Starting to Loop Back - The Games I've Played

I've ranted about this game before, and I think we're getting to the point in my review of games that I'm starting to loop back onto games that I've played while writing stuff on this blog. Oh well, it's next on the list, so we're going to do it anyways.

Now, part of the weirdness that is Tales games, you start to expect certain things. Typically there are your summons including gnome and company, and there's typically two worlds. When I say typically, I mean you practically expect those things to show up when you pick up a Tales game, sort of like you expect to find a Chocobo, Shiva and Ifrit in a FF game. Shockingly, this Tales breaks that mold and doesn't stick you with two worlds, summons, and the same old bag of tricks.

This game starts out with some of your main characters as children.

and then goes to when they're all grown up and ready to save the world. The fun part about this, is that although some people see the childhood section as an annoyance, for story telling it's actually a really, REALLY cool move because you get to see why the characters are the way they are when they're grown up. You understand the weird relationship between the brothers when they're older, because you see how weird they are when they're younger. You understand just how awkward it would be when Sophie shows back up because you knew her from the childhood section. As a game, it was a bit annoying to know that whatever I did with my characters during the childhood section had no part in how they were going to be when they were older, it didn't mind how much I leveled or geared up, which was frustrating, but on the story side of things, it was a really, smart move because it gave you the background to the characters and introduced the world without throwing you into it head first expecting you to pick things up as you go. (You know who you are!)

Luckily there was one thing within Graces that was kept from the old template of Tales games, the active fighting. Where FF is turned based and you micro-manage (or at least you should be able to do this in your older FF games, don't get me started about the new bleh that they're doing with their combat system) Tales games allow you to take control of one character, the others are either AI or other players controlling their own character, and then allow you to run around, hit, fight, block, or do whatever else you want in real time. This is actually one of the biggest draws to this game for me, not only do you have a great story, but the combat system is MULTI PLAYER. It's an RPG that you can (and should) play with your friends because AI will never be as great as a person sitting next to you that you can communicate and plan things with.

With the pros out of the way, here come the warnings - if you're looking for super realistic graphics with top of the line character design and a traditional story that doesn't have it's weird quirky moments, then this game is not for you. You're going to run into characters that cast swords out of a gun/staff, that have little anime tear drops and storm clouds over their head when they're feeling certain things, and you're going to run into pink, blue, white, green, and purple hair. It's a very particular art style, and from that, I know that some people don't like it, just be warned of what style they're going, and know what you're getting yourself into when you start the game.

Then comes the fun part, just like all of the other Tales games, in good style, this one comes with a new game + option. I'm always a fan of new game +, always. It can never be a bad thing to do the game all over again, with everything that you ended the game with, just so you can unlock even more stuff and become even stronger so the next time you play, you can do new game ++ and rock the game even harder.

We'll just put it this way - I played the story line of this particular game enough times and became so over leveled that I could start and finish the entire story of this MASSIVE rpg in about six hours. I'm no speed runner, but being able to start to finish this game in a slightly longer gaming session (or two short ones) that's not too bad. I'm sure I could shorten it a bit if I really cared, but like I said, I watch speed running from a distance, there's no chance that I'd actually do it.

Anima

Over the weekend I was working on FFX and getting 100% on it. As part of that you have to min/max EVERY character that there is. The official thing is that you have to take every character through every bit of the sphere grid, but if I'm going to make three characters have max stats and break the game, I might as well drag everyone else along with them.

So, I was doing that, kicking butt at the sphere grinding, getting levels like a boss, and maxing out stats. I was through maxing out strength, and then started to work on defense, when I realized that I hadn't done one of the most basic end game things - getting the final Aeon(s), the Magus Sisters.

As part of doing this you typically have to go through and fight another summoner and beat each of her summons, and traditionally it's supposed to be some tough fights for you to get through because no one likes it when Bahamut is against them. Then I pulled out Anima, one shot each and every one of her summons and the summoning animations were the longest part of the fights because I killed things so quickly.

It was sort of funny that I didn't realize how strong and how over leveled I was until I did that, so part nerd, part life lesson, but you might think that you're behind schedule and think that you're not doing as great as you thought you were, or you just might be dealing with some really, really hard stuff in your life and when you get back to the easy junk you'll blow by it in a minute.

87 Bazillion Guns - The Games I've Played

Yup, it's time to talk about this one.

Now, if you remember right, I really enjoyed the first Borderlands. Part of me was suspicious about them coming out with a second, because I was afraid that they'd take away what made it awesome and just try to make it more generic and appealing to the general audience.

Luckily they didn't do that.

All of the chaos, all of the RPG elements, the nice blend between FPS and RPG, the AMAZING story line, and the top tier writing and voice acting are all still there. Then the best part about it all, unlike the first one which was desert on desert with more desert, #2 decides to let you see some polar ice caps, industrial clean cities, run down cities, and even brings you back to visit your old desert stomping ground from the first game for a brief visit.

The old NPC's are still around and stomping, making their mark on the world, even DLC characters like Moxxi are back with a vengeance, and what's even better is that your PC's from the first game are now NPC's in this game. So all of the stuff that you learned to love from the first game is still there, but now you get to build off of it and see more of what we fell in love in the first game, but with more friends. All of the new characters and new NPC's that are running around only add depth to the game that is well needed and they fit in perfectly. Personally, my favorite character in the game, just because of how she is written and voiced, is Tiny Tina. I would slow down my game play and listen to whatever she had to say whenever she spoke over the radio to me, just because I knew that whatever was going to come out of her mouth was going to be worth listening to.

The best part of this game is easily the side quests. The story is fun, and it's interesting and does some cool things, but it's the side quests that make the game worth playing because it's in those side moments that the writer(s) allowed themselves to have fun and do some crazy, out of the box, hilarious things. The story line is straight laced, and pretty much what you would expect from a FPS game. Here's something that is wrong, go kill the thing that's wrong and fix it to move on to the next area. I mean, typical story line for games doesn't even begin to explain what the general line is. The princess is stuck, let's go save her. Oh no, the big bad thing has part of what we need to save the day, let's go kill it. But then the side quests come and the humor and joy that is Borderlands really starts to shine.

