Yukinos Blog-O-Rama!

Dinner: Chicken, garlic & butter drenched asparagus and cheesy mashed potatoes

Attempted clothes shopping today. I really hate clothes shopping. Especially for “fancy” clothes. I am a jeans & t-shirts girl. And hoodies. I do love me a nice comfy hoodie.

Haven’t had the chance to play Assassin’s Creed 2 yet, as Matt can’t stop playing it. I have been able to sneak in a bit of Left4Dead2 in-between playing “girlz” games for the DS that I need to review for GA. Right now, I am stuck in My Baby First Steps trying to get my child, Bob, to run. I have at least taught him to say a couple words. Guess I’m not a complete failure as a digital parent. =P

Currently reading: Last of the Wilds by Trudi Canavan

Trying to finish another book from my reading backlog before I start on the two books I got from Viz to review. I also just finished a great book called The Scent of Sake, a story about a Japanese woman striving to keep her family’s brewery from failing and making it the number one sake house in Japan during the early 1800s.

Looking forward to Dexter tomorrow night!! I knew there was more to the sleazy reporter than just having sex with Deb’s douchebag partner. Also hoping Dexter deals with Trinity soon and for a big plot twist in the 2nd last episode of this season.

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(Originally posted on GamingAngels.com)

There are many mornings when I wake up, look at the ever-increasing pile of games I haven’t played and feel defeated. Counting my 360 games alone, there are thirty one games I either haven’t started or need to finish off. (Although, can one truly ever *finish* Viva Pinata?)

For the past couple weeks I’ve been working on games #32 and #33 – Last Remnant and Portal. I had taken a break from Portal when I first encountered those sarcastic turrets that I love so much in “A Day in the Life of a Turret”. After giving myself a week away from them, I crawled back, destroyed those evil lasers and made it to Test 18, where I now stand in a corner trying to time an energy pellet’s movements. I will finish this game. I will have my cake.

Last Remnant has really grown on me. It took a while to get used to the battle unions and figure out just how to arrange them. I figured once I had that down pat it would be smooth sailing. Give me a week and I’d have the game finished, gaining a decent amount of Gamerscore from it. WRONG! Last Remnant’s majority of gameplay does not come from the storyline but from all the sidequests. And the achievements with the largest GS attached to them require completion of all sidequests. I’ve finished a majority of them now, still plugging away at 4 to 5 more and a bit of story progression every day. This one looks like it will be another week at least until I manage to finish her up.

This week I added a newer game to my backlog: Persona for the PSP. I remember playing a bit of it back on the PS1, and I love the Persona games. But as I type this, I realize I never finished Persona 3, and I haven’t even cracked the plastic on P4. It probably wasn’t a great idea buying a new hand held game when I already have Knights in the Nightmare I am trying to get into, but Atlus loves to give us soundtracks with their games, and I am a sucker for an Atlus soundtrack.

So here I sit, contemplating my next move. Once I finish Last Remnant and Portal, where should my focus be? Should I concentrate on the Persona remake? And what about Knights in the Nightmare? Should I ignore other handheld games until I finish that one? It’s so hard to just focus on one game at a time these days with all the various platforms bringing me games I really want to play all at or around the same time. And then there is the stack of games I bought fully intending to sit down and complete, just gathering dust on the stand.

So I ask you, readers & people I force to answer via Twitter: Which of these should I focus on next?

1) Persona PSP
2) Knights in the Nightmare
3) Oblivion GOTY (main story left to complete, 2nd playthrough)

Until next time! ~Yukino

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Xbox 360:

Magna Carta 2
LEGO Rock Band
Assassin’s Creed 2
L4D2
Saboteur
Samurai Shodown
CSI: Deadly Intent
Where The Wild Things Are

DS:

A Witch’s Tale
Sushi-Go-Round
Cooking Mama 3
Nostalgia
Wire Way

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(Originally posted on GamingAngels.com)

These days, being a gamer means you have a backlog. Games can be in your backlog for any amount of reasons; 5 new titles came out on the same day, you picked things up on sale & haven’t unwrapped them, you found old games from 2 systems back that you still want to play through.

My stack of games keeps growing, partially due to the fact that I have since combined my library with that of my fiancee, and also in part to the fact that I am a sucker for a game on sale.

So, as I play through my stack of 360, PS2, PS3, DS and PSP games, I figured, why not let you all in on my journey to clear out some of my backlog?

Part One: Portal, Infinite Undiscovery and Last Remnant

Last week when I decided I was going to do this, I asked my Twitter followers to choose which of these three games I would test out first. Portal won. Well, more like Orange Box won, but the game I really wanted to play off the disc was Portal. I’ve seen the ending. I know all about the Cake. I have the song in English and Japanese on my iPod. I’m set!

I am proud to say I made it to test 16 (I believe) before I called it quits. Those damn turrets were annoying the hell out of me. I really enjoyed GLADoS’ humour though. Bring your daughter to work day – awesome. Promising not to lie to you anymore, which you knew she would anyway. What a devious little program she is. I will return to the Aperture Labs as I want to finish her off….. and have cake.

