Oh back to school...bts...to prove to dad I am not a fool...

Yes, it is 7am. And yes, I am awake. That only means one thing - college has once again started. I actually don't have class until 9, but I figured I should wake up early on the first day of classes and try to get in a more morning-ish scheddy. Alternating between M/T/W/H I have 9/8/9/8 in the morning. No Friday classes, woot! Another good thing is just this one class today, so it's a kind of way to ease into the Mondays.

We basically got our room set up yesterday, and it looks good to me. I am living in an upperclassmen dorm, so that's pretty sweet. One I put up some posters my side looked better to me because that's what seems to always make a difference.

The move-in yesterday wasn't too bad. I had tried bringing less stuff this year, and my Mom kept on saying, "You have practically nothing." Well, way to go me. I figured by junior year I should know kinda what I really don't need, and I should be fine on what I have. If worst comes to worst, I have some space for more, but I doubt I'd be bringing more stuff.

Anyyyyyways, I don't think I actually have anything else to say; sorry for the short blog post, but I knew I had to make one around the time that school started. I havn't done too much gaming lately because of coming back to school, but now that my schedule is different than summer, free time means I could be doing gaming. But I should also prolly somewhat have a life, so it won't be 20/7 gaming or anything.

The latest patch for Median (1.55) should be coming out sometime this week, so I guess I'd hit that up somewhat when the time comes. Maybe I'll play Silkroad Online a bit more now that I'm back at school. Of course, I can still go strong with FFR/Stepmania (T1 = faster downloading of song packs!). And lastly, I almost feel like replaying Terranigma; no idea why, it was just a pretty fun game overall.

Well, I guess this is it for today, blogeroo. Have a good one! Peace.

Exercise to Burn that Gamer Fat Off...

Well, I decided to go with my mom when she was went out to Ridley Creek State Park to walk five miles (she's in training for the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk), so I was up around 9:30 to do that. Yeh, I don't think my schedule had me ready to wake up at that hour, but I managed to heave myself outta bed and accompany her. It was nice out, and it wasn't all that bad. I'm still kinda tired now (but of course going to bed around 5 or 6am may be the fault of that). A nice soft sprinkle of rain even came along to cool us down.



Later that day, my family went to Philly to see my sister (my dad hadn't seen her place before). It was quite trafficky (whatever, I can spell it like that if I want) because of some work here, an accident there, and a Unity Day Festival near the Franklin Institute (all during a nice rainfall). It's a nice part of the city where she lives. Anywho, we ended up eating at a Chinese buffet back near where I live. I made sure to pile up the chicken (nice spicey Thai chicken!).


So yeh, I dunno if it'll be rainy for the next couple of days, but it rained a bunch today. We'll have to see. Man, I'm tired from this day of not being a total bum.

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I guess a reason I am so tired is that I stayed up last night to finish Terranigma. I had talked about it in the last post, and you saw the interesting "box world" menu screen. I enjoyed the rest of the game, but there were points that I must have not totally been listening to the story because I got lost at some points. I'll letcha play it for yourself and see what you make out of it.


Well, I'm kinda tired right now, so I guess I'll just stop talking about the game since I prolly said enough last post. Overall, it's a very nice game and I think you should try it out, especially if you like playing games like Zelda. Take a look at the screenies and see if you wanna try it out (highest pic I'm about to destroy a lovely large cube, second I have no idea why I put in there [kissing, love announcements, and circle of doom about to swallow them], and the final is the final stage of the final boss in this game...finally)

Peace out, blog.

The End is Coming!

Hey all, whaaaaat’s happenin’? Nothing much here, although I am trying to get myself together somewhat in preparation for my junior year which starts in a little over a week. It’s pretty exciting to be able to see everybody again (esp my gf), and all that good stuff. I’m almost thinking whatever they have first night, I’d have to get a cheesesteak wrap because that’s my “thing.” Anyways, that’s not that important, so we’ll see what goes down come the 26th.

I took a trip to Staples to get the staple school supplies – notebooks and pencils (I made sure to get 0.7mm this time since I tend to break 0.5mm), and I picked up some Sharpie’s because you can never go wrong with them. All I need now is basically a trip to Walmart or whatever to get anything else (ie duct tape). Until then, it’s coming down and I got the whole “if there are any dinners you would like to request before you go back, let us know” thing. I did request taco’s, and I’ll probably make quesadillas for them before I go back (beyond that I know I’ll have to bust out the mac+cheese, and I guess a pizza wouldn’t be out of the question).

