Tuesday 31 December 2013

I said it was coming...

I knew they'd be generous, but I didn't know it would be this generous!

  • A Nintendo 2DS!!?
  • Pokémon X, with a cartridge case and X/Y styli
  • Samurai Warriors Chronicles
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV Limited Edition
  • Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light
  • Grandia III
  • Inindo: Way of the Ninja, with a dust cover, somehow
  • Two of Mark Rosenfelder's books on conlanging: The Language Construction Kit and Advanced Language Construction
  • Many clothes, not exciting but nevertheless very useful
I can't believe I have so many more games to play, and a whole new system to boot... When I married Emily I also married into an amazingly friendly family with whom I will enjoy the rest of my visit for sure.

On the subject of Emily, she got a few games (to go along with her own 2DS) so I'll list them here because I'll get to them eventually too:

  • Pokémon Y
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
  • Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
  • Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi
  • Spirit Camera
  • Paper Mario Sticker Star
Crazy. Crazy, but very generous.

Saturday 28 December 2013

Odd Christmas

This year's Christmas was meant to be much like last year's, but events seem to have conspired against that. My long-suffering wife was yet again forced to go to hospital thanks to her mystery ailment. Thanks to some rather excellent customer service from US Airways our Boxing Day flight has been rescheduled to this Monday for virtually no cost, so we're still going to America!

Here's the current swag list:
- Complete Madness, a Madness compilation album
- A popcorn maker
- This awesome Assassin's Creed wallet
- Smoke and Mirrors, by Neil Gaiman
- Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch
- This ridiculous M.O.D.O.K. mug

Thanks to Emily's outrageously generous family, this list will soon grow!

Saturday 23 November 2013

Mass Game Beatings

I have been on a game beating streak lately! Massacring Baklaag's minions like nothing. Here's a quick run-down of each one.

Path of Exile is a blatant Diablo II copy with some extremely deep customisation. The campaign (at least, on Easy difficulty) is relatively short, but still packs quite a few punches. A few of the bosses are outright jerks for the high-Agility, please-don't-hit-me character I was playing, but I managed to get through it eventually. The last boss is a multi-phase one-shots-you-constantly dodge-able-with-insane-reactions asshole that I felt like I'd never beat, but he died eventually.

Half Life 2: Lost Coast is essentially a level/map that was cut from the final game, and as such really isn't a full game, but it's still one more Beaten on Backloggery. The level was pretty fun, though I did get stuck in the church for a while trying to figure out what to do. Then my brain kicked in and I finished it. Not bad at all. I didn't play with the commentary on, maybe I'll do that sometime on Hard to get the Complete.

I've described Pokémon Ranger before so I won't really go into it, but I beat it a few days ago and I'm glad I did, because now I never have to play it again unless I want that Manaphy. Final boss rush is dumb. Either you pick up the right wild Pokémon or it's freaking impossible.

Assassin's Creed II: Discovery is the good DS title from the series. It's essentially a 2D platforming game with a few of the main series mechanics stuffed back in, like stealth kills and throwing knives. It's fast paced and difficult and I enjoyed it a lot, though the last mission is really long and taxing. My full sync is at 48% or something, so it'll be a long time before I get the Complete.

I really enjoyed the sequel, so I thought it was time to play the original Hacker Evolution and its expansion, Reinsertion. There aren't many differences; some minor UI changes, the lack of the deletelogs command, but otherwise the same. I enjoyed the writing in the main game, it actually presented a pretty cool story! Some of the levels were fun to work out, too. Unfortunately, the expansion isn't anywhere near as good so I steamed throughout it without much thought. I also tried to play Flight Zero, but it seems to actually be impossible, so... I stopped.

Another game that has been sitting on my shelf for literally years is Enchanted Arms, an early Xbox 360 JRPG with some fun strategic combat and truly terrible voice acting. I thought it was going to be an absolute slog but the characters got more interesting and the story was good enough that I wasn't rolling my eyes at every obvious twist at least. The ending boss rush is tricky, took quite a bit of weaselling for my slightly underpowered party, but I got through. I actually recommend this game if you have an Xbox 360/PS3 and a few bucks spare.

