In the previous blog, I explained that I picked up Batman: The Brave and the Bold for the Nintendo DS from GameStop. I've been playing it off and on since then and recently completed it. I wrote a review but I'll give a shortened run down here.

The game is incredibly short. I unlocked everything in the game (story mode, character trophies, challenges and upgrades) in just under 6 hours. However, it's still really fun. The visuals are good and the combat flows fairly well. Also, since I absolutely adore Batman and his entire universe it was pleasurable just for the reason of being Batman and his allys and fighting the criminal scum that aren't has well-known in the mainstream DC crowd. Villains such as Clock King, Gorilla Grodd, Dr. Polaris, and Black Manta are a few of the baddies that the Dark Knight Takes on at the end of the games 7 levels. The story mode is a cakewalk and is made much easier when Batman is fully upgraded. The challenging part of this game is found in... well... the challenge mode. I won't go into details, but there were times were I was extremely frustrated while playing them and it was not a pretty sight. 

The collectibles of the game are character trophies which are found in each of the levels. In addition to the characters featured in the story, there are also a plethora of other DC characters to find and add to the collection. Finding the trophies isn't difficult because halfway through the story you pick of a radar that gives off the location of the trophies as they appear on the screen. Still, it offers some substance. Other than that, there are some cheats that can be put in that allow for some sweet Batman costumes that can be used in-game as well as four new challenges, including two that are so damn difficult that I just flat out gave up on them. I was really happy to see that one of the costumes available is the Medieval Knight costume that was featured in one of the earlier episodes of the first season of the show of the same name. I personally think it's one of the coolest looking outfits that the Dark Knight has worn.

 It just oozes bad ass, doesn't it?

Well, there you have it. Batman: The Brave in the Bold is a pretty fun little platformer. I've decided that I'm only going to play one game on a system at a time, as to not overwhelm myself. I don't really have anything I'm playing on the 360 right now, even though I have a ton of games in my backlog. Though I've picked up a ton of 3DS game recently, I'm gonna try to get through the DS games I've had for a while that I haven't beat before I move on to those. With that said, I'm playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for the DS next. I have pretty low expectations for this game since I somewhat remember playing it a few years ago and it wasn't anything special, but I'm gonna play through it nonetheless. Stay tuned.

Hey everyone,

 I wanted to make a blog post for what just came in the mail today, my copy of the Project X Zone Limited Edition. It was a pleasant surprise since I wasn't expecting to receive it until Monday. Anyways, here's some pictures of what's in the limited edition:

The Limited Edition includes Limited Edition Packaging, a poster, game soundtrack, art book, and the case and cartridge itself.

Game Case, Instruction Booklet, and Cartridge

Art Booklet and Game Soundtrack

Dante from the Devil May Cry series in the Art Booklet

Zero and X from Mega Man X

Poster included.

I'm really excited to start playing this game. Being my first big 3DS purchase, I'm also looking forward to what else I can pick up and experience for the console. So far there have been some pretty mixed reviews but I liked the demo (which is an abnormality among what other people think, it seems like) so I'm pretty sure I'll love this game. I actually don't know many of the characters that are featured but I'm actually gonna use this game to expand my video game horizons. Maybe get into some new series, which of course I will keep everyone informed with in this blog. I'll let you know my impressions of the game as I play through it. Just for the record, I'm gonna put playing Golden Sun on the backburner (I don't like playing a large amount of games at once) to focus on Kid Icarus: Uprising, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, and this game. Also, I get paid tomorrow and I'm gonna start working on my GameStop Rewards Want list my picking up Batman: The Brave and the Bold video game and my local GameStop tomorrow. I just started watching the show and it's pretty good so I'm gonna check out the game. It's supposed to be a fun little platformer. Well, I'll catch everyone next time, hopefully with some insights into Project X Zone! 

Wow... So my plan to keep this blog running strong failed really early in its existence. Like REALLY early. Well, let's just pretend that I totally didn't neglect to write any sort of post in the last couple of months and just move on.....  yeah?

Anyways, let's see....

I suppose we can start with my gaming exploits. Buckle up, this might be pretty long. Well, I didn't really start playing a lot of video games until school let out for summer. I started up my Gamefly membership again (more on that later) and I received Batman: Arkham Asylum first. Now, I love Batman. He's definitely one of my favorite comic book heroes. And this game... Wow. Incredible. Combat flows so smoothly, the characters, setting and story are all fantastic. I was so immersed in this game. I really wish I could have played through it again. I collected all the Riddler trophies after beating Joker and sent it back in.

Silently taking out Joker's goons can be a hell of a lot of fun 

Well, I realized that Gamefly was a tad too expensive, and I wasn't really finding time to play the games I received from the service and I felt tied down, like instead of doing what I wanted to do with my free time, I needed to play the game I got from Gamefly. So I decided just to end it. I got through 3 worlds of Super Mario Galaxy (great game from what I played) and sent everything back.

