I'm still gaming

Just for the record, I'm still gaming.  Just not in the place where I use to be for the most part.  Since I've had a hard time getting friends to play with me on Xbox360 I've started getting back into my PSP.  Specifically Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions.

I've been playing this game on both the PS and PSP but I seemed to be a little further ahead on the PSP so that's where I decided to focus my time into playing the game.  I like the game because I can pick it up and play it for a half hour at a time and actually feel like I'm making progress.  In that half and hour I can win 2 battles and maybe 3 if I get to strike first with some of my heavy hitters.

One of the things I realized after I picked this game up again was that I had duplicates of some of the Zodiac symbols with some of the characters and not having characters with some of the other symbols.  Since I wanted a full and complete and balanced team that meant dismissing some of my characters that I worked hard to level up and learn things and then hiring complete noobies. 

I charted out which characters/symbols I had and which ones I needed and then make the sad choice to let some of them go.  I had spent many hours leveling those characters up and learning skills but some of them had to go.  I also spent a lot of time looking at all the options in the Warrior's Guild to find just the right Brave/Faith level character with just the right Zodiac symbol to join my team.  Once that was done I was left with a big problem.

THEY WERE ALL LEVEL ONE NOOBIES!!!!

It doesn't matter what level the other characters are on your team whenever you hire a new warrior they start out at level 1.  That means when you take them into battle you'll be fighting level 22 baddies with level 1 characters.  Do you know how many times my characters died.  Were revived.  Then promptly killed again before they could even take a turn to run away.  And if they don't fight they don't level up.  I can't tell you how many Phoenix Downs and Potions/Hi-Potions I went through just in one battle alone.  And because I had about 6 noobies to level up I had to go through this a lot. 

I didn't take them all into battle at the same time (learned that the hard way).  I would take 2 noobies, one really good healer and 2 heavy hitters.  The heavy hitters would knock the HP down to a reasonable level and the noobies would move in to finish them off (you get an EXP bonus for finishing off a character).  If anyone got in trouble my healer would step in and help out (a healer with a long range weapon is wonderful).  Even though this method worked it took a lot of grinding away at battle after battle just to get these new characters up to a level where they could hold their own in a battle and not have a healer hold their hand all the time. 

I did have to replace one of my noobies because there was something about them that wasn't working.  I don't know if it was their power or speed or whatever, but I didn't like it and it wasn't helping me.  Because I got rid of them I had to find another Zodiac of the same symbol to replace them.  Which meant another level 1 noobie.  While this last noobie is now a level 17 and the rest of my characters are in the 30-40 level range at least he can hold his own in battle.  He can take a couple of hits before he has to retreat and heal, but that means he can give a couple of hits too.  And he's not bad.  And a lot better than the wimp I let go to get him.

But during all that grinding I was getting bored.  I knew it would be for the better in the long run but fighting battle after battle just to increase the level of one characters didn't seem worth it.  So what did I do?

I started a new game.

Just to see if it would be worth it to stock my roster with the perfect team of a variety of Zodiacs right from the outset of the game I started over from the beginning.  When you finally get a squad a characters to play with I was disappointed.  I don't remember my other game starts to be witch such low Brave/Faith levels for all the characters.  Unfortunately in order to hiring better characters I need to win battles and earn money.  By winning battles and earning money I was leveling up characters I knew I wasn't going to keep.  Once I had the money to buy new and better warriors I had win battles and earn money to buy even more warriors and equipment and potions and such before I could finally get a decent team together.  And since it was the beginning of the game there was only one map point where I could get into a battle.

So in order to avoid grinding on my main game to level up characters I started a new game so I could grind and win battles to buy different characters so I could grind and level those up.  It made sense to me at the time.  Once I figured things out though, I went back to my main game.

So anyway, I'm still gaming.  Just not always on the Xbox360.  Oh, every now and then I get back on the Xbox360 to play some Borderlands and recently I've been playing some Modern Warfare 3 just for the social aspect (hell, if my friends won't play with me then maybe strangers will).  I might even turn it on to play something silly like Peggle or Rock Bank Blitz while I'm eating dinner.  Once dinner's done I'll turn it off and pull out the PSP.  Who knows, maybe once I'm done with my PSP game I might dust off my Nintendo DS Lite.  It's still gaming.

For the Love of the Game(r)

I took a trip to see my sister's for Thanksgiving. For five days I was off line in my gaming and I realized something. It wasn't the games I missed, but the gamers.

That might have been because I took my DSLite and PSP with me. Whenever the itch to play something came on me I pulled one of those out. I played for a little bit but eventually put the system up and turned to something else. It was nice to play games that I hadn't played in a really long time. Unfortunately they didn't hold my interest for very long. I felt like they were missing something.

I realized what they were missing early on in my vacation: my friends. I missed playing with people. I missed the camaraderie, support and direction in the game itself, but also the friendship and bizarre conversations my friends and I usually have. I miss finding out how their days were going and what plans they have for the weekend. And with the holiday weekend there were more friends available online than usual. And I missed out on most of it.