Finally, a few minutes ago I beat Epic Dungeon on Easy with a Berserker. It's an action rogue-like on XNA Indie Games, the rogue elements being fairly light. It's a fun game, and this playthrough took a little over an hour to do. Beating it on Easy seems fairly simple, so at some point I'd like to beat it on Epic difficulty and also finish up all the 'awardments' as it calls them.

8 games in a row. Of course Emptyeye had to buy me that Humble WB Games Bundle so that makes up for all the games I just beat... well, technically I haven't redeemed them yet so I'm not going to add them!

Backloggery unfinished rate is now 78.6%.

Monday 18 November 2013

I was a big, twenty, noisy wall of dick

So I had a really stupid dream last night. Let's recap.

For some reason I wanted to carry around a cap gun with me (you know those fake guns that just fire smoke basically) while I was walking around, so I put it in my bag and went out. While I was out, there were a bunch of soldiers in fatigues putting down some kind of equipment; I got paranoid that they were bomb sniffing devices and started running to get away.

Suddenly I'm in a car with some kid I don't know and he's complaining that the music on the radio is all old boring stuff. I listen more intently and recognise one of the tracks as a generic 80s synthpop kinda thing. The scene shifts again to a live performance of a glam rock track, complete with spinning camera views and zooming in on tongues etc.

Shortly after that it becomes an documentary about the band that played that track. The voiceover says something about it being "the first song with stacked instruments" and cuts to an interview with the bassist (who is for some reason not actually holding a bass, but a normal guitar).

Guitarist: "So I was just going blang, blang, blang", motioning with highest two strings on guitar, bending them impossibly far away from the guitar with just his fingers.
Interviewer: "What was the inspiration behind the song?"
Guitarist: "I was a big, twenty, noisy wall of dick!"

...I think it's some kind of euphemism for being high?

Analyse that, Freud.

Saturday 9 November 2013

Resolution Update #3... oops

Read all the books I got for Christmas
Nope. I'm about 82% of the way through Les Misérables, but my tablet is being repaired so I can't even read that.

Finish FF X-2, XII, XIII for Emily
Nope. Haven't played any of them since last time.

Submit a speedrun to SDA which isn't Arcomage
Submitted Arcomage, it was accepted.

Go to Crystals for Life
Hey, I did this one! I'm also preparing for next year's one.

Get my Backloggery Unfinished percentage to below 65%
Hahaha no. 79.5%

In conclusion I'm not very good at this.

Sunday 27 October 2013

Budgie Chronicles

I haven't talked much about our beautiful yellow budgie Bruce, so let's change that.

Bruce is actually female, but it takes a little time before it's obvious - the 'nose' changes colour to indicate it. She's usually quiet, but she isn't afraid to yell a lot when surprised by loud noises or whenever we leave her alone to go out. She's also capable of singing quite nicely, though it's not particularly common. Unfortunately, she's quite tricky to handle. Although very willing to come up to our faces and nibble on our noses, she's afraid of our hands and will back off from our fingers if we attempt to get her to step up to them, which is usually something budgies learn quickly.

However, today our persistence paid off; I reached into the cage to play with her, and guessed she was calm enough to try something a little exotic. I don't like grabbing her with my hand, but as she is so unwilling to step onto fingers it's the only way I've found to handle her. After letting her relax, I carried her out of the cage and stroked her for a minute or so while she looked around. Then I set her on my leg and waited to see what she would do.

She was still breathing very hard, so I was worried she'd start flying around at random as usual. To my surprise she walked about carefully, then started rubbing her head on me! Something startled her and she did fly briefly, landing on the floor and looking a little confused. After a little coaxing she walked right onto Emily's hand, which is something I've never seen her even close to doing before. She was happy to let Emily pet her wings and back! She even stepped from Emily's hand to mine, and ate from a fruit bar while still being held. We decided it was long enough for her to be out, and returned her to the cage; she hopped back by herself.

I'm looking forward to what she can learn to do next!

