Spring Backlog Cleaning

It's been a while since I've done my backlog updates. I've certainly done a lot since my last one, although maybe it only feels that way. It's hard for myself to even keep up with what I have left unless I do these backlog updates, so regardless of whether if you care or not, here it is!

Street Pass Benefits

After having gotten tons of Street Passes on my 3DS at MegaCon, it made me think about how much of a benefit these Street Passes can have on your gaming experiences. A lot of times, you won't get anything very helpful, like a mediocre Coin Rush Mode score in New Super Mario Bros. 2, or some easy fight in Throwdown Mode in Dead or Alive: Dimensions. I got a pretty decent list of ProfiCards that I collected with Street Pass for Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, but as far as I know, none of them really contained any Dark Notes that were worth mentioning; no great treasure drops from bosses, no Magic Pot encounters, etc. But there were a very few that contained some very helpful elements in some games.

Recovery into Progress

So I am officially fully recovered from whatever it was that I was sick with. I have been for a while now, I guess, but at the same time, there hasn't been too many things for me to talk about on the blog lately, despite there being plenty of things for me to do. My current goals are to get more Deity Wars galleries out since that project's been on hold for long enough it seems. Just that the events don't seem to stop on these games, so it constantly keeps you busy. Other than that, there are (barely) efforts in bringing more images to this text-covered blog. It's just a matter of balancing how I use my time at this point. In the meantime, however, I wanted to talk about several things, including my usual video game progresses that I've been seldom doing lately.

First Impressions from Guild Wars 2

I've been playing Guild Wars 2, well, a lot, lately. Got my Guardian above level 30, granting me access to all 10 of my skills now. I also made a Sylvari Mesmer as well to see what the game was like from a different perspective. I can honestly say that the game is very well polished, and the best part of Guild Wars 2 to me so far is the great sense of exploration. The world of Guild Wars has always been huge, but Guild Wars 2 takes it to a new level; hopping across gaps to reach higher footholds for scenic Vistas, fighting through a cave full of enemies to get Skill Points, completing the map to get major rewards, etc.

Holiday Backlog - Pre-2013

Merry Christmas!

It's the holiday season again, and although I haven't been able to cover all the holiday events that's been going on in several online games I play, I hope everyone is able to get what they want to achieve in them. Considering it's been a while since I've last done a Backlog, with new games to add to the list once again, I decided I should sort out this list to make it easier to see what games I need to work on, what I have available, and what I've finished that I haven't reviewed yet.

Not the most interesting post for my readers probably, but it helps me out a lot to do this. I'm sorry I couldn't do something bigger for Christmas though. >_> Plans have been falling through an awful lot when it came down to relying on others to helping me. Hopefully I can get the help I want when the time comes, or that I get plenty of time and inspiration to work on what I want done by myself.

Mind Occupancy

Lately, to keep my mind busy, I've been pushing myself harder to play video games more than usual whenever I catch myself with even a few minutes of open time. During this time, I've actually gotten some time to play Star Ocean: The Last Hope, practiced a bit in Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3, checked out Waveform on Steam, and started Virtue's Last Reward on the 3DS.

Back to a Crawl

It's been over 4 months already since my last progress report on my usual video game posts, and for a good reason for a change. For those of you who haven't heard, I've got myself 2 jobs in the past month. So... there really isn't much of a progress to report, honestly. More-so, I'm reporting my lack of progress if anything, which sort of disappoints myself in my lack of ability to manage time as well as I'd like to squeeze in more activities. Regardless, here are some of the things that I HAVE been doing.

Backlog - Bargain Bonanza Edition

So now that Steam's Summer Sales 2012 ended, I figured now would be a good time to update my backlog, now that it's expanded needlessly greater yet again. I'm going to have to figure something out to play through these faster.

I've definitely made some progress from the last backlog, but at the rate of me getting new games, I'm not getting enough done at the moment. >_>; I may have to completely drop Diablo III considering I haven't had much luck with profiting from it.

Tweet Tweet

I've been wondering whether if I should start tweeting more, and add a gadget on the blog that shows my latest tweets or something. Of course, I usually have a lot of things to say whenever I have something to say, so the 140 character limit might not work out too well for me. We'll see though.

