So, I'm not going to bother creating titles that match my blog because I'm too cool for that. ;p

Now then, despite all the delays I'm quite overjoyed about the whole release date moves. Simply because I'm broke, I splurged for Christmas and I've decided to get rid of all my loving debts, so a *nearly* four month break for the huge releases is a breath of relief. I also have to be honest...I'm not excited about Final Fantasy XIII. Seriously, every time I think about it I just kinda go,

"Meh, I'll prolly play it because I've followed the series for so long."

I blame the gaps between releases and the main character named Lightning. I don't know who thought that was cool, but I'm an adult now and elementally themed heroes or heroines aren't cool anymore. Couple that with her appearance, she looks like Yuna, not her fault actually since the character designer is the same one who worked on X, but still, how annoying was Yuna? She tried to be awesome but was mopey and her passive stance made her seem like a housewife on an adventure. That's not what I want, I also don't want someone who looks like a ticked off girlfriend named Lightning running around saving the world with a Cloud-ish type attitude.

Yeah, that's right, I'm not a super-duper Final Fantasy VII fan. With good reason, I don't let nostalgia cloud my judgement, it's an all right game but hardly the amazing accomplishment people make it out to be. Play Final Fantasy IX and you'll have played one of the best Final Fantasy games.

Anyways, I also blame my lack of excitement on the fact that western RPG's are finally hitting the right marks with me. Mass Effect was fun but kinda chatty, it had this pattern of fighting for 30 minutes coupled with talking with people for an hour. But Dragon Age: Origins? Hot dawg that's a fun game and is very well balanced in focus. There's also the amazing point that it's long and is expanding and that's cool. Final Fantasy XIII needs to be that amazing JRPG that pulls the focus back from the western market if it wants to ensure that I'll buy it and other future JRPG's. I can't believe I, as a former passionate advocator of JRPG's is saying this, but it's the truth. With that said, I don't know if I'll be buying XIII or Resonance of Fate this March, but I do know that I'll be buying the new DA:O expansion. 'nuff said. ;D

So, all bad rhyming aside, I have really ignored my blogging enjoyment for awhile. I have a few, well actually several, things to blame for this lack of passion. For one thing my school just kind of exploded as I moved and then Dragon Age: Origins came out and of course a hundred odd hours were lost to that, and then, just when I thought I was free to browse the interwebs with nothing to take up my time I acquired a copy of Champions: Online.

Okay, I know what people say and how they complain about the occasional bug and that there isn't a lot of content, but I have to argue with that info. I've played for almost two months now and I've NEVER had such loyalty with an MMORPG in all of my gaming history, which, despite my gender, has been for a long time. So imagine my surprise when I became totally besotted with Champions and have leveled two characters to the current level cap of 40. There is a lot of content and enjoyment if you've got even a mild interest in comic books. If you've ever played the tabletop RPG, Champions, then you've got even more enjoyment there. It's campy, it's charming, and you don't miss. They ditched the accuracy thing, you will always hit, thank god, yet it's still challenging. The game is more action oriented, you're able to block attacks and jumping around can help. Travel powers are fun, my favorite being teleportation, and of course this is a game from the City of Heroes and Villians guys so the customization is ridiculous with the chance to earn more costume items in gameplay. It's addictive, it's glorious and I love it in its entirety and finally, after disliking every other MMO out there, I've become addicted to something.

Oh yeah, you can pay with PayPal, which makes me feel way more comfortable when they deduct monthly fees. :D

Anywho, in other news Dragon Age: Origins is addictive and fun and the only people who dislike it are those who decide to hate it because of the graphics, but it really is fantastic. Next on my list of acquisition is Demon Souls, I've been financially impaired recently with the new move so I have to content myself with only Champions, oh poor me. xP

Well, that's it for now, there's a lot I'm looking forward to and I have a PS3 now so I'm super happy, lucky, fun time. I decided from the get go that I wouldn't buy a PS3 until it was under $300 and once it hit the $299 price point I totally handled that noise. Have a happy winter holiday and enjoy whichever religious occasion your family honors. :)

Well, I haven't deigned to post since my hopeful Batman: Arkham Asylum preview blurb. Happily I report that I've now beaten that game and I was blown away by the fact that developers can make an awesome Batman experience in gaming form. Yes, I know, nothing's perfect, it's only 10~ hours, Poison Ivy's face looks weird, whatever. It's the U3 engine, and we have to suffer for a highly polished Batman experience.