Oh, I've also played some games. I've warmed up a bit more to Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2 after giving it some more play. The different Mobile Suits can play very differently, and despite how crappy the non-Ace suits are, they can still be pretty enjoyable, especially when you take out the ridiculous giant suits with them. I've beaten all the Official Modes so now the game is beaten. Mission Mode looks like it will take forever to max... I spent about 15 hours working on Milliardo before realising that he can't join Operation Meteor, so bringing all pilots to Friendship is actually impossible for him. I've started again with Domon, because his voice samples crack me up.

Dream team: Katejina, Domon, Yazan, Ghingham. Also maybe M'Quve because IT WAS PRICELESS!!
The yelling would never stop.

Sunday 6 October 2013

Amalur, Pokémon Ranger, Geneforge

Been a little while, so here's a little update.

Yesterday I beat Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. It some ways it was a disappointment; the game world is beautiful, but everything else feels hollow. The characters, while sometimes having well-written dialogue, are rather flat. The game's typical smattering of Elf, Dwarf, Human does not serve the setting at all, and I feel it was somewhat a waste of the creators' talents. The combat is fun, but becomes repetitive fast, because even on Normal difficulty the enemies take forever to die unless I get a couple of critical hits. It took longer to clear some standard groups of enemies than it did to beat the final bosses! Nevertheless, it was quite fun, and I might revisit it again with a different build (I played almost entirely Finesse) or difficulty level some time.

I didn't even mention that I'd started playing Pokémon Ranger almost immediately after finishing Diamond. I'm still not thrilled with the idea after giving it a few hours, though it's short enough that at least it won't be a major blight on my life or anything. Drawing rings around the Pokémon is haphazard; it's difficult to tell exactly how long the capture line will be and even the tiniest movement can ruin it. Some bosses seem unfairly difficult to capture and require furious stylus use to pull off. Minun's partner power trumps everything else, so anything non-boss is a pointless waste of time. I'm Ranger Level 8, so there isn't much of the main game to go, but I would like that Manaphy egg to give to Diamond!

Biff's adventures through Geneforge continue, and the world gets more and more interesting. I feel like if Big Huge Games had asked the Spiderweb Software guys to write the plot instead, they would have turned out a truly excellent game! I'm torn between carrying as many supplies as possible and selling big chunks of them so I can pick up new stuff. The combat is brutal; it's starting to get hard to keep creations alive (I'm playing a Guardian, which aren't that great at shaping) and they don't hit enemies too hard, though my own damage is ridiculous. I'm not regretting joining up with the Awakened at all; they seem to be the most reasonable of the lot, though I was disappointed that I couldn't ask Ellhrah to do something about Astrov, but I guess he wasn't in anywhere near as good a position to help as Rydell is.

Saturday 14 September 2013

Latest Pokémon Champion coming through

My excellent and not at all stupid team took on the entire Elite Four and the Pokémon Champion in Pokémon Diamond with few headaches. At first the sheer level difference was enough to throw me back out, but this game is quite lenient, only charging you the same amount you would have won when you lose, so I rammed into them a few times and lost, only to come back with more experience and Hyper Potions.

Laszlo LUXRAY Lv. 49 OT/Lag.Com
Glen GASTRODON Lv. 50 OT/Lag.Com
Dirk DRIFBLIM Lv. 51 OT/Lag.Com
Evelyn ESPEON Lv. 52 OT/Mercury
Ted TORTERRA Lv. 53 OT/Lag.Com
Rachael RAPIDASH☆ Lv. 43 OT/Lag.Com

Laszlo murdered any Flying types that were thrown at him with a nice Thunder Fang, but was also important for taking out rogue Psychic types with his Crunch. Glen used his sheer bulk to wear down a lot of enemies, with a nice Surf and Ice Beam to take out all-comers. Dirk used his extreme speed to take out a few trouble spots with Fly, while ably absorbing a few hits, then finally taking out an annoying Alakazam with his Aftermath. Evelyn's speed and power made short work of several Pokémon, having to rely only on Psybeam and Last Resort for her attacks. Ted was key, with his incredibly strong Earthquake and Wood Hammer. I had to revive him twice to take on the strong Water/Ground types. Rachael was a newcomer to the team, having replaced my questionably-useful Weavile. Though low level, she was able to destroy a particularly badly-engineered Lopunny with ease, and Fire Blast a Bronzong to death.

All deserve their places in the Hall of Fame.

