Doug

Been listening to that bad boy on repeat all day yesterday.

Trudging through to the nearing end of the semester. Still have a pretty solid B in microbiolgy which will probably get bumped to an A with the lab. Got a B on my second speech, which just leaves the group speech left on december 3rd. Next O. Chem test is wednesday, which I am not looking forward to, the final even less so.

My uncle Joe died yesterday, which is to say it hasn't been the greatest year for people I know. I was asked to be a pall bearer but the service is at the same time as the aforementioned organic chemistry test. Unfortunate, since I much rather attend funeral services than those travesties they hold at funeral homes. So it goes.

Been playing some Dragon Age, and I just finished the dwarf storyline. It's pretty tough sometimes, then sometimes you just open a door and summon a blizzard and shut the door behind you until everything dies. Mages may be a tad over-powered compared to warriors and rogues. The bioware site is pretty slow about updating characters and achievements, though. Maybe there is some sort of synching option that I just never bothered to look for.

Okay, these are pretty good too. Especially the second one; that chorus is great.

Scheduled thursday. Only 3 classes (Organic Chem 2, Human Physiology and Gross Human Anatomy), but all of them have labs. There was a decided lack of 2-4:50 lab sections next semester which is depressing. I am not an 8am kind of guy. Of course, still have to get through this semester. I can never figure out why they don't wait until after you actually pass classes to schedule new ones since a nice portion of them are sequential bastards. I need to write my speech and do another lab report/pre-lab this weekend. A persuasive speech on protecting the 2nd amendment with all the shootings going on seems right up my alley. I also had some sort of weird epiphany in O. Chem yesterday and everything he went over made sense. That being said, I can't wait to be done with that class.

I've played a lot of Borderlands, finished it, and still want to keep playing. It is a rare game that can inspire that sort of feeling in me. Honestly, it's tied with Infamous for game of the year for me. It's okay to think about that since the video game season is almost over, ignoring the q1 rape that is imminent next year. For starters, I really dig the graphical style. . Gun variety was pretty insane. Sometimes you'd get crap, and sometimes you'd get a revolver with ridiculous damage that hit 7 times with a low level requirement. I like the skill tree, and the fact that you can respec whenever for what amounts to pocket change. I love character building, but I hate being stuck and not being able to try out different things, which is something annoying me in dragon age, but I'll get to that later. The shooting worked great. It didn't seem to be as plagued by the invisble dice rolls in say, Fallout 3, where you'd be shooting a guy point blank in non-vats combat and and still not be damaging them. Most of my weapon skill proficiencies are only around 10 though, since it seemed like a shame to only use 1 or 2 weapon types, especially if you found something sweet. Quests weren't overly elaborate, but pretty servicable in the desire for more loot and money. I only faced bugs on two occasions too, which is pretty impressive for a pc game. One required a quick restart of the game and the other involved dying over and over until the enemies spawned properly (final round of the second arena). The death penalty was pretty minor, just a percentage loss of your money. Plus, you have a chance to get a second wind while you're bleeding to death if you manage to kill another enemy before a timer runs out, instantly bringing you back from the brink of death. Story was also minimal, but it did let you jump right in and play. If you only had 30-45 minutes to kill, you could still get things accomplished, and if you wanted to play for 8 hours straight without any breaks, hey, that was possible too.

I would've liked a little more character appearance customization than some palette swapping, though playing through as Mordecai did lead to having a decidedly Kamen Rider-esque color scheme. I think I would've changed customization a little here too. Maybe have a base weapon/manufacturer that'd put out a certain dps and you'd be able to go to a vendor to buy things like scopes, elemental damage, things to lessen recoil etc. A better manufacturer could handle more upgrades, something like that. It also seemed like a shame to only be able to actively use 4 weapons. I'm thinking 1 for each weapon type, at least. The pc interface was kinda clunky at times. I still never managed to get scrolling the quest text box to work 100% of the time. Some things were better served by arrow keys, and some for the mouse, which seemed weird since you'd think they'd be interchangable. Anyway, if you fancy shooting dudes in the face while hording guns and money, you probably can't go wrong with a purchase.

Dragon Age and me were having some problems early on and I couldn't figure them out for the life of me. I've ran other games with heavier demands with no problems on this thing, but no matter what I did my framerate was like 5-10fps, rendering it pretty much unplayable. And then, I placed my laptop on an ice pack, and lo and behold everything ran fine on high settings. Magic that. I haven't gotten very far yet. I only managed to get to the first town after the incident at the Tower. Man, everyone in that game is a bastard and out to stab you in the back, I tell you what. A couple things about the character creation were a little annoying, like how I'm stuck with a weapon and shield skill even though I never had any intention of using a weapon and shield. I also wasted a skill on a tactics slot, which is sorta useless since I tend to micro-manage the hell out of everything and don't let the AI do shit. Maybe as I get more used to the system I'll let them handle more, like in FFXII, but who knows. I just wish I had more time to invest in it right now because I want to tinker around more.

Finally got to take my old man's new truck for a spin, which is to say he wanted me to put gas in it. I didn't care for it on our bumpy ass road, but when it hit freshly paved route 7, it was a pretty sweet ride. It does not wish to obey posted speed limits. I think I had to keep my foot on the brakes the entire way through brookfield to my grandmother's house. I also played with the XM on it a bit. I listened to some 90's alt and grunge channel for a while, which I imagine will be as close as I will ever get to reliving the glory days of radio when 107.9 the end was still on the air. Then I listened to the channel entirely dedicated to Elvis on the way home. Good times. It's got about a 35 gallon tank on it, but with the way he drives he should only have to fill up once per month.

