Its Been Awhile

Wow.

Seriously.  Wow.

It has been way too long since I worked on this.  Why have I been gone?

Kidnapped?  No.
Murdered? Clearly no.
Turned into a tree hugger and decided to give up all modern technology?  HAHAHAHAHAHAH.  No.


Its a mixture of reasons really.  I haven't felt a huge drive to really write about things.  I haven't really even played that many games really.  Mostly just FFXI until I played Diablo for a couple of hours yesterday.  That got me going again.  Got that urge flowing.  That need to escape.  I am such a damn junkie.

My computer had also been on the fritz for awhile as well.  I had a driver issue between iTunes, my game keyboard, and some other things so I ended up just redoing my windows 7 installation.  Now I have no problems.  I am soo damn happy for that.

The final reason has been things at work have been chaotic.  As of right now there is a good chance that I might not have a job come July 1st, and the stress level is insane.  And by insane I mean:

Things have started to look a little better on the job front, and there is a good chance that the wife and I (and of course Jacob) will be making a move somewhere, but that won't be decided until later.

With all that established I just want to quickly summarize things.  I have gotten quite a bit in FFIV.  I am currently underground, and I have discovered that Cid did not actually die.  So at least one less death.  HAHA

FFXI has gone well.  I went to town and I got my SAM up to level 60 and that is amazing.  I am really liking that job and will keep you updated on that.

I put much time into Diablo like I said and I made it to floor 5 with no problems.  Going to grind for awhile there and then will keep moving on down.

Sorry about the short post.  More will come.  I swear.

Don't Pick a Favorite

Seriously.  Don't.  Cause they might die.

This is going to be a spoiler post.  I am just going to start that off right now.  If you don't want any spoilers for Final Fantasy IV, then stop now.  Do not continue.




Now.  A shitload of characters die in this.  You start to like some and then BAM.  Death.

I am now about to enter Babel Tower, and just picked up Edge to join my party.  But thats not what I am talking about.  No.  Lets discuss the members of my party that I have lost so far, and I am maybe at the halfway point.

First to go, Palom and Porom

Edward, not dead however he is out sick

Tellah, sacrifices himself

Yang, another sacrifice

Cid, yet another sacrifice

That is 6 people (excluding Edward makes it 5) who have sacrificed themselves for the good of the party.  I understand that its for the betterment of everyone, however Palom and Porom dies so soon after you get them that I am still trying to get my head to stop spinning.  Its completely crazy.  I have experienced party member death before.  One of my fondest memories of a FF game is in FFIX when Blank saves the party and is eternal placed in Stone (yet the party seeks out a way to cure him of this status and he is released later on).  There are other instances as well, however FFIV strikes me so hard because they happen one right after the other.  Its like the creators didn't like their creation so they wanted to come up with a way to clear the lot of them as quickly as possible.

Silly creators.

The other thing that strikes me is how they tell how Rydia, one of the main characters of the story and the lone Summoner, goes from a young girl to 17 in a flash.  Normally you would be like What the Hell????  But Squaresoft had this planned out.  After you are separated from your party you have to keep going and you eventually get the band back together.  Rydia explains that she was sent to the World of Summons (I probably have that completely wrong, sorry) where she learns more spells, aaaannndddd even though she was there for a short amount of real game time, time in this other world flows faster so several years have passed.  BAM!!  Explanation has been provided.

So now that I have talked about that, I feel like there may be more deaths to come.  Who knows.  I have half of the game to go.  Many many things can still happen.  I am enjoying the game so far and its nice to be reliving this older game.  

Holy Fish!!! (Mackeral)

I know I have been away for awhile and that is in part due to work.  I have been working a lot of late night games and events that I get home exhausted.  Once that occurs I just don't feel like putting words onto paper (screen).

I was checking up on things today with the blog, thinking of a post when I saw that I have surpassed 2000 views. WOW!!!

I know that most of this might be spam sites.  I need to figure out how to counteract that activity.  However still. I am impressed.


Now what have been up to lately??  Well.  I have been working a lot on FFIV, and on Assassin's Creed.  I have been working on FFXI too since We$$ is able to get on more now.  I am trying though to keep my play time on FFXI down so I won't get absorbed into that too much and forget about everything else.

I have been working hard on AC lately.  I have decided to get a complete on it since it will be my first complete since I started using Backloggery.  I have been working a lot on my Backloggery page.  If you wanted to keep up with my daily progress it is the best way to go about it.  I posted a link to my page on the links section of my blog.

Exchange Rates

I have been thinking for awhile and I believe that it times for some changing.

Not some big life changing thing, nor a mid-life crisis.  Heck I am only 26.  Not there yet.


No, I need to juggle up my groups a little bit in terms of the console selection.

Currently I have Final Fantasy XIII-2 on the playlist, however I think I need to change that.  I just beat FFV and Crisis Core, and I am currently playing FFIV.  I also am working a lot on FFXI so I feel like I am just surrounded by fantasies that are all final (joke joke).

Seriously though.  I never thought I might get sick of Final Fantasy games.  I love the series.  Thats very easily known.  However I need a change though, especially on the console side of things.