What do I play next?

Monday 9 September 2013

Thoughts on Crystals for Life 2014

Somehow last time I wrote I neglected to mention anything about Crystals for Life. I had an excellent time at the event this year and I want to go to next year's event too. To this end I have submitted two runs for consideration, and I'll talk a little about them both here.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss is the greatest game ever made. The marriage of first-person dungeon crawling and a creative and engaging setting, with the reliance on the intelligence of the player to actually finish results in a beautiful game. I never tire of this classic. I started practising this for AGDQ2012 but it was not accepted into the final line-up, and there have also been some route changes since I learnt the game, so I have some work to do before it's ready. Hopefully, being a short and confusing RPG, it's a perfect fit into Crystals for Life.

Dark Cloud is very different. It's still a good game in its own right, but it is mainly remembered as a cult classic and as the prequel to a better game. Also, this run is perhaps 8 hours long with randomly generated dungeons and items to deal with. The route is almost finalised and I did a single-segment play-through on my stream not long ago. My personal best can obviously be vastly improved but I feel little impetus to practice it simply because the game is so random. Once I do another run through, any future time will be mostly affected by how nice the RNGod feels that day.

Saturday 7 September 2013

The In-laws

So Emily's parents and sister are back in England for general visiting and touristry. Might not have all that much time for gaming in the following days, so here's an update of where I am right now.

I finished Deadly Premonition a couple of days ago. I'd already seen a play through on YouTube before but doing it myself was satisfying, and my audience was appreciative. Also quite an infusion of Gamerscore, haha. It's an amazing game, but I wouldn't recommend it to many people simply because it is so strange and its design philosophy goes completely against mainstream AAA gaming sensibility.

Most of my time lately has been taken up with Pokémon Diamond. My team is Espeon, Weavile, Luxray, Gastrodon, Torterra and the immortal Drifblim. Just reached the Pokemon League yesterday, feeling pretty good about my chances.

Also started to play Geneforge, a western RPG by a company I admire for their willingness to sacrifice all else in the name of gameplay. It's interesting so far, and I hope to find time to continue soon.
The last few days have been spent putting up shelves and generally making our flat look nicer for when the in-laws want to visit. Might post some pictures soon.

Saturday 3 August 2013

Return of the Lag

Haven't written anything for a while!

Went on a trip to Scotland for a fairly belated honeymoon. Had a good time, didn't play any games whatsoever, haha.

Thanks to Xbox Live's Games for Gold thing I own Fable III and Crackdown now. Technically I already have a Crackdown disc but it really belongs to a friend of mine who I somehow haven't given it back to yet. I also downloaded Spartacus Legends because it's free if you have a Gold account. So, three more free games. Oops!

My Unfinished percentage is now hovering at 79.8%, which I guess is a tiny bit lower, but still a far cry from my 65% goal. According to Backloggery I've beaten these games recently: Kirby's Adventure, SoulCalibur II (I actually Completed this one, by doing everything in Weapon Master), RIP2 - Strike Back, RIP3 - The Last Hero, Kirby Super Star (I've actually played this a lot on emulator before, but now I've cooped it with Emily) and Assassin's Creed III (not quite Completed, but fairly close).

A few words about the RIP trilogy: they're arena shooters, which I kind of like, and there's enough variety for it to be fun. RIP2 was my favourite of these, with a higher difficulty than the first one, but not the endless annoying repetition of the third. RIP3 also has a problem with weapons balance; there's never a reason to not upgrade. I've only played through them all on Normal or possibly Easy. I imagine RIP2 Hard would take a long time to get through.

SoulCalibur II was a lot of fun, though some of the challenges in Weapon Master are very stupid. I've previously finished Soul Blade's Edge Master so I knew what to expect, but the randomness involved was very aggravating and it took a lot of swearing to get through some levels. Still, the actual game is good and it made me want to play a little more SoulCalibur V after I finished. So I have a few more achievements on that now too.

Spartacus Legends is a freemium game which is still fairly playable if you don't pay, which is nice, but progress is slow (of course) and the actual fighting isn't the most complex or interesting. If they'd focused a little more on trying to make a good fighting game then it could be a pretty strong title. Unfortunately it suffers from the usual freemium problems and also really irritating music.

