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.

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!

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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.