I'm typically not a fan of DLC's and expansions, but again, the DLC's are where the developers had too much fun creating the game and really just enjoyed themselves with all of the references and jokes that they could put into one game. For example, my favorite DLC is where Tiny Tina is a DM for a D&D game with the PC's from the first game. Yes, imagine a psychopathic demolitions expert who is maybe 13 years old, being the DM of a D&D game, and then also imagine people like Brick as her players.

For people that aren't super nerds, and don't get all of the references that they're throwing out, the DLC's are still interesting loot and shoot games, but when you get what they're talking about it just gets funnier and funnier.

Really, I can't say much bad about this game.

There's even new game + with harder enemies and better loot and higher levels that you can gain . . . . and then there's new game ++ where you finish new game + and then everything, no matter which part of the game you're in levels up with you and always gives you a challenge, and should only be played with a group of four players so you can survive long enough to play the game. Yet again with all of the skill trees, all of the different classes, all of the different playthroughs that you can play, Borderlands provides a game that you can dump hundreds of hours in and play differently every time you play it. It's not for everyone because you are running around and blowing people's limbs off in bloody messes in a FPS, but it's at least giving a look at.

Temporal Paradoxes - The Game! - The Games I've Played

Between Darksiders and this game, I cleaned up and did a few other games, and finally finished some of the ones that I started, put a dent into others, and cleaned up some trophies on ones that were only half finished. As part of that list, in that chunk of time I put some serious work into FF XIII because I got FXIII-2 and wanted to be prepared for what was going on, and so that's where we go from here - FXIII- 2

I was supicious about what in the world was going to go on in XIII-2 because the FF series has never done well with sequels and I was afraid it was going to happen again. The story for FFXIII-2 is really messy, and really convoluted, but it basically gets boiled down to this -

Your main character from XIII, Lightning, had a sister that you never really saw, played, or knew much about. She was trapped in a crystal, and that's about all you knew.

In XIII-2 the tables get turned, you play as Lightning's sister, Serah, and Lightning is almost no where to be found throughout the entire game. All of the characters from XIII that are still alive (spoiler some people die at the end of XIII or at least are put in crystal suspension and are no longer able to move) become NPC's and characters that can join your party for brief moments in time.

The story line is this - Lightning has become a diety, or at least a stand in diety, we're not quite sure, and something is going wonky. Serah finds out that time is being broken, and that the time line isn't working like it should so she grabs her stuff and heads out to fix the time line. Meanwhile a random heart throb, Noel shows up, and says he's going to help out.

So those two are running around trying to fix up the time line, and they run into everyone that's worth mentioning from FFXIII just in different time zones in different flavors of trouble. Their goal, make everything work out, so that they can fix the end of the time line where Lightning should be, and get her help with fighting the big bad from the entire story.

Let's not forget that you have a Mog that follows you around, who is also Serah's weapon, and you get to play a bit of Pokemon and collect monsters that you fight against to fight with you in later battles. Just like in 13 you have different classes that you can level up in, and you set your game to fight for you. Serah and Noel can fill all different types of roles, while the monsters are stuck in a single role that they have to fill, and like any good FF game, you can level all of them up (monsters included) until you break the game over your knee and fights become jokes.

The best part of this game is it makes up for everything that 13 was missing and expands on what was already awesome.

Remember how 13 was super linear and you just walked down a bunch of hallways and you won the game? 13-2 is OPEN. You can jump between different times and places with pretty good freedom once you get a bit into the game, and what you choose to do in one location and time can open up entirely new locations and times and even create paradox endings to the game where you don't actually beat the game but you cause something so weird to happen that a different ending has to happen. This gets so out of hand that late into the game (if I remember right, it's after you beat the final boss in main story line) you can actually go back and reset time zones and replay the area so that you can cause more of these paradox endings and make even weirder and weirder things happen.

The high detailed graphics of 13 just keep coming in 13-2, and remember how I complained that in 13 you could see things but never get closer to them or see them from a different angle? Thanks to the slightly more (but not perfect) ability to roam around in the world, you can actually see things in 13-2 from different positions and really get to enjoy the wide spread of graphics.

And then there is the mini-games. There's not many, but compared to 13 which had none, it is a glorious thing that you get back to the golden saucer roots and race the chocobos that you have pokemoned and made friends with.

The story line gets a little convoluted at points, and if you didn't pay perfect attention to 13 (like me) then there are some sections that make no sense at all because you have to try to remember the difference between Fal'ci, la'ci, pluse la'ci, and all of the other things that sound exactly the same, but for the most part it moves past what you had to deal with in 13, and creates a pretty solid line of it's own that has little to do with the first.

For the record, when in doubt, this is how series should go. You take the world, what has happened in it, and then you use some tangential idea or character that showed up maybe once in the first, and then give their story. It's still in the same universe, but Serah's story stretches through thousands of years, passing up where we started in 13, and absolutely demolishing anything that you were used to in 13 and making a new world to play in. It's the same place . . . sort of. . . but the distance that 13 and 13-2 have between each other is enough that if you didn't like 13, 13-2 is a broad enough departure that you can start over again, but close enough together that if you loved 13, then 13-2 is a romp through a section of the world that you never knew about and times that you never even imagined that you love to experience because they tie back, loosely, to the game you know and love.

The only complaint that I have about 13-2 is the fighting system itself. It's not as bad as FF12, and slightly faster than 13, but it's still the auto-pilot forget the game and win system of fighting. Part of the reason that I love to play FF series is because there is some sense of control with fighting. If you run into something that is magic immune you swap over to your fighters and smack it around, but at the same point you can always jump over to your magic users on high defense monsters and nuke them to the ground. You control each character's actions and make sure they do exactly what you want to do when you want them to do it, but then FF13-2 rolls around and you're faced with the auto-pilot mode again. You tell the game roughly what you want it to do (sentile for defense, sabatuer for debufs, medic for healing, and so on and so on) and then the game auto generates what it thinks work best for that class you just said you want it to do. You do have the option to micromanage ONE of your three characters (counting the monsters on the field as one of your characters) but it takes more time than hitting the auto-pilot button because the game doesn't wait for you to make your choices of what you're going to do next. The only thing you really do with battle is set up one paradigm for damage, one paradigm for healing, one for debuffing, and one to increase the damage gauge (yes that's back again from 13), and then you just hit the auto battle button, occasionally switching between your different plans of attack depending on if you're dying, if the enemy is not dying fast enough, or if you filled up the gauge and want to destroy whatever it is that hasn't died yet. It's boring. The action on the screen is impressive as your characters run around and do crazy things, but your involvement in that amazing fight is limited to hitting X to auto fill your battle and occasionally hitting R2 to swap what your team is doing.

