Starcraft 2

God damn Starcraft 2. I don't personally like RTS games too much since I don't like multitasking. Once you fuck up one thing it's like a big ball of fuck ups that eventually get you killed. Dieing sucks and there's so many good players it's annoying. Well the challenge is good and the graphics were definitely an improvement over the previous game. Makes it much easier on the eyes because when I played the first Starcraft I realized I was playing a game that was like 15 years old. Jesus it was hard to play considering I never got into it when I was young,

Anyways basic RTS stuff but with 3 distinct races with their each unique abilities. They're decently balanced but you can never know until you play it long enough. Usually in the beginning even if you pick a shitty race you can win with enough skill against a person with the better race. I personally play Terran because that's what you play in the campaign and I got used to using it. Not bad, I like them since tanks are awesome. Too bad I suck ballz. ARRGHH I hate multitasking!

Fuck supply depots...Seriously...

You can't win unless you get the right strategies and insert the right units and be fast enough with good timing. It also feels like a waste of time learning this but I'm going to kick my friends ass till he gives up this game first. He's winning for now... but wait till I train and kick him in the nuts.

OH YAH!! JUST LIKE THAT!!

Disgaea Series

The disgaea series, a fun little series that's part SRPG and part paraody. It's a fun little game and I've played a decent amount of them. I've played 1-3 on the consoles and 1-2 on the psp. I definitely logged more time on the portable ones however since it's much faster with ow you powerlevel and it adds a few other things which make it a little bit easier. For example in the second psp port of the game they added a new bill which lets you max enemy levels(and thus the exp you gain) in one bill instead of 10 or so saving you quite a bit of time. They also added a few characters and several changes to the mechanics.

Disgaea 1 picture showing just a fraction of how much damage you can do

The story is amusing, personally I don't find it crazy funny but it's entertaining. Sometimes I want a more light hearted type of RPG instead of the more serious and dramatic Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics. It definitely plays with tropes and provides so good chuckles. It does however get a little bit more serious towards the end usually having something to do with gaining love and friendship the hard way.

The main characters of Disgaea 2!

One feature that's unique to this series is the ability to power level to obscene levels with the max cap at 9999. It doesn't end there though because you can reincarnate, which makes you a little bit stronger each time and you can store levels till you hit a cap which is around 127000 I think. Of course it's not as tedious as is sounds because you can gain exp and levels at a phenomenal rate; some stages are designed around this. Still the grind is there and the Random number god will mess around with you sometimes.

Blurry picture of Disgaea 3 showing a new feature called: Geo Blocks

Most of your luck will come into play when finding items and leveling them. You see you can go into your item and level them and depending on the rarity of the items there is varying amounts of floors. 100 floors for legendary, 60 for rare and 30 for normal items. Sometimes you'll spend a few hours just trying to find a legendary version of the item you want but sometimes it's not the rarity you want. You see even if you find the legendary version of it if it doesn't match a certain rarity number you'll have to go inside that one and find the perfect rarity. You can equip 1 weapon and 3 items and if all the rarities match you can boost your stats even more.

Of course there's many more factors that require some luck such as lovers, pirates, innocents, mystery rooms and many more that is beyond the scope of this blog. Regardless though it is fun to tweak your character and I do find it fun since while sometimes tedious you actually do see the results which makes it fun. Even today people are finding new ways to do even more damage because so many variables can effect you, and that's just in the first game. The 3rd one added even more and just recently a 4th one came out. Too bad it's in Japan though we'll probably have to wait a little while to get it. Oh well it lets me finish the 3rd one till I'm bored with it.

Overall I Really like these games so I give my slightly biased 20/10... oops I mean 9/10.

Saints row 2

So I bought Saints Row 2 on the PC using steam about 4-5 days ago and just finished it a couple hours ago. It took me about 30 hours and I'm at about 90% completion according to my save file. The gameplay is basically a sandbox game but with a few quirky things unique to the game. Think of GTA: San Andreas but with enhanced graphics and improved gameplay. However don't buy the PC version it's an inferior port and unless you have a decent computer you're going to lag, especially during any driving part.

So if you've never played a GTA game or a sandbox game think of it like this: you're in third person perspective kind of like Super Mario 64 and you control your character and basically do whatever you want; hence the term sandbox game. Of course in these types of games it's not a true sandbox since there's missions with objectives, in this case you're trying to take over a city called Stilwater. GTA may have pioneered the genre but people have definitely added their tweaks and things about it as the sandbox/GTA genre went on.

A lot of the things that Saints Row 2 does is basically a parody of sandbox games. How people talk, the cheats, how you fight, customization of your character along with a variety of other things. Now the way I play the game is basically mess around and get used to the game for about 1-2 hours. Start mission, do a few side quests, start mission again and repeat till I beat the game. That's how I did it and I enjoyed it most of the way through. There's a few mini-games that pissed the hell out of me but that could be due to the PC port. The mini-game I played was a driving themed game where you use a quad and try to go through these checkpoints. It's already hard since you're timed and they give you very little time and there's tons of obstacles in the way. Not to mention your quad controls like ass and wants to fly into the air every few seconds where you lose complete control of the vehicle. You can also make cars explode and light pedestrians on fire but that just adds to the frustration. You basically get extra time for blowing up cars/people but the people avoid you and the cars FUCKING EXPLODE! This might not sound like much but the explosions cover your view and the fucking people... oh those FUCKING people just move out of the way whenever you want to hit them. Now I understand that that's just basic human survival instinct and programmed ai but it just pisses me the hell off.

