I haven't posted here in so long... very very sad.
I think for a while I just lost the will to write anything. There was probably lots I wanted to write. And mostly about games (looking at my previous posts, it's mostly about games anyway), and to be honest, I was getting bored of it. Shocking really! However, I still play games, but I think married life has started to dull the taste of gaming. I just don't have the capacity anymore to really delve into another world and just spend hours upon hours immersed in there anymore. I would like to, but nowadays the idea of just spending a day playing a game seems wasteful to me. THAT is a huge shift in thinking. Thoughts like that scare me as well.
Anyhow, the major reason for the lack of postage was my (close to) two month trip to Europe. I can now safely say I have been to parts of the world which aren't "Asia". I'm quite proud of myself for that :)
I'm such a lazy a$$ when it comes to posting photos, I apologise. But if you will bare with me I should have most of them up by the end of this month :P
For the time being here are some already posted :P
1st day stopover in Narita
Spain - Madrid
Spain - Sevilla
Spain - Granada
Spain - Barcelona
Greece - Mykonos
Greece - Santorini
There is where I sort of ran out of space on Picasa. But fear not! The advantages of having a partner is that I get to use her alotted space as well! :D Huzzah! So my Eastern Europe, Paris and Tokyo (That's not Europe! :P) photos will be up soon! :D
For now, I'm sort of back :)
Yeah another games post. Man this is turning into a blog about me and games. Which technically isn't too far from the truth about my life :P In between work, church, household stuff, games is probably my little getaway hobby :P
Anyhow, Diablo 3 and Chrono Trigger for the DS! Two nerdgasms in a week? No wai!
I can't tell you how I've longed for a sequel to Diablo 2. Hahaha, Hunt, bunny, time to get RSI again :D It's one of those games where, it's completely pointless, yet, so addictive at the same time. I can't begin to describe how running the same fricking map eighty gazillion times for a slim chance of getting some phat loot is even remotely fun. But it is! :D I guess that's kinda how gamblers feel. Maybe this time, just this time, luck will go my way. Maybe with this, I can kick the WoW habit. Or maybe not :P
Chrono Trigger? I remember stumbling upon this game during the period where the only jap RPG's I played were action ones, the likes of Secret of Mana and Soul Blazer/Blader. I hated the idea of turn based combat. I thought it was stupid and didn't require "skill" cos there was no twitch reflexes needed. Then came Chrono Trigger, and that turned around everything. I loved everything about it, the battle system (I've seen very few RPGs which let you combine character attacks to form new ones, kudos to the Tales series for having that), the characters (even if Crono never talks), the story and it's multiple different endings. And now with it's re-release onto the Nintendo DS. I can relive those memories again on my train trips to and from work :D
It's a good week for gamers :)
Yeah this was exactly how I felt. Let's be frank, getting there I didn't use the most honest of methods. But those last lot of levels were all blood sweat and tears. Shame, I'm at work at the moment, otherwise I'd also post a pic of me on my flying mount.
Yes, questing and saving actually gives you enough gold to acquire a winged beast once you hit 70. Amazing but true! :D While they're as slow as your old normal mount (boy, I never thought I'd say that, the normal mount felt like a godsend when I first got one), just the ability to rampage through a camp of ogres and then FLY out of the camp instead of fighting your way back out. Priceless! :D Stuck in an area with no clear unaggro-able exit? FLY! :D How did I ever survive with just a land beast?
Anyhow, I can also finally go back to doing what I like best. PvPing. As much as people dislike battlegrounds, I'm a sucker for em. The idea of going to virtual war with a huge group of other people is just way too much fun :D
Oh yeah... in case you hadn't realised, I'm back on the crack (WoW) again.