All in all, it's a great game, even if you didn't like FF13, 13-2 gives you a new enough take on the world, with enough freedom and interesting story line to make people happy.

Late Night Thoughts

As I read more and more of Midnight's Children, and the more I try to fight it, the story that I want to write, the story that I think is interesting, but won't write because it hits too close to home, is the story of Saleem and his power to hear. I think that it is the most interesting part of the entire story, because that ability and how his family reacts to it, how he feels about it, rings true. What he talks about, how he understands it, how he deals with it as a kid, and how he learns that he must always keep it hidden is truth.

Midnight's Children has made me want to work so hard on Angels or whatever I'm calling it, because he hits on the topic a bit when he's talking about Saleem, but there's a lot missing there and the feelings of going insane, and no one around you believing you, and the only person you have to trust being yourself in a mirror.

I know this makes no sense to you as the reader, and I know I'm being vague, but I'm being intentionally vague, and I don't want to have you understand everything.

Moments

I haven't written on here for a while, because life is getting hectic. Just when I don't want things to go crazy, things go crazy, it's the only way that these sort of things happen. I mean, the only real response that your body should ever have of your THESIS being due is . . . you know . . . sinus infection.

Great fun.

And then, the only thing that should happen at the start of the most important week in the surrounding months for both you and your wife - your car's transmission decides to die. It only makes sense.

I'm just done with this week. I want all of the broken things, all of the sickness, all of the papers, all of the stupid stuff, all of the junk behind me because I can handle one or two of them at a time, I don't want to deal with them all at the same time.

As much as I want to just curl up into a ball and start crying and then fall asleep for the next 5 days, I don't have that much to really worry about with school. With last night's binge session on writing I wrote enough in my thesis that I could turn it in, and then I took care of all of my other classes as well, so right now I'm honestly sitting at a point where I have only one paper that I need to write by Sunday, and it's Tuesday. I have days to work on this paper, and I'm dreading it enough that I want to kick, yell, and scream like a kid throwing a fit in the middle of the candy isle at the store.

Rant

Officially this was written on 7/1/2014 around 11:00 PM, but as we know I like to hide things that are more rant related into the background of the blog, because no one reads that. The three of you who do come here are most likely caught up, so you're not going to be looking back this far. Enjoy.


Sorry, I'm just fed up with things lately.

How in the world is it that some people can make it, and then just hide and everything is just fine? Do you know how impossible it is to get famous? To publish anything that people want to read, let alone are willing to pay you good money for?

Not fair.

I don't know, I'm just not feeling it lately. I'm just upset at everything, but nothing makes it better. Nothing.

I wish there was something that I found joy in, but I've been in this great state of bleh ever since graduation. I graduated, I started hunting for jobs with the help from Alicia, and I just feel bleh. Everything, every where, nothing really breaks it. It's not like I'm sad about everything, and it's not like I'm super angry, but at the same time I'm not super happy, and I'm certainly not feeling joy about anything. It's just a great big case of living my life from a 4-6. Now normally I would be okay with the 4-6 because that's who I am, I don't live the extremes, but I'm talking on my scale. The scale that everyone else sees me living as a 4-6 is my normal 1-10, but now I'm on my own 4-6 and it's just bleh.

This doesn't even make sense, but considering that I see that there are exactly three people that check this blog on a bi-daily basis (yes, I see any time that a person opens up this blog and looks at it, and it's every other day 0, 3, 0, 3) oh well, you 3 are big enough kids that you can deal with my random rants every now and again.

Anyways, nothing seems to be getting fixed, and it feels as though when I give it 100% and try as hard as possible, no one cares, but when I loaf around no one around me is going to try either. For example, it SMELLS in our house right now. I mean 100% over the top smell of rot. I cleaned dishes, took out trash, cleaned a litter box, aired out the house one afternoon before Alicia got home, I've tried everything to get rid of it, and yet it's still there. I've tried everything that I can and nothing has been a result. On the other hand Alicia points out that it smells every other time that she walks into the kitchen, does nothing, and the smell is still there. That's pretty much what's going on with my entire life right now, it doesn't matter if I try or not, I get the exact same results. It doesn't matter if I bust my butt over everything, nothing comes out of it. It doesn't matter if I am absolutely the best employee ever, or the best author ever, or the best Dad ever, I get the same results no matter how much, or how little I try.

Work smart, not hard - no?

I know I should push through and take pride in what I do, but I do nothing so how am I supposed to take pride in that? My job is a joke, my daughter seems to like me or yell at me no matter how great a dad I am to her, my writing has never (and feels like will never) gain the attention of anyone that reads it, and no matter what I do for the people around me it always seems like I can never do it right.

It's a sad realization when you realize that you're 28 years old and you're stuck at a call center at a dead end job because there's nothing else out there that will hire you and pay you what you need to actually be of value. Don't get me wrong, I did have that job offer a few weeks ago, but the idea of working for the EXACT same amount of money but having to commute and work for a company that was horribly organized and mismanaged wasn't my cup of tea.

I'm going through the motions of life, and it's starting to get boring. Whatever, I'll sort it out.

Where's the Water Temple? - The Games I've Played

The next game on my list follows the tried and true formula of action games, and refuses to expand on it. It's not a 'bad' game, but it certainly isn't anything new.

Overly muscular guy? - Check
Weapon that would never be used? - Check
Weird mythology references that are close but stretching it? - Check
Kratos anyone?

Darksiders is God of War's formula with a different spin on it.