The organic chemistry test score is due back tomorrow and hanging like a noose around my neck. C or better or drop, oh yeah. I'm pretty sure I got at least 60 points. At least, I certainly hope I did. If I pass this and next semester I never have to take a chemistry class again, which will be a joyous occasion, I tell you what. It also makes it hard to think about scheduling during the first week of November. I mean, let me try and pass the classes I have for christ sakes and schedule during winter break or some shit.

Finished Brutal Legend on Friday. Took me about 4 tries to do the last stage battle. Seemed like sometimes after I smashed one of the beast heads I'd just get smoked. The last time I let my dude's work down the first head and then when it got smashed, I set my rally flag at the other, crashed a flaming zeppelin into it, then buffed them before I left to finish off the other one and that seemed to work out for the best. Honestly, my favorite part was just driving around looking for collectibles and listening to the badass soundtrack. I even thought Jack Black was pretty awesome, and I generally only tolerate him at best. $60 is probably a hard price to swallow unless you really dig the multiplayer though.

I also finally played through Braid yesterday afternoon. I bought it whenever it was 5 bucks on Steam god knows how many months ago. Those Steam sales are deadly on impulse purchases. Anyway, I dug the hand painted look and the soundtrack was pretty cool, with the exception of world 4 with the constant reversal every time you walked left. I mean, it's clever, but holy fuck annoying. The story was kinda weird. I mean, you are the creepy raper guy building a castle out of his pain and frustration. Too close to reality for me; I need my escapism, by golly. I breezed through the first 3 worlds, but 4 and 6 took some doing on some of the puzzles.

I noticed an event invitation for my 10 year high school reunion on facebook. I mean, there's no way I'm going, but it's still hard to believe that it's been a decade. I probably talked to just about everyone I would've talked to at Mike's funeral, honestly. To steal a line from Grosse Pointe Blank, "I honestly don't know what I have in common with those people anymore. I mean, or with anyone really." Or maybe I just don't want to deal with the constant reminder that I haven't escaped this joint yet.

Well, school is managing to throuroughly kick my ass this semester. I have a C in genetics, which wouldn't be so depressing if it wasn't with a 54. I do okay on the multiple choice type parts, but the problems seem to murder me. I'm just hoping I can maintain said C, since there's no way around taking the class and no one else teaches it. I've got a pretty high C in Organic chemistry, with the next test coming up on friday. I think I can probably at least get a B in that one. The 50 question tests every other week in Micro is wearing on me, but I think I should be able to get an A unless I just don't bother to take the rest of the tests. I also had to give a speech in speech class this past week. As for that, well, at least my powerpoint looked pretty good. I'm thinking about becoming a mountain hermit, they still get internet, right?

I keep dreaming about a white cat climbing all over me and then it tries to bite my ear. I'm sure it involves a deeper meaning into something that I will never know.

Been playing Brutal Legend and it's a pretty okay game. Well, parts of it are really awesome. I mean, killing a giant mechanical spider for strings for Lemmy so he can play his bass and heal someone? That's about as bad ass as anything gets. The world and soundtrack are amazing. I think I like driving around and listening to the music and trying to find the collectibles more than progressing the story. Which isn't to say that the story is bad, it's really the opposite. Just that the gameplay to get through it is kinda janky. The hack and slash is kinda mediocre, but then again I did just finish playing ninja gaiden. The stage battles everyone seems to keep complaining about are okay. Pretty bare bones as far as RTS goes, since it's just a pretty minor upgrade tree. I've been able to win most of them by riding a bass unit into a crowd, stunning them, then playing the face-melter solo. It is kind of annoying that your new units spawn back at the stage instead of at the merch booth where you decide to make them. I've played about 10 hours so far and am around 76% on the completion front having just unlocked the last area of the map. I'd say 60 bucks for it is a stretch, but I only paid 35 thanks to gift card action. Of course, if you actually dig the stage battles, it'd probably be a better value, since that is the multi-player.

Found blurry videos from Social Distortion show. Ball and Chain, Bad Luck and Ring of Fire. Show was a good time, though I did have to spend most of the encore trying not to elbow a security guard in the face since some dudes were starting shit where I was standing or something. Kind of annoying. Also weird having to get patted down before entering, I did realize later that I had my pocket knife on me but the guy didn't seem to notice. I mean, I guess you could stab dudes with it, but that's not really why I keep it on me. Bonus that they said they were finally hitting the studio again come the new year. That's at least one reason to hate 2010 less. It's mildly troubling that those couple hours I felt more alive than I have all year. Why must day to day life be spent in brainless zombie mode?

Finished Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. Was solid, though some of the decisions they made with it just seemed odd. Like removing all the key items or the tests of valor, though I think they moved the latter to the team missions. It certainly seemed easier, with the healing save points. The scythe was awesome as hell though. I can't imagine getting many more trophies for it though. It took until today to get the 1000 dragon sword kills and my next closest weapons are flails and scythe at 400. I think obliterations and ultimate techniques only need about 300, but izuna drops are at 200 and maybe 20 for guillotine throws. Actually, the best part of Sigma 2 happened after I already finished it. I guess the girl at the instore pickup counter checked out my items wrong and said that I never picked up my copy of Sigma 2, I ended up with the refund showing on my credit card when I checked yesterday. Guess best buy wanted me to have it as a birthday gift. I'm not complaining.