Spent nearly all of Saturday playing games. Which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. But instead of staying at home playing WoW (whoops! did I say that?) during the day I went over to an ex-workmate's place to play some XBox360. On a big fat HD tv, the games do look quite amazing. But then again when you're in the middle of a fragfest playing Halo 3, I don't think anyone really cares how nicely the water shimmers. This was the first time I'd played Halo 3, 4 player death match. In fact it was probably the first time I'd played an FPS on a console since... I dunno, Golden Eye on the N64. And like that age old classic, I HATED using the control pad to play. It felt weird and awkward, and watching my guy try to turn as another character ran past me was frustrating. Still it was fun, made all the better when someone suggested we do "rocket only" mode (that might have been me), but rockets are cool, it means I only have to hit people at most twice to kill them, instead of training a series of bullets over a longer period of time. However, I do have to concede one thing to the control pad, steady shots. Especially useful while sniping. As long as you don't touch the 'look' thumb stick, your guy won't accidentally nudge to the side when firing a shot, as is the case sometimes when using the mouse :P Anyhow, back to the story, rockets + big wide open maps + basic rocketing skillz (aim at feet, fire in front blah blah) == WIN! Eventually I figured out even in tight maps I would just hop around like an idiot and shoot at people's feet, that would score me quite a few kills before I'd inevitably suicide :P Oh and the air time your guy gets from the jumps is incredible to the point of silly. It's like someone dumbed down the gravity, making mid air aim corrections pretty easy (even with the control pad) due to the amount of airtime. I can only imagine how easy it would be to make kills with a mouse and keyboard and rocket-jumping-like air time :P
Still much fun had by all, maybe the beer helped numb the frustration a bit.
Anyhow, at night went back to church to play board games with others in our workers group. I think I'm getting a new affinity for board games. We played some Taboo, which I suck at, I used to be pretty decent at it. Now, not so. Then we played this game called Munchkin. Ok, so I didn't really play that one, but I watched a bit, but I reckon if it's a card game that tries to emulate a dungeon romping RPG, I could probably get to like it. The rest of the evening was spent playing Settlers of Catan. This game is strangely addictive. On first glance the large number of cards and long instruction booklet might turn away some, but it's so easy to learn. I've played it like 3 or 4 times now, and I'm still pretty noob. But any game that has you thinking for a few hours afterwards about how else you should have played to win gets a big tick in my book :) We need more games days :P
The first few paragraphs in today's Penny Arcade made me chuckle. We played a very similar game in my first negotiation skills class. Only we just used two cards, peace and attack. After each discussion session we would reveal one card to our 'opposition'/'friend' (depending on how the negotiation went), and if both cards were peace then we both scored points. If one decided to attack while the other declared peace, the attacker won more points, and if both sides went to war, everyone loses.
The best outcome for all parties as a collective would be to take the path of peace. Everyone knows that. A peaceful world means everyone's happy. And everyone likes to be happy. Unfortunately some people also like to win. Some people being me...
Long story short, Peace reigned for a while, and then war was waged. Incidentally, I didn't make many friends that semester. Major learning from negotiation skills: The outcomes always have repercussions. Long lasting repercussions...
The other, sort of, deeper revelation from this story was that even though everyone KNEW peace was the best option, for some reason nobody could really trust anyone else and even though I waged war, I wasn't the only one to have done it on the sly. And it seemed many were willing to win with a much lower potential outcome (than if they all went peace). Just as long as they won. People are indeed scary creatures.
Lately, the high from my asian music has been becoming less and less so. Like a junkie trying to get his fix, every passing shot was delivering less euphoria than the last. I was hitting doldrums again and needed something new. Then Atmosphere hit me, well more specifically their new album hit me. And it was a breath of fresh air. Their lyrics while crude told a story, and I'm a sucker for songs that tell a story. While the album isn't a happy one by any stretch of the imagination, you can't help but sense a bittersweetness to it all. Life sucks, but we live on, there's almost a struggling working class romanticism to it all.
Normally when I find music groups like this, I tend to overreact. I go all out and research them and find out as much as I can about them and in a sense idolise them. Much like any new hobby I find. However, I didn't do it this time. And to be honest I would rather not know. So often I've found something I like, gone out of my way to find out more about it only to discover that it really isn't what I expect. Or the people aren't what they seem to be. But when singers sing songs and tell stories you would hope that the artist reflects the pictures they paint, so to speak. I'll use a different example, take for instance your plethora of singers who harp on and on about love and how they treat their woman right or how their woman is the one they want for life (fo shizzy). Yet you do some basic googling and discover that their own lives reflect nothing of the songs they sing. They're womanising, philandering asshats. Yet they sing about these things. THAT, rubs me the wrong way.
Naive? Yeah probably. I guess that's why I'm probably going to stop looking up and finding out about new artists that I enjoy. Ignorance is bliss, I think I'd rather just live in the stories they tell than be repelled by the lives they lead.