Collect all of the items/weapons, beat all of the ridiculously huge bosses, and win the game. It's not so much about storyline, it's all about beating people up. While talking about this formula, let's not forget the prime canidate for this formula, the godfather of the action game - Link.

You know exactly what happens in this game, and you don't even have to play it. You start with no cool toys, and slowly you start dragging your heroic butt through every dungeon and cave that you can find, breaking apart every tree, bush, box, and street lamp that you can find to get more stuff. With that stuff, you kill more things, and move to the next area where you need to get more stuff, that's particular for that one boss. You've got a dozen toys by the end of the game, all with particular uses, but we all know that you're only going to use the mirror shield against one particular enemy, the giant's hammer on one section, and that long range thing is practically useless except for one very particular point in the game where you can't progress without it.

That is Darksiders.

You're War, as in 1 of the Horsemen, and you show up a bit early to the apocalypse. So, as the first one to the party, you're doing what anyone would do and start down the heroic path of collecting stuff from dungeons so that you can carry more stuff with you so you can fly and ride your horse.

The story line is 'meh' at best, but compared to other games where I can tell you the entire story from start to finish with only having to play it once and being completly in love with the charatcers and what is happening to them, Darksiders falls in line with God of War. I know what the starting point is, and I know the ending, but the middle is just a blur of button mashing, and killing anything that moved, and a lot of things that didn't move.

The only part of this game that I distinctly remember now is a particular boss that took me three times to kill. Other than that boss that took me more than a first try to kill, I really can't remember any of the details of this game well enough to really write about them. In one way, that's a great thing because it's not a poorly made game. I don't remember the sound, or the graphics, or the game play because they weren't so bad that the bad is embedded in my mind like some of the other games on this list, but at the same time, it was so mediocre that I can't remember anything great about it. As a whole, the entire game was just somewhere in the middle. Not bad enough to complain about, but not great enough to make me remember it.

Problem

My wife is out of town due to work, and I noticed this problem before, but I'm really starting to notice it now that she's gone.

The problem is this - I'm close to being done with EVERYTHING with school. I'm a few weeks away from being done done, and because of that, I'm avoiding school work with everything that I've got. If I'm in school I don't have to worry about publishing, getting a good job, or any of those big kid things. I know it doesn't work like that, but if I'm seriously dragging my feet on school right now. I'm not behind schedule on anything, and I've turned everything in, I'm just not as on top of it as I should be.

I'm not looking forward to being finished with school.

The Official Word

So my parents finally put up on their blog the official review of my graduation. I don't make this stuff up, so here's a direct quote from what they wrote-

" I am sure the university has figured out how to do this teach by on-line correspondence to a T, as the campus is a small campus located in the trees by the Merrimack river."

I'm done.

I'm 31 flavors of done and it just happens to be your birthday so you get a free double scoop of done.

Mine's Bigger - The Games I've Played

This game goes under the category of amazing invention in the world of gaming that will never be reproduced ever by anyone else. It is such a weird quirky puzzle game that nothing could ever come close to it ever again. It is a one of a kind game, with innovative game play, one of a kind levels, and memorable ear worms of music blasting through every level.

This game. . . oh this game is a weird one. Let's get some of the infamous tuneage to get this post rolling. Yup, I did the dad pun with rolling. Here's one of my favorite tracks.

So this game is supposed to be a social commentary about consumerism and the desire to always need something bigger and more, but who cares about what the producer says it's about, it's about being awesome and rolling up a ball of junk!

For those that have never played this acid trip of a game, you play as the Prince of all of the Cosmos.

Your dad, the king of the cosmos (or the giant floating head)

 did some stupid stuff, and now you have to remake the cosmos by rolling up katamari. Katamari's are little sticky balls that pick things up that they run into. The more stuff that you run into, the bigger your Katamari gets and the bigger things you can pick up. You start picking up paper clips and push pins, and then you grow bigger and bigger finally eating up entire planets in your goal to get a bigger and bigger Katamari.

This sounds like an easy enough concept, run over stuff, make a bigger thing, and run over even more stuff, but most levels are no where close to that easy to tackle. For example, there's the money level. Everything you run into has a cost, and you have a budget that you have to stay under to make the largest katamari you can. You pick up expensive items, you're screwed and you have to start over again looking for toilet paper and ramen to make your ball bigger. There's hot/cold levels where you have to keep your ball on fire, cow level where you can only pick up things that have cows on them, or avoid anything that has cows on them, or sumo-wrestler levels where your katamari isn't a ball, but a super hungry sumo that needs to beef up so you can knock the other sumo out of the ring.

That just covers single player, then there's two player games. In two player, you and your partner can either compete against each other and try to make bigger katamari's than each other to destroy each other, or you can work together on the same Katamari.

I've tried to play co-op on this game, and the amount of communication and cordination requried between the two people playing is silly complex. Then I saw two friends play it that knew the game and had some weird telepathy thing going with each other, and I was amazed.

It's sort of along the ideas of a two headed ogre. If the heads fight against each other or don't agree with each other, then the ogre just stands there arguing with himself, but if the two heads are in perfect sync with each other, the monster keeps on going without any problems. That's how it was with these two.


To do something as easy as a quick direction switch both people have to press down on both r3 and l3 (the control sticks on the ps3, pushing them physically down into the controller, not just directionally down). They managed to coordinate jumps like that without hardly talking to each other, and other even more complicated stuff like getting speed boosts and even controlling the ball of junk they were picking up, they did with a crazy telepathic link. Anyways, I digress, the game is difficult, but it's deceptively simple. That's what makes it such a great game.



It's cute. It's overly Japanese. It's artistic and production direction is so over the top that you can't take it serious . . . and then you're forced to take it very serious because the game just ate you alive and told you to start the level again because you had no clue what you were doing and requires you to suck it up and stop treating it like a kid's game.


This is one of those games that I enjoy playing, and could easily pick it back up again and play a few levels at any point and be just as addicted as when I first played it. It's a fun game and thanks to high scores always gives you something to compete against, even if it is just yourself that you're playing with. Given, it's not a perfect game, this particular one is only a remix of all of the previous Katamari games picking out the best levels and best songs, so if you've played any of the others, it's nothing new, but if you've never played before, or only played a bit, then it's a great place to come back and see some of the best of the best.