Spent the past week with a sinus infection, though I'm feeling better now. Still coughing up some righteous phlegm every once in a while, but no longer at the rate I once was. I have a quiz in genetics tomorrow and I have to give my speech on tuesday. I finished up my powerpoint earlier. I at least feel pretty confident about that part. I also need to write up a lab report for chemistry. At least the next O. Chem test isn't until next friday. I find the newer stuff less annoying maybe I'll actually get a B on it. Also getting back the microbio test for sure, and supposedly the genetics test. Should be a full day.

Tuesday involved a shopping trip and I ended up picking up a bunch of games. I had a 25 dollar gift card at gamestop, and I wanted to pre-order Brutal Legend and Dragon Age with it. Alas, this was not meant to be as when attempting to pre-order the collector's edition of Dragon Age for pc, the clerk guy said the computer was locked out of pre-ordering the collector's edition. I have no idea what that means, or why it's even possible. He then asked if I wanted the regular version and I decided to put it all on Brutal Legend. Mainly because I might be up another $15 or so at best buy by the time the release date rolls around. I also decided to pick up Onimusha 2 and 3 since they were 5 and 10 dollars respectively and in pretty good condition with manuals intact.

Then I traveled to best buy and picked up Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2: electric lady liberty boogaloo. I got the new AFI cd while I was there too. It sounds more like an AFI cd than a cd by The Cure this time around. So far, ninja gaiden is pretty solid. From looking through the 360 walkthrough, it seems like they tuned down the regular encounters and added bosses. A few items got moved around as well. The weirdest thing I've noticed is the Muramasa shop. You don't use your yellow orbs to level up your weapons anymore. Instead, you have to find a shop with a blue lantern light and he'll upgrade one weapon for you. It also seemed capped too, since I tried to level my dragon sword to level 3, but it said this weapon couldn't be upgraded at this time. I'm doubting there are enough blue-light shops to max out all the weapons, so that's kind of a bummer. My only complaint so far has been that this message kept popping up saying that I'd be dumped to the start screen should I happen to log out of my psn account. I'm not sure why this is necessary, and then it went and happened when my internet hiccuped for a couple minutes. I don't get that shit at all.

I popped the Onimushas in when I got home and they worked a-okay. I remember renting and playing through Onimusha 2 when it came out in 2002. Seems hard to believe that was seven years ago, but then again I have no concept of time whatsoever. I always feel the same and the people around me just seem to get...balder? And possibly more meaningless by the year. I loaded up my old save at the end of the game. It must've been pretty rough, since I turned the difficulty down to easy. Though, I think you could change it at any time so I might've just run out of healing items and wussed out since it was a rental and I just wanted to finish. The controls were the hardest part to believe though, it was old Resident Evil style movement and no analog control. It was hard to wrap my brain around, but I killed me some Nobunaga. I might take the time to play through it again and try to get all the other branched story paths.

The psp port of Persona also arrived in the mail yesterday. I'm a couple hours in. They did a really good job cleaning up the sprites, though I think they might've wanted to go against having a battle song with actual words in it. It gets a little repetitive. They also added a metric shit ton of save points, which was my only real complaint with the game, though I did hold out hope that you'd be able to get all the party members and swap them out at will. Oh well, I'm shooting for Reiji since I already used Brown and Elly the other times I played. Plus there's the whole new Snow Queen quest thing, Mara rides again.

Pretty stoked to go see Social Distortion tomorrow. I'm assuming it won't be 110 degrees in there this time.

Genetics test tomorrow on a shit ton of chapters. Okay, 1-5 and 21, but that certainly seems like a lot. I've been reading nothing but all weekend; so hopefully the information regurgitates well. Also getting back results for the last micro and ochem tests, so if I kill myself after I come home on monday, you can say you saw it coming. Okay, maybe delay that until after friday. I wouldn't want my Social D ticket to go to waste.

Haven't had time to play anything that isn't on psp, I think it's starting to wear on me. I played through Dissidia, if you don't count Inward Chaos. I liked it better in the beginning when it was more than a one-shotting contest. Now it just kind of grates on me, so I supposed I wont be farming gear for my level 100 Squall. I did unlock all the characters, but was sad to find out the chaos side dudes didn't get any story of their own. It's okay for a fan service game, but I guess I wanted something more. Not that I didn't enjoy Bartz dual wielding a buster sword and gunblade during a story segment, because that shit was pretty awesome.

I should have a copy of Persona showing up in the mail in a couple days. I'm also probably going to pick up a copy of Sigma 2 as soon as best buy lets me print out a 10 dollar coupon. The demo played pretty well, though the purple was pretty weird, but I guess the smooth ass frame rate makes up for it. Those ninja dudes really turn into assholes once you cut their legs off, I tell you what. I've also mentally caved in and decided I want to pick up Brutal Legend at full price. Given my current school schedule, it's probably best I don't try to get ahold of Demon's Souls until winter break kicks in. Maybe get the collector's version for christmas or something.

I was going to do some organic chemistry practice problems today, but felt like moping instead. All fucking day, like a champ. Any chance there's some mental hospital out there where I can keep my electronics and not get pumped full of lithium? Guess not, huh. Should get the results for my microbio test back tomorrow. God knows about the genetics quiz. I felt pretty comfortably on the micro, but I either did well or cocked up completely on genetics. I still need to write up a report for last week's o chem experiment and what will be this week's pre-lab. There is something so terribly unenjoyable about chem lab and I can't figure out why. I'll chalk it up to foggy goggles and a whole room having to go to the same fume hood to get their chems. You'd think they'd just split a batch up for each station to ease the congestion or something.

