The year of not getting dog'd

"Don't get dog'd" is a phrase I use often, usually in videogames.  It essentially means "don't get blindsided" (by a dog or something similar to a dog).  Dogs in videogames as enemies can be annoying.  They're fast, hard to hit, have unpredictable movement patterns, do a lot of damage (or outright kill you), and can overwhelm you in large numbers.

In the Chinese zodiac, 2018 is the year of the dog and I'm really hoping this will be a great year.  8 is a lucky number in Chinese (and Asian culture in general).  But seeing how it's the year of the dog, I joked early on in the year of being careful not to be "dog'd".  Just because we have that 8 in 2018 doesn't mean we should be overzealous.

I didn't get any work done this month, but I have been working on a medley remix that'll be the first song in the shoot-em-up remix album I mentioned 2 years ago.  It's taking a long time because I had a lot to fix, alter and import before I could actually get around to remixing it.  Throughout the month, I worked on this remix, went to Jury Duty, spent a week cleaning the house in preparation for Chinese New Year, spent time with my sister, and got caught up with some new games.  It's been a busy month in February and yet it felt so short.  I'd really like to get this current remix done, perhaps work on a few more and then get around to working on original content.  I really want to make the effort to create original content and do some more job searching this Summer and Fall.

With the release of Dynasty Warriors 9 and Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet this month, I knew I'd be pretty busy with videogames.  I was spending most of the early month trying to get through Samurai Warriors: Spirit of Sanada, which I pre-ordered last year, in preparation for Dynasty Warriors 9.  I had a feeling if I didn't finish the game, I'd be swept up in DW9 and not play it.  I didn't finish it and I really did end up playing quite a bit of DW9 in terms of hours (around 15 so far) and haven't had the chance to go back and finish it.

Dynasty Warriors 9, unfortunately, has a lot of flaws and problems with it that didn't meet my expectation for the game.  It's not optimized to run at a steady frame rate and was running below 20 fps on the first day (a patch was released on the 2nd day that fixed the frame rate issue a little).  The English voice acting is atrocious and is almost as bad as Dynasty Warriors 3.  Among those two glaring issues are repetitive objectives, lack of dynamic level designs, questionable cutscene animations, and some poor looking models for NPCs that are speaking.  Despite all this, I've been having a lot of fun with it.  It's immersive, the open-world aspect makes for a much more relaxing experience since I can take on objectives at my own pace, and there's all sorts of neat little mechanics you can take advantage of such as assassinating enemies with a bow and arrow.

In between the release of Dynasty Warriors 9 and Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet was a Steam sale for the Lunar New year, which I wasn't expecting.  I picked up 4 games and the soundtrack to Furi with one of the games being Gang Beasts.  I've been still playing online multiplayer games with my friends with revisiting Left 4 Dead 2, playing some more Rainbow Six: Siege (which has been a lot of fun), finally getting around to playing Dragon Age: Inquisition multiplayer, and Gang Beasts.  Gang Beasts is a party game with floppy people trying to throw each other off platforms.  It's hilarious and I hope we get to play it some more.  Puyo Puyo Tetris released today and my friends picked it up along with me so we plan on playing that tonight.  It's been a fun month playing these games with my friends and we're eagerly awaiting the release of Monster Hunter: World for PC as a few of our friends picked up the PS4 version and have been playing it this past month.

Just this past Friday was the release of Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet and I had pre-ordered it for PC.  I was very excited to play it, for whatever reason (kind of reminds me of Phantasy Star Online, it's a third-person shooter, and it's Sword Art Online related).  It sadly doesn't support ultrawide screen and I can't even play it fullscreen without it bugging out while widowed causes the mouse to bring up my taskbar from the bottom if I aim down too far.  Tutorial took quite a few hours to get through.  But when I finally got through all the dialogues, cinematics, and character introductions, I had a blast.  The game reminds me of the way Cyberdimension Neptunia's gameplay felt in how things were set up, but with a much higher quality.  The presentation of the environment is beautiful, albeit empty.  The game does have some flaws here and there, but nothing that really takes away from making the game fun.  I've put in about 17 hours so far and it feels like nothing (like I've barely done anything) so I think I'm having a lot of fun with it.

With the release of Puyo Puyo Tetris today, I don't think there are any other games I want to pre-order until the end of May when Dark Souls Remaster releases.  So I'll be using the next 3 months to catch up on my backlog and enjoy the games I have now.  I know I've mentioned it quite a few times already, but I'm really looking forward to this year.  The next three month working hard on my projects while catching up on backlog, then Dark Souls Remaster and BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle releases late May, early June respectively, E3, Steam Summer Sales, Summer Games Done Quick, EVO, and then hoping I can get some interviews or land a job during the fall.

Sick again

I remember getting pretty sick sometime around this time last year (I checked my posts and it was at the end of February 2017) and was thinking that I was getting sick again.  It wasn't as surprising this time around since it was my dad who came down with the flu last Thursday and then two days later my mom and I both started coughing on Saturday evening.  I was mostly coughing and trying to control the cough so that it wouldn't mess up my throat.  But eventually I started to have body pains and fatigue.  I thought I'd be okay after one day, but it only got worse.  By Monday, my cough got worse, I was getting a headache, I felt weak and the body pains got to the "skin and hair hurts" stage.  I would feel shivering cold Sunday and Monday nights and was covered in sweat after a few hours of sleep.  By Tuesday and Wednesday, my throat was a bit raspy and my abs and shoulders were sore from the coughing.  Despite all this, I was not bedridden in any of the days.  Thinking I was finally recovering on Thursday, my allergies hit like I knew it would and make me suffer an extra three days with watery/itchy eyes, stuffy/runny nose, burning sinus pains, congestion, sneezing along with the coughing that I still haven't recovered from the flu.  Right now, I'm just coughing and feeling a bit weak from the ordeal, but I should be fine for the most part.  From what I'm told, the flu that's spreading around the country right now is one of the worst ones in 32 years.  Well, I got through it so hopefully I've built up an immunity to it for a long while.

Throughout that week, I mostly spent it catching up on PC games and clearing hard drive space for the arrival of Dragon Ball FighterZ and to install Tom Clancy's The Division which I bought during the Winter Steam Sale.  I most spent the week playing through Dragon Quest Heroes which turned out to be really fun despite all the mixed and negative reviews I read about it.  As for Dragon Ball FighterZ, the came released this past Friday and it was thankfully small (4.7 GB) so I had no problem fitting it on my hard drive.  I haven't finished Story mode on it, but the game itself has been a lot of fun.  Online Multiplayer works on a dedicated server basis which made it the best connection I've had playing a fighting game with one of my friends.  I've tried playing a few fighting games with this friend and our connection hasn't always been the best.  But Dragon Ball FighterZ has mostly been a great experience so far with a few instances of it freezing up or lagging out.  I want to finish Story mode tonight since Dissidia Final Fantasy NT comes out tomorrow and I want to be able to play it by then.



I finished my first remix of the year to celebrate the return of Sakura back into Street Fighter V.  I'm really happy with how the remix turned out.

Sakura's a fun character and it's nice to finally have an Arcade mode in Street Fighter V, but the netcode still sucks so my friends are kind of reluctant to play it as much.


I thought about what I want my next step in projects to be and I think I want to create at least one remix for the Shoot-em-Up remix album before I start working on my original compositions and projects that will lead up to another wave of job hunting I'll do.  There's a lot of work I want to do, music I want to create and games I want to play this year.  I'm hoping it'll be a great year because I'm looking forward to it.