That's A Cute Little College

"That's a cute little college."
and
"I hope you're proud of yourself."

The two memorable lines from my parents this weekend. The weekend of my graduation (or at least my comencement of my graduation).

Let's go over what those mean, if you don't speak passive aggressive parent. I'll help translate.

#1- "That's a cute little college."
This came while touring SNHU's physical campus for the first time from my mom.

What does it mean?

First it means that my mom's first idea behind my graduate school is this -

My school, and therefore my education, isn't to be respected. It's a cute little school, providing me with a cute little education, in a cute little field. My school has accidents on the floor, and can't stand up or take corners too fast without tripping over it's own feet.

That pretty much solidified the inability of my parents being able to see that my degree was legitimate and took time and effort to obtain. It's a cute little school, handing out cute little arts degrees. Whatever, I forgot about it, and I moved on.

I go and walk. I look like a boss in my robes and hood and am happy as anything out there in the world. I'm pulling a full fledged ultra grin at some moments.

Even the fact that the teacher that told me that I should make my papers "sexy" and feel "hot" about the subject got an award, I was still happy. It was a good day for me. My wife was proud, my daughter was proud, I'm sure my grandparents were proud of me, even my in-laws called up and said that they were proud of me and sorry they couldn't make it.

Even though at that point I still had 4 more weeks of school, I had won the game.

That night, while talking to my parents and trying to get a simple, 'we're happy for you' or even the rare and never heard in years, 'we're proud of you' I got the second quote-

#2 - "I hope you're proud of yourself."

Now this might seem like a good thing to say. I hope you find pride in your own accomplishments. Give yourself a little self-five, and be happy for what you did.

Don't you wish it was that easy.

What this translates to is years of growing up, screwing something up and hearing, "I hope you're proud of yourself now."

Throw away something important? "I hope you're proud of yourself, now we/you can't do . . . "
Make the family late for anything for something that you did? "I hope you're proud of yourself now we're going to be late for . . ."

That phrase is not one that is a good thing, that's the phrase before shame.

The options for the rest of that sentence are great things like -
"I hope you're proud of yourself, now you have to do something real with your life."
"I hope you're proud of yourself, now you're in debt with nothing to show for it."
"I hope you're proud of yourself, now you have to support your family."
"I hope you're proud of yourself, now you have to grow up."

To be perfectly clear, not once did either of my parents say that they were happy for me, or proud of me.

So yeah, screw that. My parents were a waste of space this trip. The close runner up if you've been following the stupidity of my parents trying to rationalize traveling out here was the, "We wouldn't have missed this for a million dollars." Actually, you did want to miss this for only a few thousand dollars, so umm. . . there's that.

I got a masters degree in a field that I have a passion for and want to be in.
I'm doing what I want to do and it's not easy for others to do it.
At least for right now, yes, I am proud of myself.

I Might Just Know What I'm Doing

I'll try to do this one fast, so no pictures for this one. I'm going to go to sleep soon, and I'm typing this with my eyes closed, so I'll try not to make too many mistakes. Apologies for those that I do make.

Anyway- I don't like looking at my grades. It's something that I've been doing since I started college and started to really bomb classes. Tests would come back and I wouldn't look at them until a week or more after I had gotten the grade. I didn't want to know how bad I did, I wanted to move on past that test or that assignment, and not have to worry about it. It was my simple way of thinking that I was smarter than I actually was. That way I could just keep on going and not stress.

Anyways, I've been doing that in my graduate level classes. I turn in assignments, and then I never look back once I turn them in. It own't be until weeks later that I turn my head back towards what I turned in to see what people said about them. Recently I looked back at what I produced two weeks ago and really started comparing it to what other people in my classes were producing. It's really weird, but I think I just might actually be good at this stuff.

All of my comments from all of my professors were positive, all of the stuff that I creatively wrote turned out really good, and even when I was going back and reading through them I was only finding super minor errors that ould be fixes (and should have been fixed if we're being honest) but I didn't see any serious revisons that needed to be made.

I don't know, I run into the typical author/artist compelx where I just think that my writing isn't good enough. That I'm never going to be published, that I'm just doing this because I think it's fun, not because I'm actually any good at it. It's nice to see that not only do I enjoy it, but when I put my mind down on the paper and really focus I can produce some high quality stuff.

Traditionally I'm not the biggest fan of sharing what I've written, especially if it's for a class and I don't feel like I spent enough time on it, but I'll try to break out of that habit. With that in mind, here's tonight's creation. As well as a lot of time spent on this last night. The directions were that we had to take a character in One Flew Over the Coocoo's Nest (I know I spelt that wrong even with my eyes closed) and we had to take a scene that involved them, and tell that scene from their point of view. I took Mr. Ellsworth, the crazy guy who's always dancing and tried to show what he was seing during the party.

Enjoy-

Mr. Ellsworth Dancing

“It’s as though there’s a string traveling straight through you, pulling you up to the ceiling. It starts at your butt, travels up your spine, and goes straight out the top of your head. Always remember that string, pulling you up.” Mr. Ellsworth could hear the lectures from his dance teacher Miss Whitwer even though it had been decades since he took a class from her as he started moving his feet to the music. He knew that he was many things, but a sloppy dancer was not one of them.

Mr. Ellsworth tried his best to follow her instructions that had been burned into his mind from hours of rehearsals. He pulled himself towards the ceiling, relaxed the shoulders, with his chest out, and the secret to the entire thing that no one ever talked about, but every dancer knows and uses to make it all come together, he squeezed his butt cheeks together to add that extra sense of tension. Squeezing your butt makes all the difference.

With a little pause his head filled with the music that filled the dance halls of his youth and began the dizzying spins of a polka. Again Miss Whitewer’s voice filled his head, counting off the beats. “One, two, three, and, one, two, three, and . . . .” The more she counted, the stronger the rhythm pulsed in his head became, and the more he was back home with his girlfriend, who later became his wife, in Boston.

