I apologize for the rush of blog activity as of late, hope you guys do not mind. I'm venting out my frustrations.

This year sucks so far from my own vantage point. I was hoping for some breaks at work that would translate into getting more enjoyment from my hobbies. Instead, my job has been more chaotic and stressful. It has gone so bad that I am forcing myself to go to work on the weekends, which I have never done before in years past. I have also shifted my hours from 8-6 to 7-5, so I am waking up earlier as a consequence. Add to that my stubborn insistence of playing games late into the night and lack of sufficient sleep during the week has only added to my misery. I still enjoy playing video games, reading books and manga, and listening to hours of music, but it has not come with the same shot of exuberance that I used to have.

Lately, I have fallen into episodes depression/frustration. I bookmarked a web-comic site called "Depression Comix", a comic where the author draws a four-panel strip on how a depressed person would act in many situations. Though I have not gone as far to inflict self-harm on myself, I am replicating some of those actions with what happens in many strips. I have a terrible tendency of always beating myself up. I never really look at the good side of myself and always highlighted more of my bad actions. The strip that I have posted on the right is a perfect example. Not everything I do at work is done right the first time around, and I feel terrible about it. I go back, make the edits and resubmit. My co-workers/superiors are happy with it, though there's still a bit more work to be done. However, I view it as a negative because I could not do it right two times, and it has taken me a lot longer to get this task done, making me feel terrible.

Here are a few other strips that really resonated with me.

• Always thinking that I am going to have another terrible day.
• Digging though an endless pile of self-defeating thoughts.
• Seeing how other folks are doing so well, while I'm struggling.

My lowest point this year is when I completely broke down and cried in from of one of my superiors (a project manager) in his office. He was forced to close the door as it took me over thirty minutes before I was able to calm down. I know I should not be so upset over work, but I had it with a particular issue that I broke. I threw some subtle hints that I was getting frustrated with the workload to the higher superior. I was able to hire a temporary employee to delegate some of our (my PAC co-worker and I) administrative tasks. She has helped out a ton and keeping me on my toes on giving her as much work to keep her busy during her time in the office. I noted my frustrations on the memorandum letter I had to write as part of my self-evaluation toward my employee review. The three superiors who reviewed me recognized how hard I am working and vow to find ways to help ease my workload and rewarded me with salary raise this year on my efforts this past year. Even with the assistance and the salary raise, the work remains hectic and frustrating to deal with.

I am doing my best in looking for a new job, but I get so exhausted from work that it is the last thing I think about coming home. I have done a little bit of job searching here and there, but end up getting no good results. I asked a good friend if he can assist me in looking up potential jobs, as he has a bit more open time to look up jobs than I do. Unfortunately, Philadelphia does not seem like it has a lot of openings overall. The city's economy is not well. Considering that they've constantly cut education funding (they laid off over 3,800 school district employees two months ago!), I'm not sure how strong the job prospects are in Philadelphia in both public and private.

Work is the major source of my anger and frustration, but it is not the only source. I also get frustrated on what's going on with the world at large. I do not follow the news as much as I used to, which is good because whenever I do hear something, it usually is not good. It can stem from something serious and not reported as much (Bradley Manning) to something completely stupid (Royal Baby?). It also saddening and disturbing that I feel sort of numb to all the crime being reported constantly. I am also a huge sports fan, but I do feel silly that I sometimes fall into the sport media shenanigans over particular sports news. And... (I'll refrain from going onward.)

I feel for those who are struggling right now. I can not imagine a position where I am not working and earning an income. It stinks that there is not a lot of job openings available. The fierce competition over those few job openings does not help either. A lot of people who are either unemployed or under-employed would like to get themselves a full-time position right now. I can empathize with those who are going through YEARS in hopes of landing a job.

Lest we forgot about all of those who are living under more terrible circumstances around the world.

What's frustrating to me is that I lash out on myself on why I feel sad so often. I can see that I have a supportive family, currently occupied and earning a decent income, and have access to many "luxuries" that millions of others can not get close to. I just keep kicking myself that I should not feel sad, which then compounds the problem. (The strip on the left pretty much replicates how I feel on some days.)