Sad huh, the things we idolise and place our trust in might not be what we think they are. And more often than not they're a lot uglier. If only there was something completely consistent we could place our trust in. If only eh?
I've been a completely crabby b1tch/asshat this whole week. I think I'm going through some severe PMS, well I would be if I had ovaries. Maybe I'm missing a good healthy dose of potassium, or some other mineral, but either way I've been snappy as heck and it seems even the smallest of things are rubbing me the wrong way. Not good. Actually to make matters worse, I got face palmed in basketball last week, and it's left me with a cut lip which has now turned into a giant ulcer, so that whenever I eat it's torture. Which bites (haha! get it?).
Anyhow, not much has been happening, I'm supposed to be starting my new role this week, like properly starting. Only my manager isn't here, and well which means I get to train on my own. Yay!
Thankfully things haven't been all bad. I managed to finally finish The World Ends With You last week. And boy am I glad I picked this little gem up. I was beginning to lose faith in Square Enix in that they could do more than just pump out remakes of old classics and really childish RPGs for the DS. But this game has instilled some measure of faith for me as I wait for Final Fantasy Tactics A2.
The game revolves around angst generator Neku who finds himself waking up in the middle of Scramble Crossing in Shibuya caught in a bizarre game that lasts 7 days. As he battles strange 'ghosts' and learns important life lessons. Yes, we've all been here before. However, this time around it just seems so fresh. I think it has something to do with the battle system and the method of leveling up. Yes, battling over and over again to raise your level is still there, but doing so only seems to affect how much health you have. To properly level up you need to eat foods that raise the appropriate stats and wear different stylish threads. And then depending on the brands you wear, they bear and influence on the surrounding area, meaning you can do bonus damage to the monsters around. It sounds familiar, but when you try it, it's strangely new and different.
The battles are all done real time and attacks are performed with the stylus. It's amazing, but I think I spent most of my time trying to collect all the different attacks (in the form of pins, yes the wearable kind) and then mastering and evolving them (pokemon complex!). Eventually later in the game matchign up different pins into a deck which makes me nigh fricking invincible. Unfortunately i'm not quite there yet, the game is nice enough to have a varied range of enemies that require differing strategies.
Oh and the music. I'm not a fan of techno by any stretch of the imagination, but damn. I can't help but want to buy the soundtrack to this game after I played it. Normally I play my DS on the train and with most games I play them muted while I listen to my ipod. Not this one. The ipod had to take the back seat, I much rather listen to the music from this game.
Anyhow, if you own a DS and are itching for a different RPG. You can't really go wrong with The World Ends With You.
(Currently playing through it again trying to unlock all the secret reports. This game is kind enough to give you a mode which unlocks answers to questions you had while playing the game! :P)
Seems that this is almost becoming a monthly updated blog. I think I've said that before. Things have just been a bit hectic lately for me to really blog. After the whole wisdom teeth debacle (yes it was over a month ago), the release of so many great games, and just general instability at work, I haven't really had much time to sit down and blog.
Thankfully today my ten o'clock got cancelled, and I've got some breathing space.
Work has been pretty crapsticks. I've been pretty unmotivated. And this comic from Ninja Ken really speaks to me :P (Actually it's pretty spot on)
It's not so much that the environment is bad just that... I don't know. I just have no drive to really do well at the moment. Hopefully my new role in a few weeks will rejuvenate me some more.
Most days I just kind of drift around and think of ways to leave early. It's really not a good state to be in.
Spent a good chunk of the weekend "fixing" my computer. It was my first format in about five years, and the old box was starting to play up. Random crashes and restarts, general sluggish performance. It wasn't look great. Anyhow, much to my ignorance, what was meant to be a quick and easy format job took most of the weekend. Firstly I formatted the wrong partition (apparently the labels Windows gives you in the setup DOESN'T correspond to the labels you know and love. What I thought was C: was actually my H:, bye bye downloads!). THEN my PC kicked up as spazz and refused to boot because I had two SATA drives both plugged in as 'master'. And THEN because I had reinstalled XP using a pre-SP1 CD, Windows would only acknowledge 137gb of my 300gb hard drive. Funnily enough, google provided me with lots of weird and wacky solutions, when it really was as simple as "get the new service packs for Windows", "remove partition" and "create new partition". Anyhow that was my weekend. A huge test of patience...
I hope I don't have to do that again anytime soon.