Each beat was a minute from his life when things were better; a minute that he could spend before the accident, a minute that he could be with the smiles of his family again. He spun, he shuffled, he dipped into every movement just to have the minute where he was at the park with Deborah again. It took him a vis a vis to remember how it felt to grab Ronald off of the slide as he giggled his way down for the fiftieth time that afternoon. A redowa gallop brought back the picnic that they brought with them that Deborah used too much mustard in the potato salad.

Miss Whitwer’s counts pulsing through Mr. Ellworth’s head changed from a strict polka into an upbeat foxtrot, “One, and, two, three, and, four, one, and, two, three, and, four. . .” and Ellsworth, with a brief moment of trying to remember the new dance, switched into a turning box leading him into the first dance he ever had with Deborah. “Remember to lead with your toe. Toe, heel, toe, heel, toe, toe, toe, heel!”

Each with each step, one more thing would come into focus of that perfect moment. Three backing magic steps made the yelling of the rest of the men surrounding him disappear. A single rollaway numbed his nose to the alcohol and a half turning box later he couldn’t smell how the stench of people that hadn’t showered in days. It was a box parallel break that allowed him to catch a scent of Deborah’s perfume. It was hard for him to make out the details and finer hints within the smell, but just that single drop that managed to make it to his nose let him know that it was her, dancing with him.

The foxtrot Mr. Ellsworth was dancing, transformed into a waltz, Miss Whitwer changed her counting into a flowing, “One, two, three, one, two, three. . . .” Mr. Ellsworth started to glide around the chairs and tables, focusing on the rise and fall of each movement he made, making sure that he never broke his hold with his wife in his arms. The hold was always important, you wanted to be close, but not too close. It was like a perfectly made soufflé you had to balance every last aspect of it to make it right, but when you made it right, it was heaven on Earth. With a traveling box his hands could feel the fabric of her dress, it was a polyester fabric, and it always seemed to be rough in his hands, but the fact was that it was more his calloused hands to blame than it was the fabric that made it rough.

A switch to promenade position with a hesitation on the turn began to transform the room around him, erasing the white beds, the white walls, and filling it instead with the black tuxedos of men like him, and the vibrant colors that flowed over the women dancing. He couldn’t see it yet, but he always loved the midnight blue that Deborah wore that night. It would shimmer from blue to black depending on the lights that covered them as they danced.

It was at a natural spin turn that Ellsworth made in the back corner of the party that it happened. For the brief two count of Miss Whitwer’s barking counts the entire routine became worth the work. The sore joins that took a beating from the jumps of the polka, the vertigo that the foxtrot’s manic speeds caused, and the nausea from the waltz’s spin meant nothing when he caught a glimpse of her caramel hair. In the back corner of the ward, which to him had become the center of the ballroom at The Plaza, for a brief two count that seemed to last for hours, Deborah was back in his arms.

For that movement filled by McMurphy trying to get chief to chug another shot of liquor, Deborah smiled. Her hair flowing down her back and over his hand was like a honey satin blanket that tickled his hand with every movement that they moved together. Her eyes were locked on his, with the faint squint they got every time they danced together. She was focusing, but only because she was so happy in the movements that she had to remind herself to focus on what was going on so that she didn’t step on his toes. He always made fun of her for that squint, and that night, for those two steps Ellsworth saw more joy in the squint than focus.

The two count sped by and Ellsworth slowed his spinning and gliding around the room. He continued to dance, but not with the same fervor, because he had already got what he wanted for the night, to have the dance with his beloved Deborah.

Up too late

I was up WAY too late last night, and the worst part was it wasn't even like I was up doing something stupid. I was up trying to be productive. 

However, thanks to the complete lack of sleep that I'm running on right now, and me really wanting to do something unproductive I just called up this company while at work- 

To be perfectly clear, the company's name is Bellevue Builders. Now while talking to one of the people working there, and trying to get their email address they told me it was theirname@bellevuebuilders.com I read it back to them, and instead of calling them the Bellevue builders, I called them the Bevelle Builders. 

Now this might seem like a good ol' fashion brain fart, but let's compare what they make. Bellevue Builders build things like this - 

Meanwhile in Bevelle they're building things like this - 

Yup, that just happened. Luckily the old lady I spoke to didn't catch the slip. 

Yup

3:11 and I'm just going to sleep on a Sunday night working on my homework.

Yup, it's going to be a great week. I can sense it already.

More Space Zombies - The Game's I've Played

I talked about Dead Space already, and if you remember right, I thought they got everything right with starting a new survival horror game. They had a compelling character that made sense, the story line was creepy and great, and then there were the monsters.

With #2 coming out, I got excited. The first was scary, and I thought with a bigger budget, and more of a backing that they might just be able to go somewhere with the second one. 

I was wrong. 

Part of the allure of the first Dead Space was that poor ol' Issac was thrown into the situation with no experience or training. He was just an engineer who got stuck in a space mutant zombie infestation. It was creepy, and new, and things were survival horror in the best sense possible. Meanwhile in Deadspace 2 we've turned it more into a Tomb Raider, Uncharted, adventure game than trying to stay alive. Instead of it being an accident that Issac stumbled into he gets woken up out of a coma in an insane asylum because of what happened in the first. 

Where #1 made you jump at the slightest rustle and would crawl into your mind even when you weren't playing the game #2 is heavy and straight forward. The monsters announce from a mile away that they're coming, the surprise and shock of something happening is all but removed, and the only real moment that my stomach tightened up giving me some gamer abs, was near the very end with a very particular action sequence done right where screwing up is less shocking and disturbing than trying to do it right. 

The problems only start to compound from there. The only really horrifying part, that made it feel like a survival horror game instead of just a shoot 'em up action game was when Issac (spoiler) finds his way back onto the ship from the first game, but it wasn't so much as actually scary, it was just remembering the first game.

The good news is that while screwing up the direction and writing within the game, at the very least EA didn't manage to screw up the interface. One of the best parts of the game was the interface and the entire lack of HUD, and true to the game they kept that part. They kept a lot of the things that made Deadspace good, and even tried to tweak how some things work (like traveling in 0 g space). Most of the changes were worth it, and technically made it a better game, but the story and the pacing of the game ruined anything that technically was better. 