Monday 6 May 2013

Wales Strikes Back: Return of Arran

Our welsh friend has been over for another weekend. This means I've actually been playing games for a change.

Arran saw fit to bring Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance with him, which I maintain is probably one of the top 5 stupidest names for a game yet. It's a hack and slash game with some fun mechanics. It took me probably about 5 hours of play to beat, which is pretty short, but I did only play on Normal. The last boss was around 90 minutes of that, too. When he throws the... thing... at you, the game expects you to do some kind of precision cut on it or you take 100% damage. Well, analogue sticks aren't good for precision, so I died to that attack A LOT. The cutscenes are ridiculous. Buy if you have too much money.

I randomly finished Fable II also. When I last left off, I was just about to recruit Stephen Fry, so there wasn't much left in the game. Killed a rock, watched the main villain die in a cutscene, blah blah. I feel like the Fable series has the most untapped potential in any game series yet. The ending was very underwhelming.

FINALLY beat Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords just now, also. I used a level 50 Warrior with two items which allowed me to stack resistances, which seems to be the only way to beat Bane, as his item/spell setup is the cheatiest thing in the game. The writing is reasonably good in PQ, and I'm glad to finally put this game to rest. Except I want to speedrun it BECAUSE I AM INSANE.

Of course, I'm not the only person who plays games around here! Arran had a Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past save on our cart that he continued to completion. My poor exasperated wife had to guide him through a lot of the dungeons. :)

Emily has also been grinding the crap out of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - I've seen her beat Super Macho Man a couple of times now, but she hasn't quite managed to close out Tyson himself yet. She has managed to knock him down a few times, though. One day!

Monday 15 April 2013

Solved One Eighth Of The Puzzle On Planet Nirn

Bruce Wilberforce finally boldly went to Fang Lair. Many wolves and skeletons and goblins wert slain, and all that. I enjoyed the architecture in this dungeon; you can clearly see this is meant to be a Dwarven mine, though there are a few defined structures which are useful landmarks. I managed to find the temple at the upper left and looted it most thoroughly. Now Bruce has a couple of Marks of Shield, which could be useful in a pinch.

Eventually Bruce found his way to the prison area in the lower left, along with a logic puzzle that seemed a little too easy to me, so naturally I solved it and didn't get savaged by spiders. Spiders suck by the way - they often paralyse on attack, which lasts quite long enough for me to get my face ripped off. Should probably make a Free Action spell or whatever later. The prison led directly to dungeon floor two. TWO FLOORS?!!

Floor two is very short - a long corridor to a small island in a lake of fire. No enemies to be seen, so Bruce opened a door and sees a FLOATING BLUE HALOED STICK THING which is obviously the staff piece he was sent to get. After nabbing it Ria goes blah blah blah then a bunch of fireballing wolves ported in, so that was kind of scary for a bit, but Bruce prevailed then high-tailed it back to town.

It was about this time I actually reviewed what Ria said, involving some kind of Ice Palace so I assumed it would be in Skyrim, resident frozen north of the Elder Scrolls world. Bruce bobbed around the region a bit trying to get information, then ran into the most helpful NPC ever: Torborn Ulrarsen. Not only did he immediately point out the locations of the Mages' Guild and nearest inn, he also let me know that somebody in town knew where the Ebony Blade was. The freaking Ebony Blade. So I immediately dropped everything to go look for it. In Arena fashion, the clue is only to find a map which leads to the artefact but I went along with it anyway.

You can watch the resulting playthrough here.

The Labyrinth of Sekaml was not only all the frick over in Morrowind but also dull as ditchwater. Looks like Arena's random dungeons are just random collections of rooms with optional rivers/tunnels overlaid on them. Also the entrance/exits locations are very predictable. After figuring this out, Bruce made his way quickly down to the map on the fourth dungeon level. Oh, this was about the time that Jagar Tharn decided to send all his minions after me, which probably spiced up the dungeon delve a little bit. Anyway, Bruce gets the map and tells him to go to some place in Elsewyr. Sigh.