As of right now though, everything that I put on my Twitter is the same stuff that gets posted on my Facebook, through AIM's AOL Lifestream thing. I can post directly from my buddy list on both Facebook, Twitter, and anything else I decide to join and link the account to, like FourSquare, which I really don't use much considering I still don't have a smartphone yet. I can't really picture myself going to too many places though, but it'll be something I can start doing once I get the phone. Maybe getting a smartphone may get me to tweet more often too.

Anyway, here's my usual progress post.

Building Up Bonuses

The past few weeks certainly have been slightly more active on the site lately, and even though I said that I would be doing more shorter posts, they seem to have maintained the same amount of content as before. Well, whatever works, I guess. Perhaps that's just my natural amount of work I put into my posts. Sometimes they feel like some of the essays I did in school, in terms of how they're written. It certainly isn't mind numbingly boring or anything since they're topics that I wanted to talk about anyway. Regardless, I wonder if I can break out of my essay-length posting habits? Have them be a once in a while thing, maybe?

Anyway, this post is going to be one of those personal progress posts again, since it's been a while since I did one.

"There ain't no getting offa this train we on!"

Sorry for the crude Photoshop and stupid FF7 references, I felt like I haven't been messing around with Photoshop lately, and this is the sad result of what happens when I'm uninspired, I guess. Anyway, I'm enjoying Spirit Tracks so far. Before I get too far into details though, here are the results of the last poll.

Ultimate Backlog List

Placeholder image until I make a graphic for Backlogs.

Now that my DS is back in business again with my Krazy Glue repairs, I feel the need to update the backlog with the tweaks in placements, some new additions to the list.

The Second Evolution - Second Run

So I got my second ending for Star Ocean: The Second Evolution, this time as Rena in Universe mode, not that the difficulty affects the ending or anything. I do have to say that Universe mode certainly makes it a lot more difficult to stay alive, with the greater amount of damage that the enemies do. Even with all the Item Creations and Specialties that I used to get some really nice equipments, the difficulty ended up pushing me to leveling up my characters a lot more than I had to in Galaxy Mode. Also, before I started making better equipments via Item Creations, I was doing some pretty crappy damages too. >_> Customization helped so much once I got to Nede... Couldn't keep up with the difficulty otherwise.

The Waiting Game

It has been a fairly uneventful month for me, and I honestly haven't had too much to write about either. I'd like to move onto doing more reviews, but I haven't exactly completed any games recently either. I HAVE been working on several games, and some new ones that aren't listed in the backlog as well... just that I feel like I'm not making enough progress in them fast enough. But before I get into the details, here are the results for last month's poll.

Forgone Hibernation

Things have been fairly slow lately. I haven't had much to say in a while, possibly because of having exhausted my available topics until I finish more games to either talk about them or review them here. However, due to a little accident, my DS Lite is out of commission until I get my hands on some super glue to fix a chipped piece back on. That means I won't be able to finish FFTA2 (although it still disinterests me at this point, pushing it lower in my priority), VP:Covenant of the Plume (3rd run for the 3rd ending), Rune Factory (which I would have liked to write an actual review of once I finished it), Pokemon (I was thinking about playing it some...), Custom Robo Arena, Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (Top priority among DS games), Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Kirby Mass Attack (Another review candidate), and some others.

The Second Evolution - First Run

I just finished my first play through of Star Ocean: Second Evolution, and felt that I should talk a bit about what I did, and talk spoilers, I guess. Spoilers will have warnings and are hidden under a toggle button, so this should be fairly spoiler free if you don't click any of the Spoiler buttons. With that said, here are the details.

Crawling for Progression

It sure has been a while since I've done one of these. A lot of the reason why I stopped doing this was due to the lack of popularity in these posts where I talk about the progresses I've been making in the games that I play, and I don't blame you. Reading text about what part I'm at in each game is not all that interesting, especially if I try to go with no spoilers. Well, not this time! I might as well make use of the spoiler button when appropriate. It also doesn't help that I've been awfully slow at most games since I'm juggling too many at once, making small progress in each. I have been keeping myself from starting up new games though, in hopes of finishing up some more games before I do.

Progress - S.P.A.Z. + Review part 1

So when I saw Space Pirates And Zombies on Steam, I knew that this was a game that I was waiting for. The game based around the 2D, space action RPG gameplay like that of the Escape Velocity series by Ambrosia Software Inc. which I have greatly enjoyed during my days as a youth with a Mac computer before I got Windows. So what do I think of it, and how am I doing in the game? Read more and you'll know.