So when I gave up on trying to best the turrets, I switched gears and popped in Infinite Undiscovery. I figure this will be a safe bet. I can sit down for a week and blast through the story, gain as many of the achievements as I can manage and then shelve the game. Hell no! Don’t get me wrong. I love Square Enix to death. They make some awesome JRPGs, but IU just isn’t one of them. While I love some of the features, like connecting to other party members and using their abilities to shoot arrows or talk to mice, any game that has me looking for a walkthrough barely 2 hours in is toast. There was a severe lack of tutorial in the game, which really kills the experience. Don’t tell me to use Sunstone, only to find out I don’t even have the ability and even the walkthrough is assuming I have it already or know what it is. Ugh! So for now IU is back in the backlog until we decide what to do with it.

Finally I get into Last Remnant. Guess what? Another Square RPG! Hopefully we have better luck with this one. After a minor hiccup where the disc tried to tell me it was dirty and needed to be clean, I got it to load up. The story: You (Rush) and your sister Irina are the children of some very knowledgeable researchers who study Remnants. Remnants are these usually massive metal-magic objects that are sticking out of the ground. People with special abilities can bind themselves to these Remnants and use them for the good of the people. The reverse is also possible, and someone has kidnapped your sister and is getting her to mess around with the Remnants for their own dastardly purposes.

So far it’s been pretty good. Took me a while to get used to the Union system, but now that I have that figured out Rush doesn’t die as easily. I’m also learning about Aggro for the first time. I’m aware of the term thanks to all the WoW players I had on staff when I worked at EB. My one problem is the button mashing for the Trigger Chance that comes along in the middle of battle. Basically, if you hit whatever button it is that you are supposed to, the next hit your or your friendlies make can deal more damage. String enough of them together and you unlock an achievement and do great damage. My problem is that I find the way they randomly display the correct button is too quick most of the time and hard to follow. And then they went & threw pulling trigger buttons in there too. Ugh. That’s one achievement odds are I won’t get. Other than that, the story line is pretty decent so far. Maybe about 5 hours into the game, and its on two discs, so we’ll see how this goes.

Next Time in Yukino’s Backlog – A Journey

More on Last Remnant, hopefully I will have gotten over my anger towards turrets, and some thoughts on Beatles: Rock Band!

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Wow…. It sure has been a while. So much going on, I haven’t had much time for my own site.

Well, let’s see. Today’s gaming round up.

PSP-Undead Knights: Game is out in a couple of weeks. It was a blast playing it and I killed my battery a few times doing so.

360-Portal: Played until I hit Test 16, the point where the turrets show up. They annoyed me, so I switched to….

360-Infinite Undiscovery: Only about 2 hours in. So far I’m liking it. The battle system is unique enough. Taking a while to get used to the Connect function.

I should have played some more Knights in the Nightmare today, but I didn’t. The 360 distracted me. So did work.

There is always tomorrow. =)

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From someone in the Electronic Entertainment Industry Network on LinkedIn:

“Transformers Revenge of The Fallen will be pulled out of the theater tommorrow.

This picture will be rereleased due to company reorganization.

This needs to be done immediately because of negligence and possible drugs within organizations. There are unorthodox behaviors and stalking happening that will not be tolerated. harassment in this industry is not to be tolerated. People’s personal privacy should not be violated and stalking should not be tolerated. Unprofessionalism should be cleaned up permanently.

If by chance my name did not appear in the credits of Revenge of The Fallen, that is an error by Industrial Light and Magic. I sequenced supervised the shots on my reel. I am requesting that the movie be pulled and rereleased with my name in the credits.

Credability is a must. This entire experience has been disgusting and humiliating.”
(This is taken directly from his post in the group, including all the spelling errors. There was also a link to this gentleman’s “Code of Conduct” that he wrote himself, which I could dig up if need be.)

So let me see if I understand this. You work for ILM and Dreamworks, and worked on some of the sequences in Transformers 2. Your name may not be in the credits at this time. What does that part have to do with the drug & stalking points you bring up in before you mention this? You know they would fix the credits for the DVD/BluRay release so you would be properly listed.

It’s still pretty damn ballsy of you to just say that the movie is going to be pulled. Yeah right. I don’t think you have that kind of pull when a movie is pulling in numbers like $60 million for opening on a Wednesday. So either you have a very large set of balls, or you are just throwing a tempertantrum over a small oversight which can easy be fixed if you acted professional and calm about the situation.