In brighter news, I finished Policenauts this weekend. I really enjoyed it, though the shooting segments with arrow keys were a little on the difficult side. Also, it may have involved total whores. Seemed best to just fire as much as possible and hope it hit. Especially in the big break-in during the final act. Holy crap there were a lot of dudes to shoot. It did seem like the more that you managed to kill during the initial phase, there were less popping up during the second segment. I'm not sure why those pseudo-VN type of games never make it stateside. I can't be the only person that lethal weapon in space with drug and organ smuggling appeals to, can I? Perhaps if it had online co-op/multiplayer capabilities. I also can't contain my love for the theme song. Of course, that only makes me think of Snatcher and why cyberpunk is some sort of untouched bastard genre as far as video games are concerned. Everyone's too busy riding that post-apocalyptic fallout 3 wave, I guess.

It also seems slightly troubling that it marks my 30th game finished this year, not counting multiple playthroughs of the same game. That seems...sorta high. Upon scanning the previous year's notepad file, I finished 31, so this very well may be a record year. Especially if I keep buying 5 buck games on steam.

Upon inspecting my horoscope, said funk will last another day. Not what I really wanted to hear. Do other people get to live without the constant existential crises? They are really adding up on me lately. It could be the tiresome thought of a bachelor of sciences in biology doesn't really set you up for anything but grad school and I can't imagine wanting to teach. I also can't imagine anyone ever publishing the book in my head, but I really like the characters so it just seems to stay rolling around up there when I'm cutting the grass or whatever. Maybe it's because the first chapter is chronologically the last one and the reader would be working backwards in time since the first chapter would more or less just be a history lesson/glossary for the world. It's all just feeling more useless than usual.

School is very school-like. Speech may be killing me. First microbio test is tomorrow morning and I'm feeling confident enough to think I can ace it. I'll have about 2 hours before it to look anything over anyway since I have to take mom in early since so she can help their new intern out or something. I've still got one more problem to do on my genetics homework, but I think I'll be able to do that during my lunch break. I should see if I have anything left to write on my microbio lab too. Damn, tomorrow is going to be long.

Survived 8 hours of human contact on Sunday. Still recharging. My Social Distortion ticket came in the mail today, that should be about as good a birthday present as I'm going to get, even if it does involve getting hugged by drunk dudes again.

I impulse bought Champions Online. It's pretty fun, but I don't see it being something I pay 15 bucks monthly for. Due to the instancing, it seems pretty rare to ever see the same players more than once. Character building is pretty fun, but retconning is way too prohibitively expensive. I also find myself mostly skipping over the story, not to say it's bad, but it more or less just seems like a vehicle to get quest experience. It does make me want to make up my own character story though. What part of a guy with a demon arm slowly taking over his body isn't rad? It makes me wish I could set up some kind of script that automatically changed my costume depending on my health total. I've been sticking mostly to the supernatural and might power sets. I've been having some trouble with super villains at 20 though, since most of my fighting ability comes from the stun effect on Condemn, which doesn't work on them. Sure, it'll still do the damage. Kinda wish I took the self-heal instead of the rebirth ability since mobs full heal when you die. Wonder if I should take a new defensive passive as a power. Anyway, I'll see how far I get at the end of the free month and maybe fire it back up on winter break.

Also finally got my copy of Dissidia. I've finished the story mode with Squall and Cecil so far. Oh Renzokuken, how I missed thee. It's fun, though I imagine it'll take forever to unlock everything. I'm also never quite sure why people bag on square for fmvs so much, since they're so damn good at them. That opening movie was awesome. Seems like it'll be one of those games where beating it with every character just won't be enough. Seems like between this and Persona, I'll be set on psp for quite a spell.

Well, I have made it through the first week of the new semester successfully. Microbio is a little slow since the dude seems like mostly a slide reader, but it looks like we'll actually get to do stuff with bacteria in lab. Probably no anthrax though. Organic chem doesn't seem as bad as people complain about, but it could be that I just prefer analyzing why things do what they do instead of just endless math and conversion formulas. The professor is also very british. Genetics seems okay to me, so far it is like those logic puzzles I had to do shit tons of in elementary school. Speech is going to suck regardless, but I just have to suck it up and get through it. At least it's my last gen ed requirement, right? I think I might have to take an intermediate level in a language, but wonder if any of those new online classes they added count towards that.

Downside, having to wake up in the morning does make me feel physically ill until the afternoon. This lasts for a month or two when I'm allowed to return to my nocturnal self. I really have no idea why this happens. When I rule the world, I will make it so the vampire and hooker crowd will be equally represented in all things. There is also a rather annoying child in a couple of my classes that seems to like asking the most redundant questions repeatedly throughout the 50 minute lecture period. I don't want to kill him, but cutting out his tongue and sealing the wound shut with an iron seems totally acceptable. The more time I spend around people really makes me feel like I have even less in common with them than I did before. I'm under the impression that I'm either an alien or my brain is on a concerted effort in an attempt to kill me. I wouldn't rule out either possibility.

I played through Mirror's Edge and finished it yesterday. It was...okay. I liked the idea, but the execution seemed a bit lacking. I guess people complained about it being in first-person, but that didn't bother me. What did, however, was the fact that for a game where you were supposed to be running away from combat, it sure tossed you in enough situations where it was unavoidable to be annoying. I am also aware that there are people out there that can do every level in under 5 minutes without ever firing a gun, but alas, I was not one of them and I really have no desire to be. Still, for 20 bucks it wasn't regretable.

