I’ll admit that I cheated a little on this particular game and only played Bullet Candy once. After loading it up, it was very reminiscent of Scoregasm so I didn’t spend too much time playing around with it. I later learned (after searching online if this was meant as a predecessor to Scoregasm) that there’s a suite of sh’m’ups with slightly different designs.

After putting off writing posts, I log in, rubbing my hands together to warm them up for some vigorous typing, and am greeted with a message to update WordPress to 3.5. Okay, I decide, I should probably update because it’s been over a week since it’s release. However, the little news blurb explaining the details of 3.5 caught my interest, so I go to read the article. Then, I’m forced to watch the video because they can’t just type out the changes (I hate watching videos because I’m listening to music) and there’s nothing that the video medium particularly adds. (Seriously, someone in HCI should be writing a paper on how to properly spend time making videos vs. writing articles. And give me some acknowledgement. I’ll give that person a cookie.)

I’m a little (okay, maybe a lot) antagonistic because I’ve been bed-ridden the past 2 days and am still not feeling that great. Sincerest apologies. On a less angry note, one of the changes that caught my attention was the new Twenty Twelve theme. The version of the site you are most likely using is one that I have written a customized layout for so the following will make no sense. However, for the few who are “special” and understand a bit of website code, read on.

I don’t get why this game is so popular. Or, that is what I want to say. I’m still on the fence on whether I like it or not. It’s fun, but it’s also frustrating. It’s easily the simplest yet most difficult game I have had to play so far.

Bastion reminds me of Legend of Zelda if it were made for the PC. It is an action-based RPG with deceivingly simple mechanics. It also deserves the good reputation it’s gotten and is a treasure among the indie games I’ve sampled so far.

No, it’s not a giveaway. I’ve been generally unmotivated to sit down and write meaningful things, yet I have a lot on my mind. This post will have a lot of unrelated topics that I may or may not get to. Some are simply lists.

Shatter is a hidden gem. Based on the classic Breakout arcade game, Shatter is modernized with new graphics, new mechanics, and new music all wrapped in a nice package.

This is purely a post about my characters and what I have planned for them – sort of giving them more of a background than simply being 3D models I move around a game world. It’ll also serve as a reference for me, so I may be updating this post in the future (especially when I get more character slots). In my first post, I didn’t recall all of the answers to each character correctly. Luckily, the story tab on my hero panel provides a written record, even if it’s hidden in all the prose. This means the characters I thought of being stereotypical are not so stereotypical at all!

I got to run my first dungeon on Friday. I heard through reading forums and general chat that Ascalonian Catacombs (AC) is harder compared to Caudecus’ Manor (CM), which is the second dungeon. Someone mentioned in chat it takes about 2h to run through AC and I think it took my guild group an hour and a half. All in all, there was a lot of dying, but we finished and we had a dance celebration.

After 3 weeks of on-and-off play, my thief is past the midway point of the leveling process. That’s not to be confused with the amount that the game has to offer. No, I suppose Khamae hasn’t even reached a quarter of that yet. My map exploration is around just a third. I haven’t been to a dungeon yet. I haven’t even touched PvP (and that may be much later). So, when I say Khamae is past level 40, I mean to say I have a bit of PvE thief-play under my belt. And I’m ready to talk about it.

I have managed to convince a friend to pick up a copy of Guild Wars 2. Ironically, this was during the no-digital-sales period which got lifted a day or two after she found the physical copy. It wasn’t like she was checking the stores for shipment dates and times, but I was surprised she even found a physical copy so fast. She found her copy at Walmart, but before that, she had gone to Best Buy and they told her she had come an hour late. Apparently they get shipments in everyday and they sell out. That’s pretty good, but I’m also afraid for the relatively relaxed, nice in-game community that Guild Wars has compared to other MMOs. (It has already infiltrated the overflow servers, but I will not get into that.)

As for myself, I got my humongous box in the mail a day earlier than expected. The gallery, prefaced by shots of the original sound track that I ordered separately, can be found here, with step-by-step unboxing.