Now you’re in my house

So I got this “house” thing during the week.

I don’t actually get to use it for almost two months, but damn am I glad the hunt is over. All the lawyer and banking stuff that I’m wrapped up in at this point is a little annoying, but our realtor is making life really easy for us, and it’s not nearly as stressful as the process of looking for and bidding on a house.

I’ve been working on a budget for us, and at this point it looks like we may have to choose between internet and food. So my blogging time is probably going to be limited to work hours.

J/ks, we’re not really that poor. We’re definitely going to need to make every penny count for the first little while, though. Why didn’t anyone tell me that being a grown-up would be so expensive? But uor parents keep telling me that we’ve got a big score to look forward to in the way of wedding presentation, which should help make ends meet for a while.

All financial worries aside, I’m very excited to finally have my own place! I just wish we could move in a little sooner. It’s going to be amazing to not have all of my stuff crammed into one room 🙂

Cheating Fantasy XIII-2

I’ve been rocking Final Fantasy XIII-2 for a while now, and I just bought the gigantic, overpriced, collector’s edition strategy guide. Yes, I’m terrible at both playing games and budgeting.

Before I started playing the game myself, I gave my youngest brother crap for playing it with the strategy guide spread open in front of hm, but now I understand why. There are a handful of new systems in the game that require careful planning to optimize, but the game doesn’t really tell you a lot about them. Chocobo racing, for instance, is better documented in-game than it is in Final Fantasy VII, but the game still leaves out the part about how to raise your chocobos to not suck out loud.

The game also tells you that if you infuse one of your monster buddies with monsters of other roles, that monster can learn special skills. The truth is that a monster must be fed other monsters of a single, specific role to learn one special ability. So here I was, feeding legions of commando monsters (developed monsters at that) to my one sentinel, when he can actually only learn Reprieve by being fed a wealth of medics. So that was a huge waste of monsters and monster growth items.

The most important thing I’ve learned from the guide, however, is that the game is structured in a way that there are no Lost Forevers. There are a handful of hidden monsters that can only be recruited once, but that’s nothing to worry about. It’s not that I feel like I’m going to need to 100% the game or anything, but it’s nice to know that I don’t have to worry about never being able to get something cool. The best part is, that this ties into one of the things I like most about the game!

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is built not on one big world, but handfuls of little worlds. Like Kingdom Hearts. In fact, sometimes while playing FFXIII-2 I feel like I’m playing a Kingdom Hearts spinoff of some sort. I blame Noel. Anyway, each world represents a certain place at a certain time. There are different time periods for each location, and you can travel through them freely once you unlock each. The game even remembers where you were standing when you left a location. If you search hard enough, you can find special items that allow you to re-lock each world, and then you can play them again as if it were the first time you traveled there.

Of course, the game isn’t entirely clear about this function, but it’s not overly useful anyway. I can’t imagine any reason to restart a world other than to seek out alternate endings. But hopping between worlds is pretty cool, especially since each has it’s own B plot, and they’re usually more interesting than the main story.

I’ve kind of lost my train of thought at this point, but I think the point I was going to make when I begun typing this is that I’ve become a pitiable wreck who can’t play without the strategy guide splayed open in front of me, for fear of missing an item, even though I’ve been assured by the game and guide that nothing is permanently missable. I wish I could put the book down, because the game was more fun when I didn’t have all the answers in front of me. The completionist in me just can’t bear to cast it aside though. I would love to shut the guide, finish the game on my own, and then start a new game with the guide showing me the optimal paths and team builds. But alas, a grownup finds it hard to finish a 60+ hour game once, never mind twice.

In any case, I loves me some FFXIII-2. That’s kinda fitting, because only three people in the world like FFXIII and I’m two of them. I really don’t understand why I’m blogging about it when there is a ton of game left for me in there… Know what? I’mma go do that now.

A foreboding sense of impending crappiness

I’ve been out of the blog world for a while because I’ve been spending most of my free time watching all of Brickroad‘s video Let’s Plays. In the last month I have watched, in their entirety, the playlists for Revengers of Vengeance, Shantae, Spelunky, and Crystalis. I am currently about halfway through the Secret of Evermore set.