In much more important news, the english patch for Policenauts is now available. It's essentially Lethal Weapon in spaaaaaaaaaaaace, but as an adventure game and occasionally a light-gun shooter. There is also no shortage of lady ogling and breast groping. Sadly, there is no way I'm going to get a 550 on the target range to get Meryl to let me touch her boobs. The music is fantastic and I feel compelled to keep clicking look on things just to see how he'll describe them. My lone problem has been the emulation has been a bit on the shoddy side. Sometimes when dialogue was meant to happen, it just won't load up for whatever reason, or it'll keep looping the same line over and over. Needless to say, I've gotten better at saving constantly. I certainly feel compelled to keep playing, but I need to do some reading for classes. Damn them, I don't even know where the daylight hours went.

The past week or so has been dedicated to play through the Witcher. I think it's pretty safe to say I enjoyed the experience since I may have spent more than one night playing until 5 am. Plus I got to fuck a dryad, the lady of the lake and take part in a vampire orgy. Good times. The story was pretty enjoyable. I think I would call it fantasy without its head firmly lodged in its own ass, which is generally standard fare for that genre. I took the neutral path through it since I can't say I really liked either the humans or the elves. I'm also under the distinct impression that time traveling in stories is starting to wear thin on me. Not as much as uninteresting moral choices, however.

Combat required a certain amount of rhythm. First, you start by clicking on the enemy, which would draw your sword and start your combo string, then when a flaming sword pops up, you click again to keep the chain going and dealing more damage. This chain could be expanded by how your character has been built up in the various skill trees. Sword style wise, you have a steel sword for killing people, and a silver sword for monsters and each had a fast,strong and group style attached to it. The only annoying thing with this is that when you switched swords, it took a couple seconds for him to sheathe the old one and pull the new one, which seemed kind of odd for a guy that could flip about once he got going. There were five spells, which amounted to a force push, area fire attack, ground trap, charm and fear. I was pretty much full on sword, but I did start out with the fire attack because I took sword skills that dealt extra damage while the enemy was burning. The alchemy system seemed pretty deep, but I usually stuck to the recipes I had received as quest rewards or purchased from other alchemists. It was also quite a money sink since you had to buy books to be able to identify plants and be able to skin various things from fallen monsters.

They finally did something with this thing. Looking at that 3.0 update, though, I imagine I'll be switching back to the old xmb rather fast. Do you really need to add the store to every icon? Seriously. I also have no problem moving over to the left one click to get to my neatly organized game folders. Perhaps this is what happens when you live in a world populated by ritalinheads. Or I'm just a cranky old man, both are probable.

Decided to use the last day of my vacation to go and see Inglorious Basterds. I enjoyed it, but I can't say how many world war 2 movies or books I've consumed in my life. Brad Pitt's accent is comically awesome, especially when he's pretending to be italian. The guy that played the main SS antagonist was also amazing in his evil and I speak 10 different languages while fucking your mother attitude. Also, there is Til Schweiger playing Stabby McBadass. Then I stopped by best buy and picked up Mirror's Edge for 20 bucks. I need to lay off the impulse purchases for a while. Especially since I bought and played through Shatter in one sitting yesterday. Verdict on that one is positive. It's like Breakout, except the blocks are trying to kill you and there are bosses. It's simple, fun and has a pretty neat soundtrack. You could certainly do worse with 8 bucks.

Mothership Zeta was a bit on the buggy side. Not that I didn't appreciate the game saying I disarmed the death ray when I triggered the shooting gallery. The most problematic bug I encountered took place after the space walk. The little girl opened the door, and all the npcs went poof. Lost a couple hours to that chestnut. Some of the weapons were cool, but I couldn't help but feel that the setting would've been better for a standalone game. Seriously, most alien games involve bald space marines in giant armor of some sort. I'd like to think there is room for a game where some regular jerkoff gets abducted in some Roswell-era action. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm not touching Fallout 3 again but I probably will buy New Vegas whenever that happens.

All the talk about the resurgence of adventure games and my lack of something new to play led me to scour my hard drive. I ended up playing through Full Throttle again, which is still pretty cool, except that goddamn demolition derby thing. Then I realized I never finished the Adventures of Willy Beamish that I had on Sega Cd. I ripped an iso and started playing it Gens only to find the game hangs when you take out the cook lady on day 4. Not to be denied, I found another emulator and tried again. It was getting pretty late, but I managed to get back to the frog jump again and saved my progress. Little did I know, said emulator needed to create a RAM file before you could save games, so I got set back to the gang encounter on day 3 thanks to the glory of save states. Today I finally cracked down and finished the bastard. The ending was pretty classy. Hey! Be sure to check out my next adventure that will never happen because sierra will die a horrible death! That was a let down probably 15 years in the making.

I had a 40% off coupon at borders, so I picked up Watchmen on blu-ray. While I normally hate to pay more than 5 dollars for a movie, I figured this one would be worth it since it's like 10 hours long and full of tits and blue dicks. The ending was the only thing I really noticed any major changes with. It still managed to make me as pissed off and despressed as the book ending, so I suppose it accomplished its job.

I had an amusing day dream while lawn mowing about opening a game store. A liquor license and a Jojo's Bizarre Adventure tournament to see who would get raises may have been involved. There was also a rather ill-fated promotion of turning in last years copy of Madden for 10 bucks of the current one. They may have ended up being used for skeet shooting on the rooftop of the building until the police decided to get involved.

I am making some progress in Disgaea 3, having acquired most of the rank 39 items from the land of carnage, and most recently, leveling myself a rarity 0 Trapezeohedron to 150 or so. Haven't had much luck duping it yet, though. My philosophy has been 3 resets, and if none are duped I just shut it off for a while. You know, to keep the frustration to a minimum. The high-end postgame really scales poorly. Regular item world is way too easy, and carnage item world turns into what the fuck is going on level pretty quickly. Maybe I'm just jealous of those hp and atk totals, since they seem like they would involve 200% aptitudes and about 100 reincarnations. I'm only missing 2 regular pirates and 4 rank 39 weapons though. My innocents need work though. I could probably dupe one more set of statisticians for a weapon, but I'm pretty sure that marksman and a couple of the weapon boosters are the only things closed to capping out.