I realize that I am doing so much for others that I have not taken care of myself. I worked countless hours for my job, support my parents with their business troubles, and do a lot of small things in hopes that other people are happy at that moment. I guess I'm so wired about looking after others, then whenever I have a moment to myself, I always yearn for something to turn the tide for my own happiness.

I am amazed that I have been able to stay afloat against the stress, even if the stress that I experience is insignificant compared to what others are dealing with. It's always takes a lot of energy just to say to myself that I am doing the best that I can under my own circumstances. I am strong in a way. But I do not possess a steel will, and the challenges to maintain an open mind continue to be draining.

At last, there's that source of frustration that arises from the same activities I participate to distract myself from those same frustrations in the first place. It's never fun to get into an activity you love, only to find that it's adding more fuel to the (frustrating) fire. I have enjoyed a majority of music that I have acquired and listened to this year, the books that I read are pretty good, and the manga that I picked up have been good reads as well. Video games have been a mixed bag. I enjoyed most of the games that I played and completed so far this year, but there were many moments that just made me want to flip shit. My favorite game so far this year that I played and beat, Etrian Odyssey IV, had its fair share of moments where I wanted to chuck my 3DS out the window. Still, the games provide a solid amount of good vibes that mitigates some of the stress I am dealing with, though I wish I could enjoy these games more than a simple smile and saying the game was fun with a short explanation.

There is one certain gaming genre that always conjures up a never-ending mixture of joy and frustration. I am hopeful that I can write a mini blog series on my numerous thoughts on this genre. It's always been in the back on my mind and something that I want to simply get off my head and share. I may get some interesting reactions...

I'll end my venting here. To those who read this blog entry in its entirety, thank you. You are a very kind person who spent some of your time reading my thoughts. I wish you the best in your current endeavors. I will do my best to stay strong and work toward bettering myself, slowly and surely. It will not be easy.

--Some 2013 Random Items--

Favorite Music Albums So Far (In No Order)

• My Bloody Valentine - m b v
• The Joy Formidable - Wolf's Law
• Clutch - Earth Rocker
• Kurt Vile - Wakin' on a Pretty Daze
• David Lang - Death Speaks
• Eluvium - Nightmare Ending
• Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
• Savages - Silence Yourself
• Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
• Deafheaven - Sunbather
• Queens of the Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork
• Run the Jewels - Run the Jewels
• Sigur Ros - Kveikur

Favorite Games So Far

1. Etrian Odyssey IV
2. Fire Emblem: Awakening
3. Bit.Trip Runner 2
4. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
5. Battleblock Theater

I'm late to the party with the Ryan Davis tributes, I've been meaning to write my own tribute to him since the news of his passing broke last week. Many Giant Bomb users have already written wonderful tributes to Ryan, along with numerous users reminiscing favorite Ryan moments and organizing meetups to celebrate what Ryan has provided not only to Giant Bomb, but to the entire video game industry. The reaction to Ryan's passing has been incredible. A lot of us have never met Ryan in person, but the way he condones himself in the various content he has produced in Giant Bomb really connected with the community. Many people have wrote that Ryan helped them out in many ways. He helped a lot of the community get over their struggles, whether it's a rough day of school or work, or battling some demons, Ryan pulled us out of that rut many times. To see someone to provide that jolt of happiness through the fog of unhappiness is an amazing. I wish I was as great of a man as Ryan, to always make folks around him smile. The 9 July 2013 Bombcast and the numerous tributes from fellow gaming personalities and websites just reinforces how much he means to the rest of the Giant Bomb staff and the video game industry.

Ryan was our wonderwall. He laid down a bridge over our troubled waters. He was our hero. He was our best friend.

Unlike many of the users here in Giant Bomb, I'm still relatively new to the site. I first learned of the site from my brother in late 2011. I lurked around the site for a bit before registering as a Giant Bomb member in February 2012. I enjoyed what the site provided and initially paid for a silver membership the following month. Despite the nerves when Giant Bomb was sold to CBS Interactive that month, I held firm and bumped up my support for the Giant Bomb staff the next month with a gold membership and renewed recently. I am very happy to be a part of Giant Bomb and to support the staff with my subscription, though I don't feel like I am a true Giant Bomb fan. I haven't watched a lot of the Quick Looks, listened to only a few Bombcasts, and occasionally catch a live TNT or other live streaming event. There is so much content to sort through and if I had the time, would like to revisit some of the past material that the community has heralded. Looking through the Ryan tribute thread, I haven't watched a majority of events that the users have posted as their favorite Ryan moment. There are a few Ryan moments that I have caught that were very memorable, which are the young Brad Muir reaction and the Found Me the Bomb reveal. Those were pretty awesome. I'm sure I'll have the same reaction if I watch the numerous other memorable moments on that thread.

