Whoops

Hey folks, sorry for the relative silence over the past week. I got weirdly sick or something which made it really tough to get much of anything done but thankfully I'm over that slump. But then I realized this is midterms week! Oh no, but at least I'm about half done with them already. That will probably contribute to a bit more quiet on my end.

Either way, just wanted to share a few things with you folks. I've been playing a LOT of downloadable games lately. Usually it's easy enough to ignore them as there's so much dull stuff. It seems like XBLA and PSN are pulling out the big guns for fall though as already a bunch of neat things have popped up. Orcs Must Die!, Rochard, and Eufloria are a few of my favorites at the moment. I've also been playing through and streaming Uncharted: Drake's Fortune in my downtime. I'm hoping to be able to go through the second one as well before the 3rd launches.

I'd like to stream horror games but really the only ones I've not beaten yet are really difficult and/or too scary. Still, since it is October maybe I'll get around to streaming something spooky before the month ends.

Picked up El Shaddai Today

Despite not really knowing the first thing about El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron I picked it up today. Normally I wouldn't make such a gamble but it was $20 cheaper at a local store so I decided to go with my gut. Honestly, I don't even know what "El Shaddai" or "Metatron" even mean, so that should tell you this was a choice made at near random. I know there's some religious meaning or what have you but that's all.

Anyway, I'm already regretting my purchase which is too bad... The game LOOKS fantastic but beyond that the play isn't very spectacular. It's extremely dull, but maybe that will change later. I guess we'll see. Either way, I should probably play it through to completion after downing a good chunk of money for it.

For those of you on the fence about the game I would highly suggest playing the demo. It should give you a taste of the lovely locales but completely underwhelming combat. Or perhaps it will feel different for you! If there's one thing to be thankful for this console generation it is the wide library of game demos available.

I've Actually Played a Lot of Games Lately

I've been neglecting to update my blog with posts about games I've played. However, it wasn't until just now when looking over a list of things I beat last month that I realized I got a fair bit of stuff done. I played and completed Batman: Arkham Asylum, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Spy Fox: Dry Cereal, Spy Fox 2: Some Assembly Required, Putt-Putt Joins the Parade, Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon, Catherine, and most recently Trauma. That doesn't include games I just played but didn't beat like Rule of Rose, Lunar Knights, and others.

Now, Putt-Putt and Spy Fox aren't the most difficult games to finish or anything but I still think this is a relatively sizable list for about a month of playtime. And yet I didn't get to writing up a "test drive" post for any of them! At the very least, my time management skills are improving so I hope that means my blog will become more regularly updated in the coming weeks.

Teeny Update

Hey all!

Just wanted to let you know that I'm actually trying out streaming my gameplay online. I'm still not exactly sure how well it works (if it is even working!) but figured it was worth a shot. Honestly, streaming should be super easy but I tend to make things a lot more work. Here's a link to the channel. It's mostly just an experiment but it could be useful to grab some feedback as well. I have a friend who knows a lot about streaming so at least I can rely on him for the big problems.

Presumably because of my free day I'll be streaming on and off. That may be the case for the rest of this week as well, I'm not quite sure yet. Either way, I'm just going to be playing point and click adventure games that I find enjoyable.

Oh Dear

Ever since my post analyzing Silent Hill fanart pieces, I've been getting a lot of hits. Not so much to surpass the "video game hottie" posts but it's a pretty close competition. What's interesting is because Blogger lets you see the kinds of search queries people make to find your posts. Although this isn't important, I found it pretty amusing to and though I'd share.

Basically all of the top searches this week relate to the SH post in less-than-savory but all too expected ways:

• silent hill porn
• chris redfield porn
• silent hill homecoming porn
• silent hill nurse porn

Well, at least these internet users know what they want. Unfortunately, they're not going to find what they want here! 

Also, I'm sorry for the bit of radio silence as of late. I finally signed up for Netflix and am determined to make as much use of it as possible. While this may negatively impact my game time it is giving me a lot of content for my movie blog. What can ya do. 

Updates

So, I've been pretty busy this week! I really want to get back to writing my little game review snippets but it seems the time is not right just yet. My fingers are crossed for next week now that things are calming down. On the plus side, I got a promotion!

In short little news snippets that I was too lazy to talk about...

• Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure is a wonderful game and everyone should play it if they haven't.
• L.A. Noire got so much good press - and I disagree with all of it.
• PlayStation 4 is in the works and in other news nobody was surprised. It's been a good amount of years already!

More personally, I'm currently helping a friend work on a shmup and it's pretty fun. I'm also digitizing my game collection into this database software because I was too lazy to create my own program. Probably gonna write a "review" of the software so that'll get linked here when it does happen. In fact, I'll probably write a L.A. Noire review too next week. I just hope I can finish the game soon enough to put out my opinion before everyone else posts their disheartened essays about the game. 

Updates

It looks like Blogger is back in working order! I just wish this fuss had happened this week instead of last, because this week is Finals at school... and then my birthday weekend. Ah well, what can you do?

So unfortunately for you fine readers I'll probably be mostly out of action this week. Of course, now that I've said that the case may actually be that I post a ton on Thursday or Friday but that's no promise. Instead I'm just warning that I may be inactive for this week before returning to regular form afterwards. On the plus side I've gone through a good amount of games so that means there will be a lot to write about.

See you later :).

Updates!