You can make the game engine and mechanics better, and even have better graphics and more diverse monsters, but if you're going to take all of that and not try to make it a survival horror game, then it doesn't quite make it. 

It's an okay game. You can still have fun hacking off limbs and freezing aliens in place as you take a blowtorch to them, but don't expect as much horror or survival, and expect a lot more typical action adventure. 

It's Tricky! - The Games I've Played

Let's just get this started right, because there is one, and only one song that should be playing for the introduction of this thing -

Def rap star? DJ Hero? Nope, the one, the only SSX.

Now, I started playing the original SSX back on ps2 at a friend's house, then a roommate had SSX tricky while at college, and then this one came out for ps3 and all of the nostalgia came back and made me want to pick it up and play it through.

SSX at it's roots is a snow boarding game. You go down the mountain, do the tricks, get boost, and win. Cross the finish line first, get the most points, and it seems pretty vanilla, but the simplicity of SSX stops there, because you see . . . SSX likes to be a little crazy.

SSX has turned your snowboard into things that have quick releases for your feet. That means that your character can kick their feet off of the board and do stupid tricks that are boarderline skateboarding and motocross moves, but a little bit more out there.

The real stupidity is that if you go off a jump and do one of these tricks when you're not spinning or flipping, the move looks crazy, but possible. Then there's the fact that you can still make your character spin and flip like a top when doing these . Then while doing all of these things are going on, you're building up your 'tricky' meter. Once it's full, Run DMC pops their iconic vocals into whatever song you're going down hill to, and all sense of normality within tricks goes out the window.

Then there are the tracks themselves. Officially they're based off of mountains in the real world, but the programers took some very liberal alterations to those mountains making the wall of China pop out of random snowboarding areas and other shenanigans. In each area, they even try to make a little challenge. In one area it's so snowy you can't see two feet in front of you, another is super icy, and one you're stupid enough to go cave snowboarding in the pitch dark. Each requires something different from you, and makes the game that much more interesting to play.

Then there's the music. SSX comes with a great list of songs that all work great when flying down the mountain, but then there's the ability that allows you to import your own music so that you can snowboard down with songs like Come Fly With Me by Sinatra (seriously, it was on my playlist for SSX).

Jumping out of helicopters, flying off cliffs, grinding on rails, and everything else that is in this game is a risky business, so SSX throws you a Prince of Persia space time rewind, and if you bail off a cliff, or make a huge mistake at the end of a long combo, you hit the rewind button and try to fix it. It comes with a cost of during races everyone else keeps racing while you're playing with space time, and during trick events, it knocks down your points, but it keeps you from having to reload the stage a billion and a half times just because you can't manage to get that one jump right the first time.

As games go, this one was easy for me to 100% offline content. Then the online content came and I wanted to punch someone EA being EA tried their best to suck money out of every micro-transaction possible. If you buy the game used (like I did) you can't get any of the money that you win in races online unless you pay for an online pass. I owned the game, I won online competitions, but I couldn't get the reward for getting first place in world wide competitions (or at least in the winning top percentages) because I bought the game used and refused to pay for the online pass.

With the one minor blip from online formula from EA and how much they try to get a dollar for just about anything extra, I like this game. It's fun, it's simple, it's addictive, and it is so over the top that you have to love it. It doesn't take itself serious, but it's still difficult at times. You can do a sextupple back flip while doing a 3,600 degree turn during it (10 rotations) while kick flipping your board, and still have a hard time with the level. Just because you're good at tricks doesn't mean you're a good racer, but just because you can come in first, doesn't mean you'll win everything. It's a fun mix of levels, a fun mix of tricks, a fun mix of characters, this is the game that is casual but challenging, but just fun to play.

I very often forget about it when talking to people about games because it's 'just' a snowboarding game. It's just a fun little game, but that's the biggest thing about it, it's a mindless, fun, game.

Clearance Bin - The Games I've Played

I've talked about the sales bins at Walmart, but another great place to pick up cheap random games is in the back corner of the electronics department of K-Mart or the computer game isle next to the books and magazines in Target.

In these corners of stores, you'll be able to find either games that they bought too many of and were expecting to be big hits or games that never took off and the store is trying to get rid of because no one has ever heard of the game, and they want to get rid of them to make room for whatever is getting released and costs $70. 

Today, I'm going to cover the games that I've picked up from those bins that aren't on my trophy list because they're old enough, ghetto enough, or both old and ghetto that they don't have trophies. With no trophies, I have no way of knowing when I played them, so I'm just dumping it here. 

Now to tell you just how random this game is, and how unknown it is- while trying to search for images or anything about the game, I couldn't find the game on Metacritic's list of ps3 FPS's. 

This game is one of those that has potential to do some really crazy and inventive things with the idea of FPS games and it went unnoticed, mainly from horrible game play, and poorly written story. 

Now, let's talk about one of the best things that came out of this game before I dive into tearing it apart as the horrible FPS that it truly is. The innovative part of this game that could be something interesting, but turned out to be nothing, was the fact that your guns, your grenades, and even general combat can change the terrain around you. You don't have cover? Shoot your gun and raise the ground around you so that you can hide behind a hill. Want the high ground to snipe from? Throw a grenade and make a pillar of rock shoot up that you can stand on. Your opponents getting the high ground on you? Shoot underneath them and make them fall as the ground disappears underneath them. 

I'm no fps player, but this is one of those mechanics that I think could lead to some really interesting tactical choices. You could do a lot with being able to alter the ground and do whatever you want with it in the heat of battle. The reality of that mechanic and the gameplay that is attached to it annoying to get through a battle, and you're more likely to treat the field like a traditional FPS than you are to abuse and use the terrain gun unless there's something really specific that you need to do. The land mechanic isn't used so much in fighting as it is in rare times that the story wants you to do something and says something along the lines of, "Hey! Remember that gun that we gave you that does that stuff? You never use it, but we're going to make it worth our production team's time making it by forcing you to use it right here."