My dad likes to try and get my textbooks online before I go back to save some money, so I think most of them have come in. Now we’re trying to get a 35mm manual SLR camera I’ll need for one of my Comm classes on Ebay, and I’m waiting for some ink for my printer to come in. Meanwhile, I have to try and help more around/outside the house (still need to mow again and pull weeds or whatever). I’m also trying to get myself back on an acceptable sleeping schedule (I don’t think going to bed like every night at sometime between 5-8am would fly for the school year). So yeh, I guess I’m at that whole transitioning stage from summer couch potato to ripe college studious tomato (sorry, had to rhyme).

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Anyways, one game I had been playing for a couple of days was Dungeon Siege for the PC. This is a kind of Action-RPG game (kinda like Diablo 2 or WoW), and it was a fun single-player experience (it has a multiplayer, but I have not tried it out). The story is your typical one, with a bad side (the Seck, led by Commander Gom), who are a bunch of baddies who have escaped from their lair that had been sealed off (or whatever) and I guess want to take over the world (etc etc etc…). You gotta kill them off and send them back to where they belong or something, and you get some help along the way.

One difference from the other two games I listed is that in this game, you won’t have basically just one guy that you take through the game, but rather a group of people. The way it works is that if you move one guy, the rest will follow and basically help that person by automatically attacking whatever needs to be slain. You can select any and control them, or you (as I did) can just select everybody and move everybody at once. You can have up to either 8 people or 7 people and a mule (who cannot be equipped like others but has a larger storage space).

Another kind of difference (especially against a game like WoW) is that you aren’t going to have 50 billion quests. Quests in this game are more like checkpoints that act as stages pointing out your progress in beating the game (therefore this type of game is one that you basically are done playing the game once you beat it, unlike WoW in which there are 60 billion other things to do even if you get through the game – I’m not sure what multiplayer is like though, so I cannot be sure what else lies in that realm of gameplay). Enemies stay dead, even if you quit the game and reload your save later.

There is basically four ways in which you can deal damage – Melee, Ranged, Combat Magic, and Nature Magic. Melee is you basic hit the enemy head-on with some type of weapon, Ranged involves the use of a bow, Combat Magic focuses more on the damaging types of magic (like fire, and spells that will help others in combat situations), and Nature Magic focuses more on magic that involves the manipulation of environment and whatnot (ice, lightning, healing, etc). Both types of magicks (pretty spelling) have spells that do kind of overlap, with different names and effects (ie summoning, healing, etc.). Each character can specialize in any of the four, and you are free to swap it up at any point in the game (one character can start out Melee, but by the end of the game be a Nature Magician).

I guess I better wrap this up…I’m pretty sure everyone is asleep by this point. I do like this game because there is a pretty linear path to get you through the game, but you are still free to do a little exploring for a dungeon or two that is a bit off the path. There are a good number of items (and spells) available for use, and I do recommend getting a packmule to help you carry all of those items you will run across. You can change the camera angle around, so that’s pretty nice too. Replayability lies in the fact that your guys can switch their profession at any point (in one runthrough of the game, my main dude was Melee; this last time I played I made him a Ranger). Overall, it may not have all the “everything” that WoW has, but it’s still a great play (there is also a Dungeon Siege 2 out there, which I have played and am impressed by).

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Surprise! This one will (hopefully) be shorter, but I just wanted to make a quick thing with a game I just started playing tonight, Terranigma, for the SNES. This one is another RPG, with a more Adventure-RPG style (much like a Zelda game, for instance). Basically, here the main character jumps into a magical box and upsets the balance of the 2 worlds or something, and he must go fix the world(s).

The game plays much like Zelda, where you need to go around to different areas and get through them (whether that involves getting through some kind of puzzle, killing bad guys/bosses, etc). One different here is that it is more basic RPG-oriented (hit points, most of the strength/dex/vit/luck bonuses or whatever they are). Most of the weapons (so far) seem to be spear-oriented, and you can do a couple of maneuvers (swinging, jabbing, jump spin, etc). So yeh, most everything is your basic Adventure-RPG style.

One other difference is the menu screen…er…not really sure what I can call it. As I said before, the kid found this magical box and somehow binded with it. Now, whenever you want to pull an item up/switch armor or weapon/change game options, hit the Select button and your character will jump into a box. This transports you to the box world, and you take control of a little flying thing by the name of Yomi (it looks like a purple bouncy ball with wings and flapping ears). Here, you can travel to 4 different rooms (Center Room [where you can do basic things, like game options, or just some guides to help you with the game], Item Room, Weapon Room, and Armor Room). Do your thing, and just hit Select when you are done and, BOING, you jump right out of the box and you can continue with your game.

So yeh, like I said, I am still in the midst of playing the game (but I have brought back the plants, birds, wind, and animals [and I think currently working on humankind]), so woot for that. It’s a pretty fun game overall (although nothing too special), but it may have the most interesting menu screen I’ve seen.