Something something Rattirrogoth was just as boring as Sekaml's effort. In some ways I prefer this to Daggerfall's sprawling messes of dungeons, but it could have done with a little more thought. The Ebony Blade was reasonably easy to procure, not guarded by anything particularly dangerous.

Back in Skyrim, Bruce got a lead on the Ice Palace which will blah blah blah where the stick actually is. It's about this point that I decided to call it a day.

Friday 12 April 2013

Documents Most Ancient

After watching Jesse Cox and my brother play Skyrim for hours upon end, Emily has been bugging me to start a game of my own that she can watch. In natural Lag.Com fashion I've decided to start at the beginning, with The Elder Scrolls: Arena, and then make my way through the series from there. This is one instalment I've barely touched, but it is very similar to Daggerfall in a lot of ways.

Alright then, the adventures of Bruce Wilberforce begin here! We went through the 'lifestyle questions' and ended up with Spellsword, which is a pretty awesome class, so I'm happy with it. So far he's managed to die a few times in the Imperial Sewers, as any good Elder Scrolls protagonist should. After hitting the shift gate he ended up in Ebonheart, which is about as far away from where he needs to be as possible, so he fast-travelled to Rihad to ask QUEEN BLUBAMKA where on earth 'Fang Lair' is, then got told to go to Stonekeep instead.

On an aside I've never played Stonekeep but I have watched a Let's Play - it's one of the zillion games I own but haven't tried out yet.

Anyway he goes to Stonekeep and it is so freaking scary. I've no idea why I find FPRPGs so tense and scary, well except for dying all the time obviously, it's probably just something left over from when I played them many years ago and was terrified; I had to ask my brother to play for me, haha. At least Arena doesn't play random sounds in dungeons like Daggerfall does occasionally. Still, it was a fairly standard crawl - he ended up swimming for a while because for some reason I chose not to beat down the main door, so he explored rather more of the place than he needed to. He only died a few times; he got pretty lucky with loot and now he has at least -6 Armour Rating everywhere thanks to a lot of jewellery drops with -1 or -2 AR on them. The ending was annoying; there's an island covered in Ghouls and attempting to climb up onto it while they hit you is not much fun. Bruce is now level 8 also, which makes my Heal spell cost a good chunk less.

Also found many random magical items, most of which will probably end up being sold once he gets them identified.

Seeing as the next place Bruce visits will be the 'real' dungeon I'm sure it'll be a good deal harder. I was thinking of investing in a strong Create Shield spell to help prevent the amount of surprise damage he ends up taking when the monsters run up from behind and cave in your skull.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Crystals for Life

So Crystals for Life is over now, and we raised over 33,000 CAD. I'm very happy with this! My own run went pretty well, and everybody I met was fun and having a good time.

While I was feeling a bit ill, I did a segmented run of Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition and got 1h40! Was very happy about this, then I hear that Lenophis has managed 1h27. Oh well.

I'm back in New York for now, there's a few days before I get back to England.

Also hahaha, Emily won the NES copy of Final Fantasy as a prize from C4L.

Wednesday 13 March 2013

IFKTUP

Oh yeah, that means my Backloggery Unfinished percentage is now 80.6% oops

Tuesday 12 March 2013

PSN Freeness

Forgot to mention, there were three other games that were free on PSN before.

  • Patapon which I've heard is pretty darn good.
  • Piyotama dunno what this is
  • Patchwork Heroes or this

Saturday 9 March 2013

America and Stuff

So I'm in America right now, partially to go to Crystals for Life but also to hang out with friends. I've mostly been working or practicing Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition so there's not much excitement on the gaming front, but here's what I have to report:

  • Wild Arms is currently free on US PSN for some reason! Go download it, I did. Haven't played yet (of course).
  • Got a bit further on Lord of Arcana - took a few tries but I beat Bahamut and now I'm in Chapter 4.
  • Just before I left England I downloaded Path of Exile and played it for a few hours. It's very Diablo 2-lite but the amount of customisation is pretty crazy. I bet my build will suck soon.

Sunday 10 February 2013

Resolution Update #2

I finished reading From 0 to Infinity in 26 Centuries, and it was pretty good, but sadly I've read most of it before. I used to read around a lot in college, things connected to my subjects and not (I learnt a lot of philosophy at this point for example) and there were only a few things that were truly novel. I guess it's meant to be more of a reference than a read-through book anyway.