Needless to say, I felt like it was time to make my own Let’s Play. Hence the Spelunky video in the previous post. I knew it was a bad idea. I’m not the type of person who has charisma to spare, or interesting things to say. That and I really, really hate the sound of my own voice. But alas, I could not rest until the deed was done, and I spent the bulk of yesterday evening recording a video Let’s Play of MegaMan X.

Don’t get all excited by the prospect of watching the set and telling me how bad they are. I know how bad they are. It’s just… I wanted to have something of at least a little relevance on my YouTube channel. But yeah, it’s pretty bad. I had nothing to say most of the time, and every second sound out of my mouth is either an “umm” or an exasperated sigh. It was a neat project, and I had fun doing it, but the quality of the final product is a little disappointing. I don’t know if I want to post one a week to fluff my content level, or just post them all at once to minimize the pain.

On the upside, MegaMan X is one of the few games I know really well, and I was able to wrap it up fairly quickly and efficiently. There are no game overs, few deaths, and a handful of neat little things that I knew to show off. I skipped over a couple neat things (the hadoken, mostly), but covered pretty much all the game has to offer.

Don’t much like it though. We’ll see if anyone else thinks differently.

Rated M for potty mouth

 

I don’t know what I’m doing. I kind of feel like I should hop on the Let’s Play bandwagon, but I’m no good at the talkies. Or Spelunky, apparently. Anyway, this was mostly just to play around with Camtasia for a while before I actually started recording the world’s worst LP. Also, I swear a lot when I play games alone. So yeah, don’t let the little ones be watchin’ this.

I have a terrible voice too. Getting kind of used to it though, after watching this thirty-seven times.

What? I have a blog?

You know what sucks? Finding a house. It’s not really a terrible process but it sucks up so much of your free time… Actually it’s not that bad, but between that and wedding stuff and work it’s very hard to make time for stupid things like maintaining a blog. I don’t even really have that much on my mind lately, so it’s not like I have a need to blog that is going unsatisfied.

Anyway. You ever heard of Lana Del Rey? I hadn’t, but for the duration of January, my Xbox decided that I really needed to know about her and what a great singer she is. Generally I don’t listen to my Xbox’s music recommendations, but worst case scenario, I’d be GISing a pretty girl. It was from that subsequent Google search that I learned she had a song called “Video Games” so okay. This is going well, might as well look into it. Also the word “sexpot” comes up a lot, but that is irrelevant.

I also learned from the Google search that she had recently “bombed” on SNL, and that the internet was making a really big deal of it. So while I’d never heard of her, she was known to people who hate comedy.

I continued to take my curiosity to YouTube, because it seemed like the quickest way to get the deal on this chick. The first song that came up was “Blue Jeans” and I listened about halfway through the song before I clicked back and loaded up the “Video Games” video. That one lasted until about the two-thirds mark before I closed the browser window.

Lana Del Rey’s music strategy is apparently to make it as unbearably boring as she possibly can. Adele, despite all the hype around her, is boring as fuck, but at least she sounds like she’s interested in the songs she’s singing. Lana, on the other hand, seems to be boring herself to death and sounds like she’d rather be stuffing her arm in a meat grinder than recording a song. I don’t know if she’s just purposely trying to act aloof, if that’s going to be her thing, but it certainly doesn’t make me care about her music. I suppose it beats being another Gaga. Don’t misunderstand me here, because I don’t think slower, more somber songs are bad. I like dark, artsy stuff, but it has to be done right. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is one of my favourite Beatles songs. Matthew Good’s Hospital Music is an amazingly deep album. Lana Del Rey just fails to interest me at all.

Normally I would just brush an artist like this aside and completely forget they exist, but the fact that that she called a song “Video Games” makes me semi-involved. Actually, it doesn’t involve me at all, but it’s something I want to ramble on about. So this song is dreary and boring and just not fun at all. Unless this is a song about Tom Clancy video games, that’s really the opposite of how it should be. Actually it’s not really about video games at all, it’s just a word she ends a few verses with. And an easy way to bait nerds like me into paying attention.