Okay, well I guess I’ll call this post finished for now. If you actually got this far, good for you. Later y’all, peace.

Back in Boredom

Ok, so that title was supposed to be some kind of reference to "Back in Black" (don't worry, no hating here, it's a great song). Anywho, it is around 3 weeks 'til I go back to Etown, but until then it has been pretty boring for the time being. I have been entertaining myself by kinda still unpacking stuff so I can then try and repack stuff for college. I think I wanna try and take a lot less stuff this year (you think by junior year I'd know what I need), but we'll see how things work out.

I havn't been doing an overwhelming amount of gaming (for me); mostly just some FFR (Flash Flash Revolution - online keyboard DDR'ing), and I am actually playing through that old school RPG I played (and reviewed) awhile back, Castle of the Winds. I am on the second of the 2 CoTW's, and this time I am kinda aiming more towards a melee character (last time I was kinda mostly a wizardess). It's a lot more fun than one would think at first glance (although there are flaws with the game of course, but then again there are flaws with every game). I had hoped for a third CoTW game, but there is none as far as I know. Oh well, still a good play second time around.

Hmm, so I don't think I have much else to say. Um.....I had Kraft Mac & Cheese for dinner if that's any incentive for me to end this blog post. It is? Thank you. Lata =)

Weekend of Good Times

Hey Bloggie, just checkin in. Only thing I really have to say that happened recently was that my girlfriend came to visit with us this weekend. It was awesome seeing her again, and we had a good time. Mostly we just chilled around the house and watched TV. On Saturday night we got a couple of pizzas from Little Anthony's and rented Ghost Rider starring Nicholas Cage. Needless to say, I think I was the only one who liked the movie, and of course it doesn't help that I like just about any movie I watch (although I would've liked more action in it).

On Sunday the weather was kinda iffy so we hung around and played some FFR on the computer. That night I tried cooking quesadillas for her and the fam, and I was happy that they worked out fine. Props out to Etown's quesadillas for making me think about them in the first place.

Today the weather was nicer so we went out for a walk on State Street and had lunch at On a Roll, a nice little restaraunt. Afterwards we stopped for ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. When we got back to my house we basically hung around and watched some more TV, then we actually played with Crazy Bones a little. I don't feel like going into a long description about them, so you can Google them if you want, but basically they are like little figures that you flick at the other person's Crazy Bones and try to knock them down. I think the C.B faze is out (don't know if it was ever in), but they are still neat little things to pass the time.

After she left I spent a couple of hours watching Discovery Channel (it's Shark Week), then I ate dinner and then later tonight I had watched last week's Hell's Kitchen and the new Hell's Kitchen that was on. I like the show because the head dude (Chef Ramsey) is such an intense character and really puts a lot of pressure on the chefs. Probably my fav of the cooking reality shows. Next week is the finale, so I'm looking forward to what will happen with that.

Well, I guess that's it for now - now let's see if I can survive the rest of the summer, and in about 4 weeks I'll be back in Etown! Wheee! Peace out, y'all.

Just another summer day

Hey there, I just decided to post here for probably no apparent reason. Whatev. Anywho, it's a pretty nice day outside (as usual). I did take a walk to Eckerd to pick up some prescriptions, and I stopped at Rita's on the way home since I havn't had any of their water ice this summer yet. I got myself something like Tropical Melon or something, and of course it was pretty good. My mom had some work done on her mouth, so I was helping my dad in taking care of her for the rest of the day - pretty much gave me a chance to be on the computer all day and just randomly surf the web. Maybe I'll watch a movie later or something; I do have a small list of some movies I wanna see (I also wanna see the 1st and only season of "Freaks and Geeks" since I saw the first episode last year in Psych and enjoyed it).

In terms of gaming, I don't really have much to share at this point. At some point, I did start a game called "Tales of Phantasia" for SNES (an RPG), and it's pretty interesting I guess. The battles are real-time and it isn't turn-based. You actually need to move and walk and attack your opponents yourself, which kind of makes it like a 3rd-person action RPG or whatever. You can see a screenie there of just a random battle I photo'ed (I just did it, but I would have tried to screenie a more impressive battle if I had the time), so you can see the graphics are also pretty interesting. I don't think I have gotten really far into it, but I probably like turn-based ones like the FF series a bit better.

Well, I mostly made this post just to make a post and to check up since I had previously left my blog dead for a couple of months without update. I'll try to check in a bit more frequently (maybe like once a week or whatever), and I guess we'll just see how things go. Hope all (read: if there are any) readers are having a good summer - I'll ttyl peace.