I picked up Fat Princess on thursday. While I generally avoid most multiplayer affairs, this one is pretty fun. The game basically amounts to capture the flag, just this flag can be stuffed full of cake and made harder to carry for the opposing team. It does have a single player campaign, which mainly amounts to giving you the basics of the gameplay in the different game types. I've only got two beefs with it. First, the online code seems like it could use some serious work. I've had to hit jump in about 5 times on average before I've gotten in a game and if the host drops the game, it says it tries to find another, but I've gotten dumped back to the title screen every time. This is most depressing when you're up to 3 on the leaderboard, I tell you what. The other is more minor in that I wish there was a better way to cycle targets while in lock-on mode. I like playing as the upgraded builder the most because throwing bombs in people's faces is pretty awesome. In bizarro world news, I think priest is my runner up. That could just be because those bastards get points like no one's business. My best princess theft was while I was a priest, and I managed to carry her tubby ass all the way back to the throne and stopped our prisoner from being taken back without dying. I swear, there was even adrenaline involved. So, it's fun, it's 15 bucks, but you might want to wait for a patch for the online.

In other news, I am boycotting any and all Sega published games until they sell the rights to the Yakuza games to someone else (Sorry, Alpha Protocol!). Also, good luck with moving Bayonetta back when it'll probably have to compete with God of War 3. My faith in them even came back a bit after Valkyria. I also might have to finally break down and invest in the Witcher since tits are officially in the american version, officially. I hear it's sorta slow to start, but ultimately pretty awesome. I might cash in a $10 certificate at best buy to get it since it looks like I'm starting to lose points. Must be because they started the new rewardzone shit. Well, I know I had 845, but now I have 724. So it would seem something is afoot.

Monday shall become tuition paying day, which is probably one of my least favorite days on average. Probably moreso than usual since the state of Ohio decided to cut its grant payouts in half. On the brighter side, the dude I have for organic sent out an email saying which books to buy already so you could find a deal on half or amazon. That seems pretty cool already, hope the class isn't shite. It's hard to get a good gauge on anything there because people complain about fucking everything though. I don't mind challenging, but I do get the feeling that some people get phd's just to bust balls for no good reason.

I finally went back and finished Metal Gear Ac!d. It was fun sometimes, but the card aspect just seemed to add to the frustration more often than not. Okay, so it was just because I only had 4 stinger missile cards and it took like an hour to kill the Metal Gear at the end. Maybe it was my fault for not wanting to grind the side missions over and over for points so I could make the most efficient deck. The story is batshit, which some might say is no surprise for any game with metal gear in the title, but this takes it to another level. You're really an evil scientist named Hans and you made a new Metal Gear! -What, really? No, I totally made that up, but you believed it for a minute there! I'm pretty sure that's what it boiled down to. The sequel seems a lot more refined though, especially since a lot of things with the movement that bugged the ever loving shit out of me were fixed, like not having to stop in front of doors, being able to switch between walking and crawling on the fly and picking up card packs on the fly instead of having to stop over them and waste more moves than should be necessary. We'll go 3 stars for the original, and a tentative 4 for the sequel.

I've picked Disgaea 3 back up in order to conserve money with the added bonus of getting some trophies. I'm sitting on a couple characters around 3k and I've unlocked up to the Baal fight, which is the last epilogue map discounting x-dimension and land of carnage stuff. I haven't done much in the item world, just a 100-something level testament and some shit legendary fist weapon for the sake of doing 1-100 without leaving. I'm still about 5-6 tickets shy of unlocking the land of carnage. I'm not having much luck duping those testaments in the class world either. It's very sad.

I am banned from ever thinking about money because whenever I do bad things happen. I got my tuition bill today which was 720 dollars more than I expected. It would appear that I got a big fuck you from the state of Ohio grant which was supposed to be there, but was decidedly absent. Worst case scenario I suppose I can just charge it, but stacking 400 worth of books on that makes that idea less appealing. I suppose I should email or god forbid call someone at financial aid to see if that money is not going to come through for sure, or if they just haven't gotten it yet. I guess at least they give you three weeks to shit yourself over it instead of just one.

That new SMT game appears to be the next one in the main series, as well as a DS game. Must be riding that dragon quest gravy train. I know I've been thinking about it since Devil Survivor and Endless Frontier came out but I imagine SMT 4 would seal the deal. I've also read about rumors of Persona 5 being on the ps3 being tied to a panchinko machine's release, which seems crazy yet totally possible. I just want a setting that isn't high school. Eternal Punishment is still my favorite and it had adults, goddamn. Make it a soul-crushing dead end job simulator/dungeon crawler. Or at least add some people who are actually fun to hang out with as opposed to spending my fictional year solving peoples' emotional problems by guessing what they want to hear.

I finished Dead Space on impossible, which I can only hope will lead me to being able to see the invisble, touch the untouchable and break the unbreakable. It was tough in spots, but I still finished it in 9 hours. The hive mind seemed like a joke compared to the rest of the game, seeing as I don't think I ever got hit. The plasma cutter wasn't as effective as it was maxed out in normal, but I had so much ammo for it at the end it didn't mean much that it took a couple extra shots. I did actually have to buy health packs and ammo in this mode though. It's my whopping third platinum trophy, but I think I got it out of guilt more than anything. I still prefer it to Resident Evil 5, but the way Resident Evil 5 set up its mission structure led to it being a helluva lot more replayable than starting from scratch and playing from the beginning again.

