The Professional Gamer - April 18, 2016

This has been the week where I had something scheduled to do every evening.  In spite of that, I managed to play a lot of video games this week.  However, I only managed to watch a very small amount of anime.  Anyway, read on to find out what I've been doing for the past week.

Let's start off with the shortest discussion.  I'm down to the final episode of Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash.  At this point, I'm expected the series to end one of two ways: either everybody lives or everybody dies.  I'll probably find out next week.  I also ended up showing Golden Boy to some friends.  I'd forgotten exactly how lewd this series was.  It's so bad; but it's also a lot of fun.  And the friends enjoyed it too!

While I was waiting at some of my meeting commitments, I played some Fantasy Life.  Once I finished Ocarina of Time last week, I needed to find something else to play.  And so, I've spent a bunch of effort on increasing some of my crafting and gathering professions.  To some degree, its a lot of work, but I'm having fun with it.

Finally, I've continued working towards a new ship in Elite: Dangerous, but don't feel like I've made a huge amount of progress this week.  To be honest, 2 million credits is nothing to sneeze at, but I've still got another 9 million to go.

That's all I've got for this week.  See you next time and game on!

The Professional Gamer - January 25, 2016

This has been another pretty great week. I've again been able to spend a fair amount of time dedicated to the more trivial pursuits of life.  Which means that I'll have a bit more to talk about this week compared to what I might otherwise have.  Read on to find out how I spent that time.

My viewing time this week was dominated by watching all but the last episode of One Punch Man.  The series has been so much fun.  It's a real breath of fresh air among the moe serials and overserious cast-of-thousands fighting series that have dominated the air-waves lately.  I only have one episode left to watch, and I'm kinda dragging my feet about it. Mostly because I don't want the series to end, but also because I'm an older anime fan and have seen so many serials fizzle at the end.  Here's hoping that One Punch Man stays strong to the end.

After I finished writing my article last week, I spent the remainder of the evening playing Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale.  The game is a few years old, and I originally purchased it sometime after it was released on Steam in North America.  I had mostly forgotten about it, but decided to reinstall it on a whim.  I played for a few hours that night and a few more hours over the next few days.  In the beginning it was fun, but I feel on the cusp of a very long grind to get through the rest of the game, and that has somewhat turned me off of the whole thing.

I also finally had enough time to get a few decent sessions in with Elite: Dangerous.  I hadn't played for a long time, largely because it is the type of game that I want to dedicate a relatively large block of time to at once.  For the last few months, I haven't felt that I had the appropriate amount of time to dedicate to it.  Man, I love this game a lot, but sometimes death can be swift and arbitrary.  This is largely due to the NPC archetype commonly referred to as the "psychopath".  Basically, these are folks who will kill you just for fun.  They never ask for your credits or cargo or anything like that.  They just pull you out of lightspeed travel and start hammering your ship with everything they have.  At least insurance costs for my ship are not too punishing at my level of play.  It's a little frustrating sometimes, but from what I can gather in the community this is considered a "feature" and an "essential part of the tone" of the game.  I'm not sure that I agree with that, and I may go back to working the relatively safe career of the merchant.

I'm still reading Ways to the West, but I am now more than half-way through the book.  The current chapter is especially interesting to me because the discussion not only centers around Denver, but on the exact area of my current commute: the Southeast Corridor.  I've been enthralled learning about the history that has lead to an everyday feature of my own life.  I should be finished with the book in time to discuss it more completely in a fortnight.  So you should look forward to that in the future.

I'm going to finish off this week with a couple of fun links.  Elysium Adventures is a Denver based firm that organizes wilderness adventure trips with a fantasy theme.  Think of those urban team building exercises, except out in the wilderness of Colorado, and you can pretend to be an elf without fear of judgement.  Finding Molly is a new webcomic that is being published by Emet Comics.  The comic is brand new, but looks really promising.

I hope you all have fun this week and I'll see you back here again next time.  Game on!

One Punch Man

Recetter

Elite Dangerous

 

The Professional Gamer - January 11, 2016

Hello readers!  This week has mostly been full of adulting. Went to a chiropractor to try and reduce the tightness in my neck (seems to be helping), scheduled a dental exam and cleaning, and did some more yoga and pilates.  All told, I'm feeling pretty good about things.  