A lot of other developers have used the same engine and it's been rift with bugs and twitches and bits of ugly, shiny character models that make everyone look like they've been doused in a clean sheen of sweat. Well, Batman does exhibit some shine, I did see one unconcious clowny do a twitchy dance, and I've seen a shadow dance every once and awhile, but the polish given to this game results in wonderful movement animation and smooth controls. The action remains challenging throughout without being too simple or complicated, which scares off people who are just looking to have fun. There are puzzles, there are secrets, and there's a legitimately interesting story which is comic book-y enough to make the hardcore fans smile a bit, and genuinely intriguing enough for less Batsy educated players to enjoy. And Joker makes dead baby jokes, and curses, and hurts my brain when I think about the less violent Batman cartoon of my youth. If there's any point that demonstrates the love put into this game, it comes in the form of the three Scarecrow stages, I'm not going to ruin anything, but I have never seen a better way to ease the Dark Knight into his fear-induced delusions. Fantastic, best comic book game I've ever played, and I will definitely download extra content if it's reasonably priced. Bravo Batman-fanboy-game-developers, bravo.

I will review in the next couple of days~ Although, if you're curious for more details I'm sure there are like 2000 player reviews on GS for you to read. I'm a bit wordy, but also as honest as possible. I'm now awaiting Wet, which I knew looked neat although people liked to bash it based on the E3 footage I thought looked cool. I was suffering, wondering how I could possibly afford the holiday game explosion while schooling, but then I remembered..."Oh yeah, isn't that why they created GameFly?" Yeah, go me, I was like a pioneer GameFly member until I started working at GameStop and got to check the games out there for no charge. So, yay for holiday game releases!

P.S. I want Dragon Age: Origins to be good too, please Game Gods, don't depress me after the awesome Batman release, all right?

So today I tried out the demo for Batman: Arkham Asylum for the XBOX360 and I enjoyed it. The characters are portrayed especially well, despite the arguments I've had with my younger sister who has profound love and somewhat limitless knowledge regarding the comic pointy-eared masked vigilante hero. There was some clipping in the first bits of cinimatics that worried me, but I can't fault it when the game is a downloaded demo and I get the feeling they chopped up the opening to leave a few surprises and streamline the experience. During the demo you really only have access to the most basic of Bat-like movements. There's tutorials in melee, finishing moves, countering, batarang techniques and instructions on how to be unbearably awesome from atop...indoor gargoyles.

I do feel cheated when they cut the demo off right before the first real boss battle. I mean, can't I have one boss battle? Won't hurt too much, will it? I like that it's following comics more than movies since having the Oracle as your support is super nerdy awesome. No joke. Hearing the animated series' voices also makes me estatic, even though I knew they were present in the game, it's so much better to see it in action when you're actually playing it yourself.

So now I'm excited for another game I can't afford but I'll find a way to make it happen. Oh yes, it will happen.

Fu fu fu...

The best part of moving is finding things you had forgotten you owned. I have a signed card from Yoshi toshi ABe saying Happy Birthday, and a Castlevania the Dracula X Chronicles PSP case signed by Koji Igarashi. I have a bunch of PC games I don't even remember buying and a Dreamcast. Fascinating.

I also found some bondage goth clothing from my fashion confused high school days! Haha... I don't want to claim those though. Goodwill is going to have some interesting additions to it's clothing selection soon. xD

School starts soon, and I'm moving. So exciting!

I found a bunch of old controllers and sold them at a GameStop! Now I own almost every RPG on the 360, I'm waiting for either Fallout 3 to have a pricedrop, or I'll wait 'til October for the Game of the Year version. I refuse to own Enchanted Arms at this point in time, I've been advised against it, but we'll see. Other than that I've got them all, whether they're Japanese or Western RPG's. It's exciting. I've decided I'll buy my own PS3 before February next year, White Knight Chronicles and all. I've been leeching off roomies for my limited Sony RPG action up until now, but new locale requires that I aquire one of my own. Mwahaha.

P.S. Everyone should play The World Ends With You at least once. Rent it, buy it, either way, if you like interesting stories and great gameplay you'll be content. I'll have a review up when I'm done.

P.S.S. Not even joking here, GameSpot censors ABe-sensei's name. You can't say Yoshi toshi together as one word, I can't for the life of me understand why. To my knowledge this doesn't mean anything in slang, the only other Yoshi toshi I can recall is a ukiyo-e artist. ;o

I have to say, games have been letting me down recently. I realised the full extent of this fail the other day, when I was travelling long-distance and it occurred to me that there hasn't been a singularly great RPG on any of the next gen consoles in a very very long time. I was playing The World Ends With You and I suddenly wondered why the handhelds were getting so good at the genre while the consoles were falling behind.

