales Remastered. I played a lot of fun games this month! I also acquired a lot of new ones due to the Steam Winter Sales that's still going on right now. I mainly bought a lot of First-Person Shooters and 2D Platformers it seems.
I immediately started up Electronic Super Joy when I got it since I knew it was a short game and I do enjoy platformers. The music is amazing, but I think they were made before the game was created and so I don't think they were made for the game specifically.
The game itself; however, had problems and I couldn't enjoy it entirely because of them. For platformers, it's better to be simple and revolve the game around the established mechanics. But the game kept changing them around. One level you're smashing down on enemies, others you're flying, then you can only double jump, then the level becomes sideways? Overall, the game felt like a mess and left a bad impression on me. There were some levels I genuinely really enjoyed though and the music made the experience exceedingly better. So far, I've gotten 22 games for myself with three more days of sales left. There are so many games I want to get around to playing, but it never seems like I have enough time to get to all of them.
It feels a bit sad that this year is almost over. The games that released this year were a lot better than I thought they'd be when the year began. The Nintendo 3DS in particular had a great line-up of games released this year. 2014 is shaping up to be another great year for gaming as well with the next generation of games on its way. I am so sad that Phantasy Star Online 2 did not release in the West and has yet to have any news on it.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Monday, November 25, 2013
What a nutso November!
So I still have yet to finish my portfolio or get to working on my next music project, but I've acquired quite a bit of games this month.
Remember how I said I wanted to finish Dark Souls, Final Fantasy XIII/XIII-2, and Persona 3FES/4 by the end of this year? I don't see that happening anymore. Dark Souls is taking longer than I expected to finish, but I am having fun with it. Besides that, I put Pokémon Y on hold while I started up Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS. The game isn't Kid Icarus anymore in terms of gameplay, but it still holds the lore and music from the original. The dialogues all have voice overs and are VERY cheesy, but the amount of humor they pour into it makes for a light-hearted experience. The game's very challenging and really hard to play without the stand because the 3DS XL is pretty heavy compared to the original, so I get tired from playing it fairly quickly. Still, it's a lot of fun with lots of action in it. Among these two games that I'm playing, I also bought 10 games this month. 4 3DS games, 4 PS3 games, and 2 PC games. Amazon Black Friday Sales have begun this week and Steam Autumn Sales start this Wednesday, so I might be picking up a few more.
Among the 10 that I bought, Senran Kagura Burst for the 3DS was one of them:
I was looking forward to this game when it was announced for a Western release. When I saw the screen shots for the first game was first revealed, it didn't look that great of a game. And the amount of fan-service also made me question whether the game itself was good or not. But when the game finally released, I saw gameplay footages and was amazed by how fluid and fast the combat looked. I got interested and learned more about it thinking that it wasn't a game that would see an English version. Burst came out and then eventually XSEED games made an announcement saying that they were going to localize it with the condition that it will be digital only. I was glad and sad at the same time. I don't like to buy games digitally on any system other than PC for various reasons, but that was the catch here. So I finally made my first digital purchase on my 3DS for Senran Kagura Burst and I'd say it was worth it. The mechanics feel very similar to Dynasty Warriors and all attack link into one another very smoothly. Sad to say, but in terms of gameplay I think Senran Kagura Burst is even better than Code of Princess, and I really liked Code of Princess. I've been just blessed with so many awesome beat-em-ups this year and one that I haven't even played yet is Dragon's Crown which I order a few days ago. I'm just waiting for that to come in the mail.
Besides my ever increasing backlog of games, I've been sucked back into Super Smash Bros. again. I've been messing around on Smash 64, Melee, and Brawl and then ran into Project M on Youtube just last week.
It's a mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to make it play more similar to Melee while changing the characters to be more balanced for a competitive level of play. One of my favorite character changes is Sonic the Hedgehog and I've just fallen in love with playing him in Smash. I've uploaded a video demo on my FB page if you want to check out what he's capable of now. So that's been another lovely distraction for me this month.
Right now, I think I need to focus on finishing my portfolio because I think I want to take a break for December and just relax and enjoy Winter. My sister is coming home to visit, friend's are coming back for the holidays, and I have a stack of games waiting for me to play them. Then I go back to turbo working mode in January!
Remember how I said I wanted to finish Dark Souls, Final Fantasy XIII/XIII-2, and Persona 3FES/4 by the end of this year? I don't see that happening anymore. Dark Souls is taking longer than I expected to finish, but I am having fun with it. Besides that, I put Pokémon Y on hold while I started up Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS. The game isn't Kid Icarus anymore in terms of gameplay, but it still holds the lore and music from the original. The dialogues all have voice overs and are VERY cheesy, but the amount of humor they pour into it makes for a light-hearted experience. The game's very challenging and really hard to play without the stand because the 3DS XL is pretty heavy compared to the original, so I get tired from playing it fairly quickly. Still, it's a lot of fun with lots of action in it. Among these two games that I'm playing, I also bought 10 games this month. 4 3DS games, 4 PS3 games, and 2 PC games. Amazon Black Friday Sales have begun this week and Steam Autumn Sales start this Wednesday, so I might be picking up a few more.
Among the 10 that I bought, Senran Kagura Burst for the 3DS was one of them:
I was looking forward to this game when it was announced for a Western release. When I saw the screen shots for the first game was first revealed, it didn't look that great of a game. And the amount of fan-service also made me question whether the game itself was good or not. But when the game finally released, I saw gameplay footages and was amazed by how fluid and fast the combat looked. I got interested and learned more about it thinking that it wasn't a game that would see an English version. Burst came out and then eventually XSEED games made an announcement saying that they were going to localize it with the condition that it will be digital only. I was glad and sad at the same time. I don't like to buy games digitally on any system other than PC for various reasons, but that was the catch here. So I finally made my first digital purchase on my 3DS for Senran Kagura Burst and I'd say it was worth it. The mechanics feel very similar to Dynasty Warriors and all attack link into one another very smoothly. Sad to say, but in terms of gameplay I think Senran Kagura Burst is even better than Code of Princess, and I really liked Code of Princess. I've been just blessed with so many awesome beat-em-ups this year and one that I haven't even played yet is Dragon's Crown which I order a few days ago. I'm just waiting for that to come in the mail.
Besides my ever increasing backlog of games, I've been sucked back into Super Smash Bros. again. I've been messing around on Smash 64, Melee, and Brawl and then ran into Project M on Youtube just last week.
It's a mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl to make it play more similar to Melee while changing the characters to be more balanced for a competitive level of play. One of my favorite character changes is Sonic the Hedgehog and I've just fallen in love with playing him in Smash. I've uploaded a video demo on my FB page if you want to check out what he's capable of now. So that's been another lovely distraction for me this month.
Right now, I think I need to focus on finishing my portfolio because I think I want to take a break for December and just relax and enjoy Winter. My sister is coming home to visit, friend's are coming back for the holidays, and I have a stack of games waiting for me to play them. Then I go back to turbo working mode in January!
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