Finished Naruto: Rise of a Ninja yesterday. I still think it's a pretty good game, but the controls were really starting to grate on me at the end. The last few races / social missions are also very strict, which would be okay if it were possible to decide what Naruto will do at any given moment. Definitely want to speedrun this game someday.

Still practising Final Fantasy: Anniversary Edition. I have a bunch of modifications to make because Lenophis has managed an excellent time with some route changes.

Not submitted a speedrun yet. I should probably focus on FFAE until Crystals for Life is over.

Made a neat website for Crystals for Life! It'll be live soon.

I updated a few game statuses that were wrong, so now my Backloggery Unfinished percentage is 80.5

Sunday 27 January 2013

Resolution Update #1!


  • Read all the books I got for Christmas
Read a few pages of From 0 to Infinity in 26 Centuries.

  • finish Final Fantasy X-2, XII, XIII for Emily to watch (even if she doesn't want to)
not played any FF at all except practicing FFAE.

  • submit speedrun of Klonoa 2 / Majesty / a game that is not Arcomage to SDA
not played any of my speedrunning games so far

well that's in a month so I have an excuse

81.2%

MR EFFICIENCY STRIKES AGAIN

Wednesday 2 January 2013

So about that resolution

Nah I haven't broken it already, but some more presents have arrived, this time including games! Here they are:

  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown (360) - I bought Sean this for Christmas and now I get it too. I loved the older games and this seems a worthy successor.
  • Kirby's Dream Collection (Wii) - This is a great collection of games! We also got the 'Special Edition' so it comes with a soundtrack CD and an artbook. Lots of fun in one box - Dream Land 1/2/3, Adventure, 64 and Super Star.
That's all. We also got plenty of beef jerky, and three films to watch.

  • The Dave Clark 5 are "Having a Wild Weekend" - wha
  • Lisztomania - huh
  • Moonrise Kingdom - well it has Bruce Willis in it?

2013

Hey, the number on the calendar changed, LETS DO THINGS???

This year I'm not going to be buying any games. This is part new year's resolution, part practicality. The sheer amount of unfinished games I own is a little embarrassing and I'll be doing my best to rectify this for the next year. I'll also be attempting to get another run published on SDA - I remember promising to submit Klonoa 2 a few years ago, and it hasn't happened yet.

Things to do:

  • Read all the books I got for Christmas
  • finish Final Fantasy X-2, XII, XIII for Emily to watch (even if she doesn't want to)
  • submit speedrun of Klonoa 2 / Majesty / a game that is not Arcomage to SDA
  • go to Crystals for Life and be happy
  • get my Unfinished percentage on Backloggery to be <65%?
Speedruns I want to do:
  • Klonoa 2: this is already routed, I just need to do and record it! Maybe if I stream all these attempts then people will actually like to watch me.
  • Majesty: a long time ago I did some ILs of the every non-Expert level, but now that Majesty HD is out I can improve those. Hopefully I can beat my old times and then finally figure out some decent strategies for the harder levels.
  • Arcomage: technically I already have an improvement to Destruction recorded and ready to submit, but I wanted to beat my Building time too and that is really hard.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine: not usually my kind of run, but I love this game and feel it deserves more attention, no planning done yet.
  • Total Annihilation: this has been on the back burner for a long time... the sheer amount of missions and usual 'destroy everything' goals weigh heavily on my patience.
  • Blaze and Blade: done lots of planning for this, though the entire game isn't routed out yet. My main worry is that I'll get to the end and not be able to beat it, because the last section is haaaaaaaaaard.
  • Puzzle Quest: this started out as a joke but I do love the idea of running such a pointlessly random game. Needs a lot of work.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team: I know this game pretty well already and have some strategies in mind. It's short and should be fairly simple to do.
  • Grandia 2: grew kind of despondent when I lost my notes/haxtools but I definitely still want to do this.
I'm not going to set an unrealistic expectation and claim that these will all be done this year. I need more focus than that; something I have always lacked. I will simply try to do as much of these lists as I can.

Happy New Year.