What I mean to say is...I'm extremly passionate about RPG's, but I'm also very picky. I can count on one hand the games that suprised me and drove me to ditch school in order to reach their conclusions. When I first started out playing Final Fantasy IX I became endeared to the characters to the point where I had to play to know what would happen. When I first popped in my copy of Kingdom Hearts fresh off the new release shelves and came to the understanding that Disney characters could have a fascinating adventure with anime roots, I was in love. The moment when I noticed I was tearing up at the end of Final Fantasy X I knew that I was impressed.

There's more, but I'm impatient, the point is next-gen hasn't done this yet. The agonizing wait for Final Fantasy XIII is, unfortunately, too long. I've been ignoring all the news and screen caps in order to still be interested when the game comes to US shores, unless someone would like to import it for me, unfortunately I'm not willing to pay over $100 for a game. ;) Lost Odyssey came agonizingly close to being that epic game for me. It may have been that game, if my copy didn't freeze up about 5 minutes 'til the end of disc 2. I tried three times before I gave up, and I still haven't gone back to it. That game had all the right elements and maybe I'll go back and finish the damn thing, but not today. Star Ocean 4 had a lot of the right gameplay elements, but although it was entertaining to play through, I couldn't get over the VA for the main character, it just wasn't right. Edge was too pretty boy to sound like he still retained his manhood. Also, the fact that Squenix won't give both Japanese and English audio tracks as selectable options pisses me off. Every other RPG on 360 gave me that option, but no, Squenix is too good for that. Eternal Sonata was too easy, Oblivion didn't let me level up and become all powerful, Mass Effect felt too forcibly wordy and Tales of Vesperia is still waiting to be played...

Hm...I do like Tales games, maybe I should set aside the time for it. Anyways, my Wii is useless and I hate it right now, you know when you're more excited about downloadable games than the retail releases that something is wrong. :0

So, in conclusion to this little blurb. I really want to look forward to Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Fragile, Resonance of Fate, Magna Carta II, Monado, Arc Rise Fantasia, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, etc. And I'm wondering if each one is going to be a barrel of disappointment...

;_;

Well, I finally broke down and sold almost $700 of my super-old, no-longer-give-a-crap, RPG's. >.>;

Don't look at me like that, it's not my fault, ok? I'm moving soon and I drag too much stuff along with me. The sheer amount of books I'm capable of parting with has amassed to such a level that, rather than taking them to a used book store, I wonder if I should just donate them to the library.

Suprisingly enough I kept Suikoden II, only because I still haven't finished it and I'd like to have the save transfer when I re-play Suikoden III. Oddly enough, Suikoden III was the first Suikoden I've ever played and I love it immensely. Not only does it have a well written story, it's got characters in it that charm the crap out of me. I also held onto Wild Arms 1 & 2, not because I hadn't finished them, but because, money-wise, they're completely worthless. I don't remember Wild Arms 2 that well, but I know that the original Wild Arms was super-fun, and it hurts a bit that it's not worth anything.

Even since I started this account I've been trying to avoid smilies and the like, but I just can't do it anymore, any good sentence deserves a punctuation fail that looks like a face, it's required. ;)

I started playing Overlord II, that, despite not fixing a lot of annoying kinks from the first game, is a total blast. I know other reviews have mentioned it, but the game would be a total fail if it wasn't for the absolute charm of the minions. There's no greater moment than disguising your minion horde as a bunch of Empire (Ahem...Roman!) soldiers and having them start sounding off or singing a little tune like some kind of screwed up US Civil War band scene. It is quite fantastic. I'm looking forward to Little King's Story. I know! I play the most idiotic-looking games imaginable! But, before you write me off as some fem gamer fail, you should check out the reviews. The Overlord series is a more-enjoyable take on the Pikmin formula, and Little King's Story looks to be a more unusual take at a simplified strategy game. I love the strategy genre, and since I no longer own any Wii games, I suppose I should restart my collection.

Finally...well, I suppose I should put forth a bit more effort on the job front. A new job might be fun. Tch...who am I kidding? lol.

Hmph, I suppose I haven't posted anything in awhile. I've been spending my days getting rid of stuff. It hurts so much though...

The problem is that I'm moving. Across country... Maybe...

Well, my stepmother may be getting a job there, and even though I'm kinda old to live with mom and dad, my father presented the fact to me that since my life has been not-so-nice to me this past year a complete change of environment might be good for me. Plus they'll pay for stuff while I go to school, which means I don't have to spend all of my money on living and I can actually work on getting a decent credit score. Geez... Life is mean when your first roomies in life steal your creditcard and give you an awesome start to life with 'barely 18 and already in debt.' Woohoo, I know, I'm super negative.