Anyways I'm digressing since I still haven't fully completed all of the levels of that mini-game. Overall though it's a good game with a wide variety of things to do. Compared to GTAIV's more realistic feel this is better IMO. Not that GTAIV was bad but it wasn't as fun since they removed many of the fun cheats and activities and added boring realistic things that you don't want to do in a game. Saints Row 2 is all about doing insane things with the tools of the world. The weapons are fun to use and there's a nice variety of cars which you can customize. You can change the look of your character and the tools are simple yet quite pronounced. You can even change your walking style and you aren't limited to anything. For example, you can be a male but have a female voice and wear female clothing. The missions weren't grating and the police don't hound you for every little thing you do. The missions make you feel like a actual a badass since you go around fucking shit up trying to take back your city. The voice acting is good and I liked the comedy.

So I'll end it with a pro/con list and my score out of 10.

Pros:
-Lots of things to do and you can customize tons of things
-Cheats are fun and there's definitely a lot of them
-Graphics are nice and fit the game
-It doesn't take itself too seriously which I personally like
-Nice variety of weapons
-Decent sized city
-The mission and activity variety is pretty good.

Cons:
-Glitchy and laggy at certains parts(at least on the PC port)
-Crashs sometimes
-Sometimes the difficulty on some things can be frustrating

A solid 8.5/10

So I started FFXIV

FFXIV came out in october 30th and I have played it for a few days. Had to restart though because my cousin wants to start with me and my friend. Annoying to say the least but no big deal.

The game starts with a cutscene which actually has voice acting though that's the only one so far I've seen with any. Voice acting isn't bad but you can tell some of the people had a cock in their mouth because they sounded like they were trying to hard. Gameplay is quite a bit faster than FFXI and the graphics, to say the least, are very nice; this causes my computer to choke a bit and my friend even basically bought a new computer to play this game.

The character creation was interesting, I tried to make a badass but quirky kind of guy and I think I succeeded a little bit though when he does an emote he looks retarded. Not to hard to get in to but the game features a lot of buggy shit and the menu lag is horrendous. Oh well it's pretty fun anyways and hopefully it will get better in time. A lesson for Square-Enix though is to not rush the release of things as everyone has stated in every forum I've read ever.

On a side note my relatives keep coming over which is really disturbing my privacy...FUCK! It's pretty annoying because my computer room is like 2 meters from where everyone fraternizes and they just aren't exactly quiet about being over either. Soon I'll get a job and move out.

Jump it 2

So I've found this pretty addicting flash game, it's kind of fun and I'm whooping my friend at it.Here's a pic of it just for shits and to show my ownage of him.

Fuck yah the ownage. Of course some people get like 200,000 or some ridiculous number like that. The only conclusion to that is that they have no life.

FFXIV is coming out soon

I've been following this game for a while now ever since I've heard about it. It's coming out on the 30th of September and it'll be a day one purchase for me. The reason I'm following this is because I had quite a good time with FFXI but it had a few flaws which my friends didn't like therefore they quit which inevitably caused me to quit. First the things I did like:

- Partying was generally encouraged(forced actually) and made you use your class efficiently
- Story was interesting and had actual cutscenes
- Raising your chocobo was kind of a fun mini-game
- Level sync so you could level with a friend even if they were a lot higher level and you would both make progress in levels
- The world was expansive and massive which was really immersive
- You could change job at a whim and experience all the classes on one character

I'm sure there are a few other things but those alone made the game stand out from other for me. You could also easily play this game with a controller which I found more comfortable. However there were a few flaws that made my friends quit:

- Traveling was a huge pain especially in the beginning where it seemed that you would spend half your time walking around
- Interface sucked, it was built for a controller and you couldn't change it at all
- De-leveling was probably one of the worst things in an MMO I've ever seen
- Starting a party and leveling takes at least 3 hours of your time to get anywhere
-Monster variety was lacking, I think I was consistantly fighting crabs till level 30... than you fought rabbits
- You couldn't level without a party at all unless you were a class that could solo
- Auction house could only hold 7 items at a time and the interface for that was also horrible

Anyways... yah, about FFXIV. So I've been following it and checking it out though not religious or anything like that. I've seen some of the new gameplay from the beta and the new graphics but otherwise I'm not 100% informed on it. People on the forums I read seem to be split on it with about half not liking it. I'm hoping to just play it an enjoy it, square enix has a hit it or miss it pattern lately so let's pray this one is a hit.

Check out my new DFO character

So I started playing Dungeon fighter online and it's pretty fun. Made quite a few characters for it already and my highest being a level 41 grappler. Will update if I feel like it.