I've been tooling around with the D&D online beta with it's exciting new free to play structure. You get two character slots, and can buy more if you want. You have to drop 595 points if you want to play as a monk or favored soul, while the drow and warforged races carried the same pricetag. This seems a little high after seeing the conversion rate for said points.

400 - 6.25
900 - 11.99
1500 - 18.99
3300 - 38.99

New adventure mods seem to run about 900 points, but I'm not sure how bad content dries out at higher levels since my ass didn't hit level 3 until I did a couple of quests at Stormreach harbor. I also gained 100 of these turbine spacebucks in that time period, so I think it'd take quite a spell if you wanted to get new content without paying for it. The only other weird obstruction I noticed was that you started out with a level cap of 4, and to progress further required you to get an item called a sigil. I re-ran a quest at the tavern on hard and got it as a reward and it boosted my cap up to 8. Not sure if those apply to everyone or just the non-paid people.

The game itself seems entirely serviceable as a dungeons and dragons game though I think I can see where it would falter at the mmo part. Everything is instanced, so unless you're in a town, the game is spent pretty much on your lonesome (or with your party) traveling in a wasteland or dungeon of varying size. It's pretty easy to tune out the general channel, since it's fucking terrible, so isolation prevades. I imagine if you had a regular group or guild of some sort this wouldn't be much of a problem.

Combat consists largely of holding down the left mouse button and things dying. I have 2 hotkey bars full of various special attacks, but shy of boss characters nothing really survives long enough for me to use them. I imagine the hotkey clustfuck would be even more serious for a spellcaster. The process of leveling your character is as easy or as hard as you want to make it. You can stick with a couple of pre-defined loadouts or go batshit on what you want to blow points on. Also, you gain action points at every rank, which is a quarter of a level. You can dump them on more things to customize your character. Monks got a bunch of different elemental styles, animals styles and different types of ki strikes. You could blow them on skills and rarely stat points.

The game is fun enough as a dungeon crawler, but I can't help but think it would've been better as a regular game that just had multiplayer and they just sold cheap add-on modules for it. It seems like a tough game to go solo, for sure as the difficulty really ramps up between the starter island and the harbor. I had to blow some points on a stack of 10 potions because the rest shrine frequency really dropped off the cliff when I was messing around in the sewers, waterworks, or whatever the fuck the joint was called. It still seems like an okay game to blow an evening on here or there when you've got nothing else to do though.

Well, the attic and basement at my grandparents' house has been pretty thourougly emptied of garbage. I'm trying not to think about how many steps I've climbed in the past couple days but my legs are currently doing a pretty good job of reminding me. Other than a rather annoying cut under my right pointer fingernail and a scrape on my left leg, no injuries were sustained! There was an incident with a rather disgusting chair that played out a bit like a 3 Stooges routine. Chris ended up whacking himself in the knee with a hammer and may have went flying and kicked me in the mouth while we were standing on opposite sides trying to break it apart. I may or may not have hit my head a double digit amount of times in the basement. That being said, I don't think newstands have that many magazines in stock at any given time. I did take home a couple boxes of crap to sift through. I got a pretty nice stereo that I set up in the garage so I can use it when I'm dicking around outside. There's a couple boxes of books to clean through that I put in the basement for now. The paperbacks were pretty wrecked, but a lot of the hardbacked stuff held up pretty well. Found some vintage Playboys from the 70's and 80's, though the one's that were in basement didn't hold up as well as the ones in the attic. You don't get that kind of bush outside of creepy fetish sites these days, I tell you what.

I did take some other weird stuff. I cleaned out his old pack from the army and found a bunch of patches, medals and the like. While I didn't take it, we also found his uniform later on. Holy shit, he was tiny. He had to be at least 6'1" but this looked like a little kids jacket. He was a sergeant in the 82nd airborne, never really knew other than he trained other paratroopers. I also took his old helmet and goggles from his racing days. They looked like hell, so that made them more interesting.

In lieu of looking for videos of songs, I'll share the current album I'm obsessed with, which is by a group called Daikaiju
A link to said album can be found here. They are filling a surf rock void in my empty life, to be certain. I need to buy a physical copy, but this will tide me over for a couple weeks.

I also saw a sign on RJ's while we were heading up Davis street and it said they were reopening it and calling it Rockabillies. I will pretend it will be full of dudes with slicked hair and leather jackets and dames with polka dot dresses and flowers in their hair. I can't imagine it will be the reality though. Might as well get me a 57 Chevrolet convertible if I'm going to keep dreaming.

Funeral was decidedly funeral like. Had to carry the casket down the stairs and to the hearse this time. The church also had the unenjoyable connotation of being unbearably hot. He looked better than he had in years though, which I suppose is weird to say about a dead guy. I think I may have spent 20 minutes crying like a bitch outside afterwards, because I guess it's okay as long as no one else can see it.

So much for saving money by not buying multiple games again this month. I only picked up Vampire Bloodlines for 20 bucks, I ended up blowing the other 40 I usually allot for a new game on manga instead. It's amazon's fault for having Jojo on it's buy 3 get the 4th free list. That only puts me up to 5 though, so there's still quite a ways to go. I think volume 12 comes out in august. I don't think anything comes out that I'd buy in July either, so I'm safe until August. I put a pre-order in for Dissidia, which only comes to 27 bucks after the 10 dollar gift certificate I had for amazon. I might have enough credit card points to get another one sometime in 2021. 4000 points isn't much of an exchange rate at a dollar a point.