I think the best thing to do is to switch FFXIII-2 out with Assassin's Creed.  I never did play the first game in that series and I now have that plus Assassin's Creed: Revelations.  So what I plan to do is to start playing AC.  Then after that see how I am feeling and reevaluate if I want to start up FFXIII-2 again.  I know for Group III I have FFVI slated to play.  I am going to see about changing that as well whenever I get to it.

FFVI has been something that I have been debating on what to do.  I do own it for GBA and I am pretty far on it.  I know the story of it however I am willing to restart it again.  If I did that I would want to purchase it for the PSP and play on there.  I do favor playing handhelds on my PSP and when I get the chance I like to play games on it.

However do I really want to spend money on something that I already have??

Knight on!!

Things have been a little slow lately.  I blame it on the fact that I have been pretty stuck on my comp as of late just making sure that the final adjustments are made and everything is running properly (i.e. testing its processor power in many ways, including FFXI and Half-Life at the same time).

Because of this I have been having issues committing to playing FFXIII-2.  That and the fact that I have been working every night since last Thursday and that will continue until Tuesday.  I haven't had the drive to really sit down and get working on FFXIII-2.  Since I am in the beginning stages of the game it does require a lot of effort to go through all the tutorials and get the basics of the story down.  My hope is to do that next week, however I have been contemplating switching it out for Assassin's Creed (AC) so I can not be completely over FFed.  I still have sometime however to make that decision.

Instead lets focus on FFIV.  I had made a lot of progress with FFIV awhile ago, but then as always I stopped playing it for awhile.  I tried my best to figure out what was happening in the game but I could not for the life of me figure out things.  Thus I decided to delete a 30 hour saved game so I could start from scratch.

I like the story of Cecil and his journey of being a Dark Knight and finding the "Light Side".  I love the Dark Knight job and its mystery that surrounds it.  Also the armor for it is pretty damn sweet.  Its my second favorite job in FFXI as well.


Its pretty late now and I think that I am going to call it a night.  However I will have more to talk about as I play further along.  I got a 2 hour one way bus ride tomorrow, so I will have enough time to play on.

Sorry about the delay, but good news

A week ago my desktop died.

I was mad.  Really mad in fact.  My hard drive seemed to have corrupted again and it would not boot through. This had been probably the 4th time it had done this and I knew that I could just keep cycling of formatting, reinstall everything, and then it crash again.

So after talking with my wonderful wife we spent the money needed and I got my computer parts for my new build.  YAY!!!

Once I got them in I spent about 2.5 hours of painstaking, massive concentration requiring, building of the computer.  I followed the manuals and the videos for building that Newegg.com provides (available here) and was able to put it all together.

Then I turned it on and...

IT WORKED!!!

I was soooo excited.  I could barely contain myself.

Once I got that done I searched for anyone that might be able to get me a copy of Windows 7, however that failed.  So I broke down and bought it.  Got it installed yesterday and have been working on copying all my data over to it today.


Man, this comp is fast.  I mean really damn fast.  Its pretty much exactly what I wanted.  My wife has told me that I need to geek out more but I am afraid that if I don't contain myself it would burst like a dam and I will never stop.  wheeeeeeeeeeeee


I have yet to test FFXI or any other games on it but I can only imagine how fast it will be once I get them up and running.  I can't wait to play games without having to put things on the lowest setting.  ahhhh  going to be so nice to do.

I really do like Win7 though.  Don't get me wrong.  I would probably get XP tattooed on me if I wanted to.  I will always have that as my favorite OS.  Hands down greatest thing Microsoft has done in the last decade or so.  Win7 though is not buggy to me.  Well, not yet.  It is very clean and bright.  Easy to read.  Warm and inviting even.

I know the history of Vista and all, and I am glad to see that this doesn't have all those issues with it.


Now, in terms of the games.  I have started FFXII-2 and I am still trying to figure out what exactly I want to say about its beginning.  It will be a good post.  I have also been working on FFIV as well and you will see those posts soon.  I promise.

As for now, I am going to keep fiddling with AMAZINGNESS!!!!

Updates

So I made some changes to the blog today and going to change some of the ways I do things.

First, I changed the List Page and created a new page that will contain all the completed games on it.  I wanted to do this so it would make the list easier to read for me but also for you without having to scroll around looking at what is not crossed off.  I can also keep track what I have beaten to keep a count of how long until I can get a new game.

Second, I will be making "groups" of games to play.  It will be a way for me to make a course of what to play in what order.  I pick one game for each system, plus something to do on FFXI in terms of a mission pack.  I thought this might be easier than to just randomly pick games cause there are so many games that I want to play.  If I beat a handheld game I can either go to the next group, or wait to finish the group that I am in before I proceed.  However I can not go past the groups that I have planned.


Here are the Groups of I have so far:

Group I
1. Crisis Core PSP
2. Diablo PC
3. FFXIII-2 PS3
4. FFXI -Crystal Add-on/ZM

Group II
1. FFIV DS
2. Diablo II PC
3. Assassin's Creed PS3
4. FFXI - Moogle Add-on/ZM

Group III
1. FFVI still making a decision on the format
2. Diablo II: Lord of Detruction PC
3. Assassin's Creed: Revelations PS3
4. FFXI - Shantoto Add-on/WoTG