Resurrection!

Hey Blogger; long time, no type, eh? Man, it’s been awhile. The last time I did something I was a sophomore. Alas, I have moved up to junior status. Here are the classes I will be taking for the Fall ’07 semester (remember I am Professional Writing major/Communications minor):

EN280 – Creative Writing – Poetry, Prose
EN313 – Studies in Drama
COM125 – Media Design and Production
COM311 – Reporting and Newswriting for the Print Media
COM205A – Applied Communications – News/ Yearbook

I’m kind of excited for the Creative Writing class because it’s been awhile since I’ve done creative writing instead of professional, and this is a smaller P/F class with probably just English majors, so it should be a good outlet for my…er…”creative” writing. The other English class is part of major – it appears to be another fun lit course, so whoopee for that. Fortunately, I’ve had the professor before and he’s really nice so hopefully it goes along smoothly.

As for the Communications courses, the Production course seems interesting, and the professor was my freshman seminar professor, so hopefully it works out well. I do know the Comm Dept decided to be unique and use Macs for their building for their supposedly superior audio/video editing and those kinds of software, so I’ll need to learn that system (I’ve been brought up with PC). I write for the college newspaper, so hopefully I can actually learn the correct way to write in the Newswriting class. As for the Applied Comm, we are required to do 2 of: News/Yearbook, TV, and Radio, so I definitely chose this one first, and I’ll probably then choose TV and try to do something behind the scenes or whatever.

Next year I’ll be living in Brinser, which seems like the upperclassmen dorm. I’m not exactly sure what it offers that others don’t, but overall it seems like it’s good (especially since my girlfriend will be living on the floor below me!). My roommate is a really nice guy and a Music major, so he’ll probably be living in Zug (the music building) since I heard that’s where they chill.

As for this summer, I’ve been doing a great job at doing nothing productive. At some point I’m going to need to actually do something, but for the time being I’ve got the bumness down pat. Basically I’ve just been sleeping, gaming, using the Internet, or watching TV.

Basically I guess that’s it for now in terms of my life, so now I guess I’ll say a few words about 2 similar games, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI.

FFV (SNES)
This one I have played through and beat. Although I really have not played other games in the Final Fantasy series, this is definitely a good one. It’s the basic RPG-style game we all know and love. Turn-based, with plenty of vehicles to take you to different lands as you battle against the evil Exdeath. The big thing in this game, and probably the biggest plus, is the use of the job system (picture to the left). There are up to I believe 22 different jobs that you can pick from by the end of the game (you get a couple each time as you progress through the game), and each job has a special abilities which you can gain to add to your total list of abilities. Mix and match your abilities to create a unique set of characters, and go hither to fight the evil!

FFVI (SNES)
This one I also have beaten, and it was pretty good as well. At first I didn’t think I would enjoy it because I figured it’d take a lot to match up to the job system in FFV, but overall this was another nice play. There are not jobs in this one – to gain spells and whatnot, you need to pick up various summonable creatures placed in “Magirock” and equip one to a character for that character to eventually learn the spells available from that summon. So, to me, FFV seemed to emphasize skills, which this one seemed to emphasize spells (tip: have each character learn Ultima and you pretty much have the game in the bag).

Some quirks in this game was when there were times that the game forced you to split up your party (there was actually a sequence pretty early in the game that you have 3 different scenarios to complete with 3 different parties); I felt this constant splitting burdened me with character development, which is a major part of RPG’s. Still, this wasn’t too bad for me because near the end I took the extremist route and leveled everybody to 99 (and taught all spells to all characters *cough* Ultima *cough*), so enemies were a breeze.

Picture-wise; the one way above is basically just one of the many battles you'll be in. Also, just above is a little 4-picture montage. Top left shows one of the weird cutscenes with some fun language, top right is actually the final boss, bottom left shows the abilities screen with different catagories which are only open to specific characters(nothing much to show there), and bottom right is a pretty emo looking screen with a dead bird and one of the characters attempting to jump off a cliff (like I said, pretty weird cutscenes in this game)

Oh ya, another thing I did like about this game was that basically every item had a description so I knew what it did. I think if I remember FFV had some times when I didn’t know what an item would do. Overall, I do certainly recommend this as another decent FFV experience.
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Well journal, I guess I’ll get going now. It’s possible I may start to use this blog more, but don’t expect daily updates or anything. There may be times that I’d just use this as a normal blog, and not as a gaming blog since I don’t just play a game then play another game then play another game then play another game…ok that was complete BS of course that’s what I do. Still, I don’t always feel like saying anything about some of them. Well…I shall peace out now so you can go do something productive with your life; lates.