I hope no one frowns upon me for my lack of "Giant Bomb-ness", but I wanted to share my thoughts on how wonder this site is as well as give my respects to Ryan for all of the wonderful content he has provided not only here in Giant Bomb and at his time in Gamespot. My condolences to Ryan's family and friends. Take as much time as you guys need and I'm sure the Giant Bomb community will do everything to help them get through what they need. I have made a $10 donation at Child's Play that was created in Ryan's honor, and at this time, currently contemplating purchasing the "Fuck, Ryan Davis" t-shirt to help support his family.

I will do my best to be a good person to those who I've come across. I am honored to be followed by 14 Giant Bomb members and to have communicated with many more. I had a ton of fun being a participant of the Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena tournaments organized by FluxWaveZ. My PSN's friends list was empty before P4A came in. Since then, it has populated to close to 30. I also enjoyed putting some time in contributing to the GB wikipedia for a couple of games. I hope the work I have put in is satisfactory. I hope to do more wikipedia work down the road, though my job eating up more of my time and energy isn't helping. I will also do my best to enjoy playing video games, just as much as Ryan did.

Ryan may have passed from this world, but he lives on forever in our hearts. Many thanks Ryan Davis.

Working and Paying and Living and Dying

“To work on something – even on a video game – for 12 to 15 hours a day for a year is not enjoyable or fulfilling. I have no doubt that to make this game, hair was grayed, health was ravaged, friendships were tested, and marriages were strained.

What I’m saying is that these glorious games are, in real and measurable ways, born of human misery.”

I took that quote from Tom Bissell’s 14 June article on The Last of Us. While you can question whether this applies to all video game development studios, you can’t question that developing these games on tight budgets and schedules puts an enormous amount of strain to everyone involved. In the end, these studios hope that their product sells enough units to make profit. It’s disheartening to see many development studios and publishers close doors due to their games not making profit. Of course, if a bad game is developed and published, then shame on them. However, to read stories such as Tomb Raider not successful despite selling over three million units, something’s not right with the industry. The ones really get hurt are those the thousands of hard working people that get the passing name credit in the game, whether they’re a tester, coder, programmer, animator, marketer, etc. While we may react to those who are more visible in the industry, lest we forget that there’s hundreds of thousands of people that are continuing to ride the video game industry to where it is today. Without all of them, we won’t be able to experience and discuss numerous games that they have worked on for years for our enjoyment.

My job has been pretty hard on me in the last few years or so. The president and CEO of the company visited the Philadelphia office on 18 June to talk about the health of the company. His “town hall meeting” was positive, where he showed numerous figures and graphs on how quickly the company has rebounded from the 2008 economic breakdown. In 2011, the company has posted a modest rebound in profit margin. The profit margin grown last year and he expects the margin to become better this year. He also noted that he expects record setting revenues this year, based on how much the company has already recognized as revenue from the first five months of the year. This may sound like its good news, but how much of that increase in profit margin has come at the expense of an employee’s health. While I may not log as many hours compared to folks in the video game industry, I’m still logging over forty hours per week and not seeing the benefits of the fruits of my labor. It doesn’t help that I’m not enjoying what I’m doing here, compared to some others who can deal with the hours just because they enjoy what they’re doing. Funny enough, I do envy the work that my fellow employees are doing here. I work in an engineering consulting company, and I’m always fascinated with the schematic plans my company produces on numerous projects held all around the world.