As for story line - I can't remember it. Even with other FPS's that I've made my way through I could tell you a rough story line, but this stuck with the COD formula of not making the story line memorable enough that I cared about anything that was going on. I'm not even sure if I ever finished the whole game.

There's a reason that this was on a bargain shelf. The story was forgettable, the innovative mechanic fell short of it's potential, and it turned itself into a generic first person shooter that didn't want to make any waves or do anything new, so it turned into being something average.

Keeping it Classy

Today on keeping it classy- a coworker's story of his time in Las Vegas. 

I told him that Vegas was home for me, and then he shared a fun little story, keeping life super classy, about his 6 month stay in Las Vegas. His ex-wife had some job there where the company was paying for their housing, and he was supposed to be saving money. Skip to 48 hours in to living in Vegas and he's already doing some HEAVY drugs with people he hardly knows. 

Yup, keeping it classy today at ROI Solutions. 

300+ Hours - The Games I've Played

On the list of games people have referred me to, and I've played just because they said it was the most awesome game ever, this is another winner. This is by far, the game that I have put the most hours into playing. I kid you not when I say I dropped 300+ hours into this game, and at that point I had to walk away and play something new because I could have kept on playing. That is how massive, and how amazing this game is, and that's why it easily makes it's way onto my favorite games that I've ever played.

When people ask me what this game is, and why I like it so much, I try to equate it to other games. The only ones out there that are anything like this (that I know of) are either XCOM or FF Tactics, but it's those games on steroids. 

For those that have never played any of these games, I'll try to simplify it down as much as I can. Imagine a video game version of chess, where you have a board of squares and a bunch of pieces on the board that you control. Your goal is to kill the other side, and each piece can do something different. You take a turn moving your pieces, and then your opponent takes a turn to move theirs. 

Now add the fact that your chess pieces can level up to level 9,999, be reborn back to level 1 so you can restart and gain even more power, have 30+ different classes they can be, have different weapons, cast spells, combo attacks with each other, have special attacks that depend entirely on which weapon that they're using, and let's not forget that depending on what square on the board you're standing on you can do different things depending on the board you're playing on. Then there's also the little fact that your weapons, armor, and gear can level up, and carry with them residents that can modify and adjust what they do as well. 

Like I said- steroids. 

The story line is interesting, and the gameplay within the storyline is cool, but this is one of those games where the story is just the start of the game, and all of the really crazy things happen in the 'post game'. 

The best part about the game is that they expect you to break it, they want you to break it, and the more you break it, the more you keep playing. But to explain it the best, let me walk you through ONE character. 

The main character of the story is Valvatorez

He's a vampire, who's been in retirement, but you help him come back out and start smacking heads together to get things organized. He starts at level 1 with the wimpiest of weapons. 

You can level him up to level 9,999 and at any point in the game or progress you can rebirth him back down to level 1 and he keeps a percentage of the stats that he had gained up to that point. This way you can go 1 to 100, rebirth down to level 1 and grind back to 100, and he'll be significantly stronger than the first time you were at lvl 100. You can do this pretty much as much as you want. Officially there's a limit to rebirths, but if you ever hit it, good job to you. 

Every time you kill someone with Valvatorez you get mana to spend in other places, like buffing up the skills that you know so that they effect bigger areas, hit harder, and all sorts of fun things like that. So grinding doesn't just give you levels, it gives you the power to be able to buff your own skills. 

Then comes your items. 

While grinding up your own levels, you have the ability to jump into ANY item in the game, and go through a dungeon that represents that item. The further you get into the dungeon, the stronger the weapon gets. And the further you get into the item, the harder the monsters get that you have to beat to get to the next level. This means that you need to level up items to go into item world, but to get those items to go deeper into an item, you need other items that you've already explored, and then typically while you're on your way through an item, leveling it up, you can find a new item that has better base stats than the item that you're in, which means that once you're done with the one you're in, you can start on the next one which will be even harder, but will make a stronger weapon, armor, accessory, or whatever else. 

And that's just for one guy, and one item. 

Then, comes the twist of rebirthing and the character world. Just like item world, you can jump into characters and modify them from the inside out, giving them skills or stats that they typically wouldn't have, and altering them even more than what you could imagine. 

With that much complexity, let's remember that you can always create your own character. Where Valvatorez will always be Valvatorez, your created character can change jobs every time that they rebirth. That way you can make a tanky swordsman who rebirths as a magician, and suddenly you have a tanky magic user. 

With that in mind, let's do some number, you have 20 human classes (each with 6 layers of classes within them, the higher the sub-class the better your stats will be) and then 19 monster classes (again with 6 sub classes each). This means that you can take your one created character, and run them through 39 different classes and never duplicate a job, and each time you do that you can go to level 9,999. 

Then there's the items. Each type of item has 40 types, and then each of those types have 3 rarities. A common item only has 40 dungeon levels, a rare has 70 dungeon levels, and legendary has 100 levels. That means that there are 40 different swords, but of those 40, there are 3 rarities of each type of those swords. 

There are 9 basic types of weapons, with 40 seperate ranks, and 3 rarities of each. And as you can see the numbers start to get very big and very diverse very quickly. But because of how big the game is, and just how much there is to do within it, instead of feeling overwhelming, it feels as though there's always something new that you can tackle or a new goal that you can set for yourself as you go. 

Admittedly, the graphics and some of the animations aren't the best quality, but instead of pumping out a high degree of quality graphics, it puts the attention on the game. Disgaea decided that they'd much rather have a deep, quality, time intensive game, rather than a flashy game that nothing new ever came out of after the first 40 hours of play, but did I mention that  you don't need to know the story line, or anything at all from any of the earlier games to understand #4

There is easily 1,000 hours worth of gameplay within this game. The story line, once finished, can be restarted in NG+, but you can also increase monster level and difficulty at any time as well, so even if you're super powered, you can NG+ with your ultimate characters and gears, amp the monsters up to the highest levels, and still feel scared for your life, just while doing the simple story line. This game is proof that you don't need high end graphics, or even super amazing audio to make a game that is playable and addicting. It knows it's audience, it caters to them, and makes an amazing turn based tactical game unlike anything else out there.