Now I can focus on spending my summer the way I want to spend it. I'm really getting into my 3DS and I'm so stoked to get as many DS and 3DS games as I can to play them. A couple weeks ago I purchased my first 3DS game with some money I saved from working, and I picked up Kid Icarus: Uprising. I'm only about 5 chapters in, but so far I'm loving it. The graphics are good, the dialogue is funny as hell, and the gameplay is extremely fun. I'm looking forward to pouring many hours into it as well as future purchases for my 3DS.

Taking on the many commanders of Medusa makes for some great boss battles

Speaking of which, I have two more on the way, and I'm really excited about it. First, I used the GameSwap Subreddit to trade my New Super Mario Bros. and SpongeBob: Creature from the Krusty Krab games for a brand new copy of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars for the 3DS. A pretty good deal, I think. I should be recieving it tomorrow. Next, I preordered Project X Zone Limited Edition.

I played the demo and loved it. A lot of people were skeptical about it saying that it could get repetitive fast, and while that may be the case, I personally thought it was a really cool game, with nice animations and I think it'll be a good change of pace.

In addition to those 3DS purchases, I also took advantage of a deal on GOG.com where I picked up Torchlight for free. I think I'm gonna start playing it in the next couple days, so we'll see how it goes. I'm not much of a PC gamer, but I think my POS PC can run it and I couldn't pass up on that kind of deal.

Lastly, I found an GBA emulator that I can run on my phone without having to jailbreak it, so I'm currently playing Golden Sun on it and so far I'm loving that game. (In case your wondering, I'm going down the list of IGN's Top 25 Best GBA Games of All Time).

I think that about does it for my gaming endeavors. Also, I've totally updated all of my games lists on my profile. I've sold some games on eBay and I no longer have a GBA or PS2 so I took all those games out. Just for future reference, every game that I'm currently playing will be accurately listed in the "Now Playing" section.

Next, I'm gonna talk about my comics! Yay! The main series I've been keeping up with the fast few months has been Age of Ultron. It's a huge Marvel event featuring many different superheros from the Marvel Universe in a post-apocalyptic world set about by the villain Ultron. The series as a whole is nothing too fantastic... There are a few good issues but overall it was pretty mediocre.

Other than that, I'm currently reading Superior Spider-Man, Hawkeye, Green Arrow, Daredevil and Daredevil: Dark Nights. They are all really, really good and I would recommend all of them. You can pick up some collected editions of Superior Spider-Man, Hawkeye, and Daredevil if you wanna check them out. Personally, I love Daredevil. The artwork of Chris Samnee is just phenomenal. I started on issue #23 but I really wanna go back and check out the earlier issues. Other than that, I'm probably gonna start the Sinestro Corps War here soon, seeing as I've read Green Lantern: Rebirth twice now. Great book. I have all the Blackest Night trades waiting for me when I'm done with Sinestro Corp War as well, so let's just say I'm gonna be busy with comics for a while!

That about does it. Oh, I forgot to mention the games I picked up on the 3DS eShop! I got Gunman Clive, a really pretty platformer that I've yet to beat, Crystal Adventure, a little RPG that I've played probably 5 minutes of (hopefully more soon), and on the 3DS Virtual Console I got Super Mario Bros., Megaman, Tetris, and Metroid II. I just beat Super Mario Bros. (with the help of restore points) and I'm just playing Tetris off and on while I struggle through Megaman. I'm terrible at that damn game. Well, I think I'm gonna get out of here now. Feel free to comment and offer some insight into whatever you'd like! Hopefully, HOPEFULLY, I get a new blog out really soon. Thanks!

Hello everyone!

I'm back, I know it took a while for me to get this next blog out, but I get pretty busy sometimes and don't get the opportunity to sit down and do things like this, but I'll keep trying to do my best to keep this blog up to date. 

What I would like to do with this blog is sort of introduce myself to everyone, and then talk about what I've been doing recently leading up to what I'm currently involved in and we can go from there. 

Where to start.... 

Well, I suppose I'll just start from the beginning. I'm from Topeka, Kansas, which is also where I currently live. If you don't know anything about Kansas, Topeka is the capital city and has a population of around 130,000. It's not huge, but it's pretty damn big compared to all the other small towns in the state. Personally, I like the urban lifestyle more than the suburban one I'm currently living in, but I don't really have much choice in the matter. I just turned seventeen in early March, so I'm sort of among the younger crowd that post on this site. I'm not going into detail about my childhood really, or where I go to high school, I'll just say I'm a junior and about to be a senior. The extra curriculars I'm involved in are a wide range of things, including cross country, track and field, marching band, concert band, jazz band (I play the tenor saxophone, if you were curious) and that's about it. I like to think that I value my education and I put forth a good amount of effort and currently have the highest cumulative GPA possible. I'm looking forward to my college search and I'm hoping to attend a university around here, probably the University of Kansas or the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Well, that's should be a decent enough picture of what I'm involved in and some of my hobbies other than gaming and comic books. I'll talk about what I've been doing as of late, since I haven't really been involved on this site in quite a while.