It’s been hard for me to enjoy my hobbies when I’m spending more of my time every week dedicated to work. I still enjoy reading a great book, playing a great game, or listening to great music, but I have not expressed as much excitement over those things as much as I used to. At this point of the year, there are two games released this year in North America that I have really enjoyed my time with, Fire Emblem: Awakening and Etrian Odyssey IV: Legend of the Titan. I’ve completed the story and logged in close to 95 hours in Fire Emblem, while I’m still going 110 plus hours in EO4. Both games are awesome in my eyes, but I don’t feel the overwhelming joy that I used to have. I fault that to my hardened perspective from working so much, seeing my family and some friends struggling with whatever endeavors that have on their hands, and my continued stubbornness and carelessness of beating myself up.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to keep going. I hope to all the tireless workers out there, doing whatever you’re doing, I sincerely hope all of you are doing well. I still don’t know how hard all of you have it out there, and I still have a lot to learn myself, but you have my thoughts. I wish I can provide some more comfort to my parents aside from giving them numerous amounts of money from my own pocket to help fund their struggling grocery store business.

Leaves Eclipse the Light

“He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.”

I believe that quote is taken from a Chinese proverb. The meaning is obvious, but I don’t entirely agree with it. Obviously, there are some people who should be better off not speaking out their thoughts, but there are many others who I feel like they make compelling arguments that others should read and take note of. I envy those who are able to provide great reasoning as I always fall short of providing such on numerous topics. I’ll heed to the fellow users who are still hanging out in the IRC GB_P4A channel as such folks. (You guys know who you are, you guys are awesome!) The majority of topics revolve around video games, but there’s also a bit of television, movies, music, and other topics that get discussed in the room. I don’t delve myself into too many of their conversations because simply I haven’t played as many games as they have, nor know as many other things in video games. I’m amazed every time I return from work each weekday to see the users there discuss whatever they’re discussing. I do have my own thoughts regarding some topics, but I always fail to articulate why and therefore I refrain for the most part. There are many times where I’ll speak upon a topic, only to not see the other side of the argument numerous times. I’m doing my best to see both sides of the court, but still have trouble doing so.

I don’t know much about the well-known voice actors, the visible personalities in the video game industry (the executives, studio directors, journalists, etc.), the latest gaming news, or Giant Bomb in general. I haven’t watched many movies in the last six years or so, and everyone has their own musical tastes. I’m content in being an observer and gaining a bigger perspective of stuff in general.

I realize writing this journal entry puts me in line with that proverb, but I hope my writing and commentary are a decent read to anyone who reads this entry.

Looking for Astronauts

“Something to cry for, and something to hunt.”

Looking back at my video game library for the 3DS, PS3, and X-Box 360, there are some trends. One noticeable trait with my gaming library on those platforms are the lack of high profile games. No Assassin’s Creed, Battlefield, BioShock, Call of Duty, Elder Scrolls, Gears of War, God of War, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, and whatever big title games are out there. That’s not to say I’ve avoided all high profile games. I do own and enjoyed the few that I did play, such as Red Dead Redemption and Uncharted 2. It’s just that these high profile games don’t interest me as much compared to some other games that I have much more interest in. I wouldn’t mind trying out some of these games down the road, though I already have an enormous backlog with my current library.

A majority of gaming library also fall under the following genres: fighting, Japanese role-playing, platformers, puzzles, racing, and rhythm games. Many of my favorite games from previous generations fall under these genres, so it’s no surprise that I’ve carried that over to the current generation. But unlike my progress with music, where I expanded my music library with an eclectic mix of genres in the past couple of years (ambient, classical, compositional, electronica, jazz, metal, etc.), I haven’t done so much with that with my gaming tastes. The only other genre that has some presence in my library is action. I enjoyed some of the games under this genre, such as the games I mentioned in the first paragraph (Red Dead Redemption, Uncharted 2), along with two Platinum games (Anarchy Reigns and Vanquish) and a few others. There are other action games that I haven’t started or barely played that I’d like to get, though my track record of clearing my backlog isn’t great. I’m not sure what other genres off the top of my head that I’d like to delve into, but I would like to expand my horizons.

Though it seems unlikely, maybe I’ll find the time to start playing games outside of my comfort zone. Platinum has peaked my interest and I’m hoping that The Wonderful 101’s finished product is as good as what they have revealed so far. I may also try out Bayonetta, though I’m still a bit hesitant since that game looks all kinds of crazy. But if I was able to get through Vanquish, I guess I should be okay for Bayonetta? I also got action games like Dead Space, The Last of Us, Uncharted 3, and a few other action games to still go though. It’s not a priority for me as I have my focus on other games, but it’d be nice to tackle something different once in a while.