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The games listed in this blog are so that I can remember what games I want from now until the end of this year. Some of these games have already been released. There is no particular order to any of the games listed in this blog. =)

Nintendo DS
Prof. Layton & The Diabolical Box
Knights in the Nightmare
Gardening Mama
Sushi Go Round

Nintendo Wii
New Super Mario Bros Wii

Playstation 3
White Knight Chronicles
Cross Edge
Ratchet & Clank Future: Crack in Time
Singstar: Queen w/ Microphones
Fat Princess

Xbox 360
Ghostbusters
Final Fantasy XIII
Bioshock 2
COD: MW2
Beatles Rock Band
Lego Rock Band
Squeeballs
Alan Wake
Metal Gear Rising

(This list is subject to change without notice. ~Yukino)

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I bought myself my 360 for my 27th birthday. I carried her home in the dry 30C+ weather, the same day I had gotten my horrible passport photo taken at Walmart. She came bundled with Forza 2, but I had purchased a game or two from work so that I would have some selection.

And in 1 year 10 months I finally reached the 15,000 Gamerscore mark!

I would like to thank the following games for making it happen:

Halo Wars, as this was the game I was playing when I broke the milestone
Resident Evil 5, since I have been playing it over & over to get more achievements unlocked
CSI, the only game I have the full 1000 points for, but it was super easy & worth it
Fallout 3, how I loved you so much before I bought any of your DLC
Gears of War 2, for all the fun I’ve had playing Horde mode with friends
Rock Band, Rock Band 2 & Lips, for bringing me the music
Fable 2, Lost Odyssey, Tales of Vesperia & Oblivion, for the various RPG love you showed me
Thrillville: OTR and the Viva Pinata games, such wonderful relaxing fun

But most importantly, to all my Xbox Live friends who I got to meet, get to know, and play with in the last 22 months. You people have made gaming much more enjoyable than it ever was before I got online. =)

Want to know about the Bleep Bloop? Click here!

In other non-achievable related news, I also wanted to point out that GamingAngels is having an awesome contest wherein you could win a cool gaming tshirt from Joystick Junkies. There will be three winners, and they can choose from any of the men’s or women’s designs that are under $25.

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It’s been a while since I’ve had time to write anything in my personal blog. So tonight, although I really should be in bed, but for some reason can’t sleep, I am jotting down my backlog for all to see.

Xbox 360
Dead Space – on Chapter 5, first playthrough
Tales of Vesperia – somewhere just before the end
Resident Evil 5 – need to play through the campaign on Pro now
Gears of War – have no clue where I am (but I played Gears 2 before this one)
Rock Band 1 & 2 – can only do vocals, suck at guitar & can’t do drums with the bad ankle
Silent Hill Homecoming – fighting some stupid boss with no health & I am totally screwed
Dead Rising – bought it & have only played for like an hour
Lost Planet – bought, haven’t played
Blue Dragon – somewhere on Disc 2 I think, around the end
DOAXB2 – collecting swimsuits, slowly
DOA4 – unlocking characters, again
Transformers: The Movie – never played past the first mission LOL!
PGR 4 – laziness
Forza 2 – also laziness
Virtua Fighter 5 – its a fighter, sue me =P
Soul Calibur 4 – see above
Viva Pinata – need to be in the mood
Viva Pinata 2 – same as above
and a bunch of XBL Arcade games I really should try to finish

PS3
Metal Gear Solid 4 – haven’t played past the E4All demo spot
LittleBigPlanet – on level 2
flOwer – on the 5th or 6th flower I believe

PS2
Persona 3 – laziness & can’t find my PS2 memory card to import to my PS3
Persona 4 – want to finish some other games first

DS
Big Bang Mini – almost done, had to finish Ninjatown first though
Japanese Coach – learning tool
Prof Layton & Curious Village – almost done
World Ends With You – recently taken out of the plastic

PSP
Castlevania – barely touched
Infected – never touched
Patapon – about halfway through

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Yes, I buy Xbox Live Arcade games. I also purchase DLC for games like Fallout 3, Fable 2 and my music games. I have no problem paying for and downloading these small purchases to enhance my gaming pleasure.

But I take issue with Sony’s recent decision to nix a retail UMD copy of Patapon 2 (which is on UMD everywhere else in the world) and replace it with a digital only release for the North American gamers. When I buy an actual video game, I expect a hard copy that I can take care of and not have to worry about becoming corrupted. I may lose a game save or two and be a bit upset about it, but I would be super ticked off if I had to redownload an entire game should a file become corrupted.

Not only that, but I don’t want to have to buy a zillion memory sticks (OK, bit of an exaggeration, but still) to fit my games. I don’t want to have to pick & chose which games I’ve paid for are on my memory stick at one time. Who’s to say I won’t be itching to play a game I have paid for from the PSN for my PSP but don’t have access to download? I shouldn’t have to go through the hassle of downloading & redownloading over and over again and again.

I considered importing a copy of the UMD, but unfortunately I haven’t found a retailer importing it for a decent price. And since I refuse to purchase a full retail length game as a digital purchase (who wants an empty game case with sleeve and manual sitting on their shelf that has no disc? So pointless!) it looks as though Sony won’t be getting the $24.99-$29.99 CDN that I was so willing to spend on Don-Chaka.

Bad move, Sony. Bad move.

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