1. I got my issue of GameSpite Quarterly 8 today and it looks fantastic! Looking it over really makes me want to make my own book. This issue is all about the PS1 and 400+ pages. I'd love to do my own thing about the PS2 but it would definitely need to be self-published, like GSQ. I'm eagerly awaiting the Hardcoregaming101 book by the way as well.

2. Still probably not going to get in any mini-review things for the games I'm playing on here this week. Sorry about that but I'm running behind on my full length reviews so obviously those take priority. However, I picked up some new games this week and I'm very interested in them. I think I'll write about them here early next week. Hopefully!

3. Why did the make the plane control in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas so difficult? I can't even handle it! I'm thiiiis close to the ending and can't get past a horrid plane mission.

Update: Technical Difficulties

My internet went down on Monday and only came back late this night. As such, I've got to work on a lot of pressing internet-related work... so my blog will probably be neglected for a few more days, if not the rest of this week. It really depends on how fast I can do the work I was supposed to have already been cracking on :P.

Don't procrastinate, kids!

Updates: Streaming and Horror Movies

I was pretty busy running around on Friday/Saturday for a rather exciting reason. After lots of searching, I picked up a capture device. What's that? Basically, it's the kind of thing people use when they record gameplay for Youtube straight through the console or stream gameplay live on various sites.

Over the last few days I've learned a lot about capturing and streaming my gaming, but there's certainly a lot more to learn. As it stands, I can currently stream in a sort of muddled SD quality but at least there is no choppiness. My card is capable of streaming in crisp 480p but unfortunately my PC is too darn old to handle that kind of quality. However, once I get a new rig in my house I know I'll never skimp on video quality again. My current streaming page is available here but I intend to return to Justin.Tv once I can use higher quality.

As for now I really don't have any specific streaming schedule. At the very least I am trying to record and save my gaming sessions on the page so that people may look at them later. If and when I have a regular streaming time that will be posted on the blog. Or if I intend to do a marathon or something else unusual that'll be posted here too. I'll be streaming basically whatever I feel like although for now it will be based around last gen games and this gen. Regardless of what I stream, expect there to be lots and lots of losing.

Something else exciting came up over the weekend. I was having a lazy Sunday and thought it would be fantastic to start a movie blog. Aside from games, movies are my other love and I think I could write up a brief summary of thoughts over what I watch. So, in a way it'll be a lot like this blog except that there will be no dying on my part. At least I hope not. I've quite aptly named the blog Marcus's Movie Life and there's nothing there yet, but if you like movies you might wanna follow/favorite/whatever it for later! I must warn you though that horror movies may end up being the focus of the site since that's my fallback genre when there's nothing else I feel like watching.

Having a new blog shouldn't impede my updates on this site. I generally always watch movies as is so there's no change to my habit. I just wish I had started this last year during my October horror movie bonanza. I watched over 60 horror movies in one month and by the end of it I couldn't stand to watch anything.

Anyways, that's enough chatter about my activities. Regular scheduled blogging shall resume shortly...

More Updates

So, this week I have 3 games on my plate to try and beat and review. Four if you include the Bioshock I'm just doing for fun for a little site. But 3 are pretty time sensitive and I'm curious as to how I'll be able to finish them off by Sunday or Monday. Well, thankfully there's not too much on my plate the rest of the week so I can dedicate myself to GAME PLAYING. Unfortunately this means more lack of mini reviews for this site. Presumably there's still other gaming things I can write about, so that'll be kept in mind during down time.

Today I got to play the 3DS. It was a compact and attractive system, which pleased me. However, the 3D effect was really strange. It made my eyes feel all weird and I couldn't "focus", it felt like. I toyed with the slider and slowly cranked it down from full 3D, to 2D, and back up. Without being on full 2D I really felt none of the other settings worked for me. After a while with the slider at around 75% 3D I was able to finally start focusing again and see what I needed. The 3D effect was still palpatable, but didn't really seem so impressive. I gotta say, it kind of saddened me that it wasn't some godly little 3D fantasy box for my eyes.

In other news, the games I'm playing for review purposes currently are Ys I and II Chronicles, Phantom Brave: The Hermuda Triangle, and Yakuza 4. Right now Yakuza 4 is taking up all my attention because that series is godly. Hopefully it clocks in around 20 hours so I can knock that out in a couple dedicated gaming days.

That's most of the gaming stuff that's gone on around here. I've also been re-organizing the game room with the addition of new shelf space. Everything isn't perfect yet, but it's getting there. Of course, for me, nothing is ever perfect enough. It's still worth the attempt!

Updates

Heeeeeey everyone!

I'm just making this post here to let you know that for the most part my blog will not update with such masses of stuff each day like it mostly has been in the initial week. That gives you time to actually read stuff without get swamped by updates as well as time for me to do other things too!

Today I got an editorial position on a small, but growing gaming site so that will definitely take up some time. That, paired with my schoolwork and various other endeavors will stretch my obligations further. This blog is a ton of fun to work on though so it's not like I'm going to stop focusing on it!

Just wanted to share that there probably won't be 4 posts or whatever every day, but there might be sometimes! I just need to get everything all balanced and see what time is left for what. I picked up about 10 new games over the weekend too so at this pace I'll keep having things to review for a very, very long time. As it stands, if I can keep up my current pace (without counting new purchases) it will probably take maybe 3 or 4 months to write a few paragraphs on every game I've not really touched in my collection. We'll see how far off I am once that time eventually comes.