Well, a lot of things have been happening my junior year of high school, the main thing being that I have a girlfriend now, and she's really great and I like her a lot. She's also open to trying to do the things that I enjoy, like gaming, so it's fun to try and help her out when it comes to things like that. The other big thing that happened was that just a couple weeks ago I travelled to Winter Park, Colorado, for a national music festival that I performed in with my high school's concert and jazz bands. We did really good and in addition to competing, we had the chance to stay in condos that were right on the ski resort in Winter Park, and of course we did some skiing. I am a man of many talents, but let's just say skiing is not one of them. Regardless, I had a really fun time and I thought I would brighten this huge wall of text up with a few pictures of my trip:

 This is the main slope, but their is a huge amount of ski trails all around the resort

A view of the mountains, as well as the condos that we stayed at (the large building in the background-center)

This is kind of a crappy view from atop the mountain down below

I had a really great time competing and hanging out with all my friends that are also in band with me, it's really nice to have a group a people that's so large yet so close together (We actually have the largest high school marching band in Kansas, at around 225 members). 

That about sums it up for what I've been doing recently, aside from track season that's going on right now. I haven't been able to run at any meets because of weather cancelling all of them, so unfortunately I'm going to end up running one meet this year. Oh, I forget to mention that I also have a job. I work at Hy-Vee, which is a grocery store. I do your typical high school student duties: baggin groceries, getting carts from the parking lot, taking out the trash, helping customers, etc. It's not the most exciting job, but it is nice to have some of my own money to use on things that I enjoy.

I think that about does it for this addition in my hopefully extensive blog series. For my next entry, I hope to either discuss my recent comic book pick-ups or talk about the games I've been playing recently. Until next time!

Hello, everyone. It's been quite a while. I've taken sort a hiatus from using this website, for reasons that are unknown even to myself. I suppose I just lost interest. But now, I'm back, and I hope to start blogging regularly for the enjoyment of other people, as well as myself. Let's begin the introduction, shall we?

First off, this blog is going to serve many purposes. One: to keep everyone up to date of what games I've been playing, what reviews to look out for, what to expect from the future, and my opinions on all things gaming. If any of you followed any sort of blogging or discussing in the past, you would know that I was almost strictly a Xbox 360 guy, and all my gaming flowed exclusively through that console. Things are going to be different this time around. Over the past four or five months, I have done minimal gaming, for various reasons. Mostly because I lack the time and the motivation at some points, almost all my time is dedicated to school, extra-curriculars, my girlfriend, and my job. Because of this, I have found it very difficult to find time to play video games, and when I do, I'm usually exhausted or just don't have the motivation. In addition to this, I have found a new hobby which I really enjoy: reading and collecting comic books. I'll go into more detail on this later, but it's become a new passion of mine, and at times took precedence to the other love in my life, gaming. But, since I've gotten my job and my birthday was recently (I turned 17), I now decided that I'm ready to jump back into gaming. I've used some of my money I've saved up to purchase a Nintendo 3DS, and I'm really excited about all the possibilities that are now at my fingertips. So, to be clear, I will be playing and reviewing and opinionating games on many consoles, including the 360 , the Wii, and my computer, but I've decided to turn my attention mainly on handheld gaming with my new 3DS. 

Secondly, I would like to use this blog to share my thoughts on my previously mentioned newfound hobby: comic books. I hope to have a blog around every Friday or Saturday detailing my comic book purchases of the week and my thoughts on those purchases, and a preview of what I plan to pick up the next week and why. This is something that I really do enjoy doing, and I look forward to sharing my experiences with all of you. 

Lastly, I intend to use this blog to share with you what's going on in my life. The life of a high school student can be dull at times, but hopefully I can pull together some interesting stories that may be at least somewhat entertaining. I do have a lot going on right now, so it will be nice to be able to vent and hear different perspectives on the issues I'm facing. 

Of course, I can't guarantee that I will post all the time, sometimes I get busy and I totally forget to do things like this, but I will try my best to keep a regular blog going and though I really don't expect many people to read it (or care about it for that matter) I will do it to help myself and hopefully build some new relationships. The first thing I would like to do is make a blog about what's been going on in my life recently and try to get everybody up to speed on just who is "Alex3796." Also, I would like to apologize for the wall of text that this blog is, and I really do hope to spice up future blog posts with pictures and videos. Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope you enjoy what it to come.