Regardless of whether the song is actually about video games though, I feel like a song called “Video Games” should be fun.  You know, like video games. It’s a legitimate reason to use chiptunes. Though it would be unfair to blame the actual music here. It’s not bad, and I probably wouldn’t mind listening to it if it weren’t overshadowed by the insufferable vocal track. Video games are fun, they are there to entertain, to help people forget their woes for a while and have a good time. This song is exactly the opposite of that. Yeah, I guess there are boring and depressing games, but they generally are not good games.

Speaking of YouTube, the video is pretty stupid too. Actually, so is the video for “Blue Jeans.” They’re both dumb viral/hipster mash-ups of other people’s home videos, with little bits of Lana making pouty faces spliced in. I mean, I’m not sure if they’re actually real people’s video bits that have been collaged together. They could absolutely be staged. But the fact of the matter is that the videos are completely unrelated to anything and only serve to bore me even harder.

Her Wikipedia page makes it sound like Del Rey put the videos together on her own. Given the amateurish quality (and blatant egotism), I could believe that. The only times collages aren’t stupid are when children make them (because it’s cute) and when somebody makes one that’s actually meaningful. These videos aren’t meaningful: they’re just random clips hastily slapped together. No relation, no progression, no reasonable deeper meaning. It’s just stupid hipster garbage.

So the music and videos are all absolute hipster fodder (except now that she’s getting popular, the hipsters won’t have anything to do with her), but Lana herself… not at all. She’s still a far cry from trash like Britney, but she’s got a fairly mainstream popstar look to her. And that’s just not acceptable. If you’re going to act like a hipster, look like a hipster. Get you some thick black glasses, a bad haircut, and a goofy hat at least. Probably a year-round scarf would be a good idea too. Or, better yet, just stop making lame-ass hipster songs.

So yeah, if this thing seems detached and poorly written, it’s because I was trying to stretch my thoughts too thin. I really just wanted to complain about a couple boring songs. And hipsters. I’ve been reading too many long, thoughtful blogs, and have forgottent that my sweet spot is more in concise, to-the-point writing. Also I haven’t blogged in like forever. Give me a damn break.

Lara Croft < Bears

I plugged away at Tomb Raider for a couple hours this weekend because it’s been sitting on my PSP’s memstick for ages now and I’ve barely touched it. I’m not entirely sure, but I have this gut feeling that I hate Tomb Raider.

It’s not really Tomb Raider that I hate though. The concept is fine. Indeed, I actually quite liked Tomb Raider: Legend (though not enough to complete it), but I cannot fathom how people enjoyed the older games. Moving Lara around is just such a hassle. Even back in 1996 I don’t understand how people found the awful, awful control scheme acceptable. I mean, people knowingly played this game instead of… well, anything else? I imagine that playing Tomb Raider is roughly as painful and annoying as jamming a fork into my thigh repeatedly.

Anyhow, after roughly five hours of gameplay I’ve only just completed the Lost Valley, which goes to show how much trouble I’m having here. There was a bear at one point that mauled me to death nearly a dozen times before I was able to get past him. The little dinosaurs didn’t give me too much trouble, and the T-rex didn’t even hit me, but I stopped counting how many times Lara crumpled to the ground dead because of a misstep or when she decided to walk off a cliff despite the fact that I did indeed press the jump button.

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stick this one out, guys. I can’t imagine that the game is very long, but it’s just so bad. And not Power Glove bad. I feel like I should pack it in and go back to Final Fantasy XIII-2, which is a game that wants me to win. I like those games.

(This post is terrible because I’m overtired and pissed off at Tomb Raider.)

Happiness, re-shelled

The only thing that makes me happier than looking at this wonderful cover, is the fact that I own the book it belongs to.

It’s a big mother, too. Check it out. I’m not much for comic book collections; do they usually reprint them so much bigger than standard comic size? I’m not complaining, of course. I love that fact that I could knock someone out with this baby. The sheer girth of the thing makes me feel a little bit better about how ridiculously expensive it was. For someone who is such a big TMNT fanboy and has never had the opportunity to read the original TMNT comics though, it was worth every penny. Plus, it was a birthday gift to myself. How could I not spend a little extra on such a wonderful guy?