So I decided if they go, I go, and if they don't go, I move in with my little sister because I can't stand people who depend on (Using quotations.) "magical aid" to feel better about life. Did you get that? Do you understand what kind of magic I'm talking about? Good, because it's cute when you're 16, and it's neat when you're 60, but when you're in the mid-20's and you spend all day in your bed it makes you less of a person. Whatever, moving on.

I have a lot of crap that I've accumulated over the years. Books, lots of books...twelve or so boxes of books, some I love some I hate and all of them do not fit in a single book shelf. Here's a kicker, I have the complete Animorphs series boxed up in my garage, try to out-nerd me on that! I also have a lot of games that I've played to tears. So I decided to ritually sacrifice that part of me that loves to be a packrat, and get rid of stuff. Especially the collector's edition stuff. Regardless of the fact that I paid a crap-ton of money when I originally bought it, none of my games are ever going to reach the heights of Suikoden II's collectibility. And the more I hold on to them, the less they're worth and the more broke I am. So I killed my childish collector's soul. Brutally, it was horrible, but I became hundreds of dollars richer. True story.

The more I get rid of stuff the more I realize that a ton of crap is missing, and I need to explore our storage shed. Do I want to? No, I scream if something even looks like a bug, and I hate dust. Another reason I'm going to enjoy moving,a place with no pollution means I might be able to go outside and breath, I might even get skin-tone! Crazy, right?

So, I'm sitting on my computer, writing a ridiculously long-winded blog post to distract myself from the need to go dig through old crap and see what's trash and what's treasure. That's why I wrote this although few people will ever read it.

Oh yeah, I have a sealed copy of the Growlanser Generations Deluxe box set and I can't bring myself to sell it. Geez, I wonder why?

Dude, no one is talking about the new Castlevania at all.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow helped Konami solve the 'How do we make a good 3D Castlevania game?' problem. The answer..?

...You have Kojima studios do it. That's how. I got goosebumps watching the trailer, it just reminded me of the good ol' days when I would watch Vampire Hunter D late at night on the Sci-fi channel and both anime and video games were nerdy things that people would never talk about in public. Ahh...those were the days. Anyways, this game looks fantastic, and they're hoping for the best at Konami since they've recruited some wonderful talents to do the voices. I always feel better when I play a fantasy game and Captain Picard is taking care of the narration. Woo~

Now back to trying to find my DS lite so I can get some Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days lovin'.

"...three quarters of a billion dollars..." - Sony CEO

^ Who says that? 3/4? It's 750 million you cocky bastar*. Tch.

"He's killing the hell outta those dudes!" - Random ODST in the Halo 3: ODST trailer.

^ A great source of amusement.

"...Final Fantasy XIV..." - ...

^ A f*cking mmorpg, again, like I really care. Have fun with that Sony, and you suck Squenix, who said they wanted another FFMMO? No one, oh, wait, the poor saps that forced themselves to enjoy XI, that's who. I knew it was inevitable, but quit giving numbers to MMO's. Didn't WoW show you that franchise MMO's don't need numbers?

After Sony's conference I have to say there wasn't really much there that I hadn't already seen leaked or announced. God of War 3 looks awesome! Yeah, we knew it would last year too, that's nothing new. As for Versus? Not a whisper. And The Last Guardian only looked slightly better in the trailer than the leaked video that surfaced a few weeks back. PSP Go? Cool, but I'm not looking forward to having two versions of the same handheld in order to play the complete library. Going digital for a console that is merely a new iteration and yet changing the software format is screwed up. The DS -> DSlite -> DSi did it right, they all use the SAME SOFTWARE. The cartridges. PSP -> PSPgo? One uses UMD and one uses digital download which results in people having to hang onto their old system. There better be a solution for that.

PSP Metal Gear? No matter what my friends argue, that is not Metal Gear Solid 5, Rick my friend, you lost the bet you poor sport. Psh. It looked cool and the trailer gave me a good laugh so no hard feelings there.

I dunno, the PS3 has some good features, and even I enjoy a good romp in inFAMOUS, but the conference felt less happy. Maybe it was the stupid motion sensing Wii-, I mean Sony wands. Yeah, way to have an extremely ugly tech demo Dr. Nerditron. Neat idea, but it's still a wand, and no one wants to play PS3 with a wand people. I know that doesn't sound cool at all to me. I could practically smell the money burned on a technology that developers will groan about when they realize it's increased the cost of their toolkits. Woo!

I'm being mean but I wasn't impressed...well, I did smile a bit and centaur gore...BUT THAT DOESN'T COUNT! They announced that game last year you fanboys! Back! Back into the abyss with ye!