Now this is not to say that I sat around with a bunch of strangers and didn't talk to anyone. I was with family and had some good times. But I could have done without the 10 1/2 hours straight of nothing but Christmas music on the ride home. There is just so many time a person can hear "Do you hear what I hear?" without turning into a slobbing, axe-wielding psychopath. I think I was 10 minutes away from that transformation.

I did borrow dain's laptop to jump online and check out what my friends were playing, but that made me miss them even more. To have a group of friends in your life almost every night then to suddenly be without them for 5 whole days is very shocking to the system. Yes, I know, I should probably get out more often. But I like my life and see no real reason to change it (with a few exceptions). Even playing with Pogue and his lag and echo is more appealing than playing alone. Of course, after an hour or two with that whining and echoing buzzing in my ear playing alone sounds pretty good.

I remember when it was all about the game for me. I wanted to own every system so I could get whatever games I wanted and wouldn't worry about where to play them. But lately I've felt less and less like buying a PS3 and taping into that game market. Why? Because I wouldn't want to miss out on a night playing with my friends.

I tried to explain this concept to my mother a while ago. She seems to think that you can't really be friends with someone you haven't met. I totally disagree. I've spent more time with my "online" friends than I ever would if we had met in real life. And I spend more time with them than my mother spends with her friends. Plus I KNOW things about them that I'm sure my mother would never find out similar things about her friends.

Maybe it's a generational thing. Maybe it's a gamer thing. It doesn't matter to me because I've come to realize I play for the love of my gamer friends no matter the game or the system.

Am I girly enough?

Am I girly enough to ask for the metallic pink DS Lite for xmas? I like the color but it just looks like I should be 8 years old with curls or pigtails in my hair and an old Barbie in my pocket when I look at it.

On the other hand am I "mature" enough for the more adult looking metallic blue/onyx color? I also like that one. But I don't want to settle.

Not that I'll get either of them, but what do you think?

Wii does like to play

So I have a Wii now. Wasn't really planning on getting one that's just how it worked out.

You see I finally finished crocheting the last afghan in a project that has taken me about two years to complete. As a reward for myself I budgeted to get a Nintendo DS Lite. When I got to the store I was curious about how the sales of Wiis were doing with the upcoming holidays. I asked if they had any in stock and they did. Just one system left. I said I'd think about it and walked around looking at DS games.

I was calculating how many DS games I could get (along with the system) and still be under what I would play for a Wii. She told me that I could come back and get a DS Lite any time but they might not have Wiis in stock when I really want to get one. I thought about it some more. There was only one thing else I wanted to know. The Wii comes with one complete controller but if the store didn't have a second complete controller I wasn't going to buy it. Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for my bank account) they did. So I walked out of the store with a Wii, a complete second controller and my collector's edition copy of Assassin's Creed.

I took the day off so I could play Assassin's Creed, but I never even took it out of the box. I took the Wii over to my parent's house to hook it up instead. They have a larger living room than what I have at my apartment. Plus there's so many people and coming and going over there it would get more use than at my place. So there it would stay. Besides a minor hiccup with the S-video cable we finally got everything worked out.

After creating my own Mii I had my mother create one for herself. See really liked it. My brother had come over and he did his. Then it was my father's turn.

"Why would I want to create a Mii?"

"So you can have your own character when you play."

"But if I never play I wouldn't need a Mii."

I eventually convinced him to do it and I think he liked it. We started out with my brother and I playing a game of bowling in Wii Sports (the only games I currently have for the system). I led most of the game until he was able to beat me by 2 pins in the last frame. Now the Wii faced its toughest test: my parents.

We had them set up a game of bowling with their own characters and while my mother kept claiming she didn't know what she was doing she almost doubled my dad's score. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard either.

Next up was Tennis. It took us a while to figure out how to play that one with only two controllers (the AI were just too annoying to play with). After winning 3 our of 4 matches against my brother we again turned it over to my parents. Again it was all laughter and dodging out of the way as my dad really got into it.

The last game we tried before I had to leave to go home was boxing. Only my brother and I did it and afterwards my arms felt like there were going to fall off. I was able to knock him down three times with the last being a knockout. He knocked me down once.

I left the Wii at my parents house and I hope that they take some time to play it. They're both retired and go walking in the morning so I told them they could come in after that and get their upper body workout with the Wii. We all had a blast and there was some mention of having my other brother bring his video camera over to record the hilarity for posterity. We'll see.

For this family Wii does like to play.

Red Ring of Death

Well, it finally happened. After two weeks of trying to fight it off my Xbox 360 succumbed to the Red Ring of Death. What I thought was just a router issue has turned into something worse.

I'm sure after the sadness has passed I'll look at what good might come out of this. Now I'll have more time to play some long forgotten original Xbox games along with my Playstation games. I might even have time for the Game Cube and other systems.

Only just a couple of days ago I had started to consider buying a 2nd Xbox 360 for just this situation. I'll have to think a lot more about that. Unfortunately this comes at the same time as a discussion about a PS3 game. Folklore. From what I've heard it's a really good game. Enough to buy a PS3? I don't know. But I do know I can't buy both a PS3 and a replacement. And that's not counting the DS Lite and Wii that I had planned on buying before the end of the year.

I have decisions to make. But first I must deal with my grief.