Some cool things happening this week.  Of primary interest, we had another Steven-bomb this week.  I haven't watched the Friday episode yet ("Log Date 7 15 2"), but I have enjoyed all of the new episode so far this week.  I loved learning more about Ruby and Sapphire, and seeing some more development of Peridot's character.

I also spent some time this week watching the last few episodes of Community.  I'm sad that the series is over, although the finale was a lot of fun.  Now I have to find another casual show to binge through during the week.  Any suggestions?

In roleplaying news, I've got about a third of my systems information input into a game wiki and have started inviting my players to make some stories about some of the inhabited planets.  I'm hoping that we can make this game a bit more of a collaborative, storytelling game.  This would be in sharp contrast to our typical dungeon delver / combat heavy type games, but would hopefully be a welcome change.

Finally, I'm still playing through Knights of the Old Republic.  I'm a Jedi now, running around with a blue lightsaber in one hand and a vibroblade in the other.  Future goal: duel wielding lightsabers.

That's all I've got for this week.  See you next time, and game on!

R.I.P Satoru Iwata

Satoru Iwata unfortunately passed away yesterday. Nintendo reports it was from a bile duct growth. Satoru Iwata was a very familiar face to Nintendo fans and he was very active in the community. Between Nintendo Direct and Iwata Asks he always tried to be at the fore front of what Nintendo was doing. He will be missed.

Fallout 4 Announced

I know I am posting this a tad late (understatement of the week). But Fallout 4 was announced! There is even a rumor that it will come this year! While I honestly didn't play Fallout: New Vegas I loved Fallout 3. And I love the fact that Dogmeat will continue to make an appearance as a companion. Of the few NPCS that you will lose hours of progress to if he dies.

Pokémon Art Academy Contest!

Pokémon Art Academy Contest!

Do you like Pokémon? Do you like to draw? Well then you are in luck,  The Pokémon Company International and Nintendo of American are hosting the Pokémon Art Academy Competition. Running between February 18 and March 29, 2015. To participate first you need to get a copy of Pokémon Art Academy. This game offers you 40 lessons in how to paint, sketch, and draw popular Pokémon. The contest has two categories that you can enter in: Dress-Up Pikachu and Your Favorite Pokémon

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New 2DS Designs Incoming

Remember when most electronics had the option of a translucent case that was tinged one color but still let you see the inner workings? Well Nintendo does and has decided to bring it back with two new 2DS options starting on 11/21/2014 at an MSRP of $99.99.

This will launch along side (but separately) of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire this month and will make a great gift for this holiday season. And for those that are not sure, yes these are compatible with any 3DS game

Amiibos are coming

Amiibos are coming

Lets admit one thing, as geeks we tend to start collecting things. It tends to be limited to one type of thing or related to something specific, but we do collect. For some it is DVD's, others Gundum models. A recent trend as been the introduction of NFC models that work with video games. Both Skylanders and Disney Infinity have been really successful with this. So now Nintendo is getting in the game with Amiibo, figurines that resemble characters either owned by or licensed to Nintendo. The initial run is set to work with Super Smash Bros Wii and Super Smash Bros 3DS (requires dongle that has not been released yet), Mario Kart 8, and Hyrule Warriors.

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StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

You know what StarCraft II has been missing? Some single player Protoss love. The Terrans and the Zerg has both gotten their time in the sun, but not the Protoss. Thankfully that has finally changed with the announcement of "Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void" in which the Protoss aim to take back their homeworld of Aiur that was lost to the Zerg so many years ago. But there is more at play here, and the whole of creation may stand at the brink of destruction unless things change.

10 Years of WoW

A decade is a long time for anything to last. Most things start to fade at the 4 year mark. While not completely forgetting these things do tend to wane in popularity. Therefore for World of Warcraft to still have 7.4 million subscribers (source) after 10 years is pretty amazing. In order celebrate this a new documentary called "World of Warcraft: Looking for Group Documentary" was recently released. Here they talk about the inception of MMO's that spawned the idea of WoW, the pitfalls they ran into, and what they do to try and please the players. It is just over an hour, but is pretty entertaining.