Played through Half-life 2 over the weekend and Episode 1 today. I had more fun with them than I did with the original. I'll chalk it up to not having a lot of shitty platforming sections. It had vehicle crap instead. Which was okay, but not so great. I can't tell if it handled better or worse than the Mako though. Episode 1 almost felt like more of a survival horror game at times, what with all the flashlight work needed. I need my own super gravity gun. I would use it to, you know, fight the villains.

I suppose I should get to bed or something since my cousin is supposed to pick me up at 10-ish to help clean out my grandparents' house.

Played some Symphony of the Night on psp. Still awesome, it's also amazing just how much crap sticks with you for that many years. I was remembering where to break those hidden walls like a pro. I did encouter an odd bug with the the succubus boss. Basically, if I triggered the battle it would straight up shut my psp off. Luckily, after some testing, turning off my familiar seemed to circumvent this. We are now 5 hours in and rolling in the inverted castle. Man, I'd kill for some more high resolution upgrades to old 2d games, or maybe just Castlevania and Strider.

My grandpa died. Not sure if it was yesterday or today though. I figured it was bad when my old man didn't come home from the hospital last night until late. Kinda alternating between happy and sad, I guess. I mean, whatever made my grandpa my grandpa has been gone for years and only the physical representation was left. Still, I suppose it's the finality of it. That and having to face my hysterical aunt. Man, that shit is draining. We were supposed to clean out the house next week in the hopes of unloading it since the nursing home went through all the savings and they were in the process of applying for medicaid to take over. I don't think he would've liked the thought of anyone else paying for him anyway.

The Black Dahlia Murder - What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse
Tiamat - Cain
Alexisonfire - Side Walk When She Walks
Pantera - War Nerve
Hot Water Music - Trusty Chords
The Cure - Never Enough
Turbonegro - I Got Erection

Bought Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines on Steam for 20 bucks last weekend and just finished it up today. Despite being a buggy mess, it still managed to be entertaining. Made me wish I was undead so I could be bros with Jack for eternity or swipe books from Beckett's library. There were a lot of interesting characters, thinking on it. About the only ones I didn't really care for were Lacroix, which I imagine is entirely intentional and Ash, who was a whiney douche that I saved multiple times. It's also entirely possible that I'd have a hard on for any game where the book that raises computer skill is titled 'A Cowboy's Guide to Cyberspace by Case'.

I played through as a gangrel. I was going to play through as one anyway, but I ended up taking the little quiz thing that shovled it on me anyway. I suppose it does suit my personality best, brujah being a close second. Max protean and fortitude was pretty awesome, since melee was only useless on a couple bosses. Probably could've set up skill points a little better but I didn't know which conversations or quests were going to cough up skill points. The only thing that was overly annoying in the non-bug realm was having to change my armor every time I wanted to pick a lock. Humanity or masquerade violations were never a problem for me. I think the only time I lost any humanity was when I started a fight in the chinatown club and random people kept getting shot up, even though it wasn't by me. 38.3 hours for 20 bucks isn't a bad deal. The World of Darkness always seemed like an interesting universe, even though what I've read of the Requiem stuff seems kinda screwy.

I'm not allowing myself to buy any more games until I finish Half-Life 2 and the episodes in hopes that this saves money this month. I liked the original, though the platforming was on the annoying side. I wish I had a better place for mousing though. My hand falls asleep where it is now on the edge of my desk. And the deliverance dlc for Fallout 3 should be coming out pretty soon. I think it's next week, so time to see how they manage to break things this time. I'm okay with shooting mutant hillbillies with a double barreled shotgun, even if it doesn't have phosphorous rounds.

I'm wondering if there's some sort of conditioned mental response when paying off your credit card makes you want to buy more junk. It's ridiculous, I just paid for infamous and my monitor this morning and a dozen things certainly crossed my mind for crap I'd totally blow money on. Most notably, this shirt. Sort've worried about the length though, I'm used to buying tall shirts that are a couple inches longer and I don't really know how much of a difference that really makes. I suppose it wouldn't really matter since I'll be wearing a longer shirt under it though. A trip to the book store is in order though, since the first volume of Detroit Metal City came out in English a couple of days ago. I'm kinda curious as to how they'll translate the songs for the official version. As long as there is tambourine rape, it's all good though.

Finished Devil Summoner 2 a couple of days ago. It was fun, though the end boss wasn't as cool as the one in the original. I finished 94% of the case files and got all the Law unique demons, but I'd have to play 2 more times to get everything which means it went back in its snazzy display box on top of my shelf next to Raiho. My devil chart was pretty fleshed out too, since I'm pretty much only missing fiends and evils. In other Atlus news, the Persona psp-make is being released on September 22nd, which would make a great birthday present. Just sayin'.

Played through the Rondo of Blood remake on psp yesterday in one sitting. It was really enjoyable though my left hand was less of a fan than I was by the time I finally beat Dracula's third form. I had 66% on my completion percentage, I unlocked all the levels though I don't think I finished 5'(holy dicks, hard) which means there are quite a few soundtrack items I'd have to go back and get. More importantly, I unlocked Symphony of the Night by finding an icon in game. It's slightly strange that you'd have to get access to the game in that manner though. But defintely more fun than rage quitting while playing Metal Gear Ac!d, for sure. It's just hard to be stealth oriented when I haven't had the luck to obtain any stealth oriented cards for my decks. Or I just need more high frequency blades to run up behind and shank people with, either or.