Sorry for the recent blogging. (I know it's only once a month so far in the last four months, but I didn't intend to blog this much.) Here's my Q1 2013 blog, rounding up some things that's been happening to me so far in the first quarter of this year. I was doing this roundup blogging back in Gamespot and had the urge to run it here on Giant Bomb. Instead of overwhelming you of paragraphs of text, I'll break things down into bullet points, though this blog is still relatively long. :/

Q1 2013 Goings On

• Crazy hours poured into work: extra hour or two on the weekdays, came into the office some Saturdays, worked from home on some instances.
• Uneven billing schedule caused continuous workload from one month to next without a breather. (I finally got a little bit of a breather now.)
• Conducted my first interviews for a temporary accounting position to help out my PAC co-worker and myself. Interviewed three folks. Sent an offer to the guy I interviewed in February, but he declined. A woman I interviewed last week accepted our offer, she'll start Wednesday for us. I don't think she'll help out tremendously, but I'll take whatever help I can get.
• Just shifted working hours from 8 AM to 5:30 PM(-ish) to 7 AM to 4:30 PM (-ish). Now I'm waking up at 5 AM!
• Concern for my parents: my mom has a streak of gray hairs growing; my dad's been battling boredom and the urge to drink alcohol; both have been asking me for money to pay for their business expenses.
• I've been battling myself a lot to keep a clear head. There are some days where I fall getting into some mood swings and self-loathing. It's been affecting my enjoyment of playing games (and my other hobbies) at times.

Q1 2013 Gaming

Few Thoughts

• I am surprised that I completed nine games up to this point. None of the nine games blew me away, but some games impressed me more than others. Five out of the nine games I completed are platformers. I expect my completion rate to slow as I'm currently focusing on two JRPG games and not jump around playing too many different games.
• I'm still hanging out with a few other folks at the Giant Bomb IRC Chat Room, through I haven't been chatting a lot with the folks there. I haven't played as many games compared to the guys there, don't know a lot of the big personalities in the video game industry, and not too keen with everything Giant Bomb.
• I continue to buy too many games for my own good.

Completed

• Sound Shapes
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted
• Forza Horizon
• Anarchy Reigns
• Mark of the Ninja
• Super Mario 3D Land
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
• Retro/Grade
• BIT.TRIP Presents: Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien

Keeping a running list of games completed on my profile here. Wrote some thoughts on the games I beat on DPADD.

Current Active Games

• Persona 4 Arena - Yeah, I'm still playing this game, though not as actively as before. I'm still enjoying playing this game despite getting my butt whooped for the most part. I guess it's an accomplishment that I rose my overall win percentage from the low 30% range up to 37.5% currently. I managed to get to a B+ rank briefly in January before falling back down to a C rank. Sometimes I get disheartened by watching high-level Chie play from local and major tournament streams. I won't get close to playing my Chie up to their level ever, but I'll still do my best to put up a good fight.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening - I got the game at the date of release (Feb 4th), but didn't start the game until two weeks ago. I've playing this game slowly, been grinding and figuring out who to pair up with who using the DLC map packs. I've had a terrible track record with JRPGs as of late (particularly not grinding enough), so I'm being more methodical with this game. Loving the gameplay as I am a fan of strategy RPGs (Advance Wars, Devil Survivor). This is my first game into this franchise.
• Atelier Meruru - Finally got around to start this game. I've only play the game briefly, but from what I was able to judge from the brief time I played it, it's Atelier Totori refined. Slight changes to the battle system, task assignments, and other things here and there. I feel obligated to get through this game since I am the top wiki editor for Atelier Rorona and Atelier Totori. I hope to both complete this game if possible (I failed to complete Atelier Totori) and flesh out the wiki page as much as I can.
• Dirt 3 - I'm returning to this game to fill in my racing thirst after I completed Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Forza Horizon. I dropped this game quickly when I first got it at around launch because I got frustrated over the Gymkhana tutorials, but I sort of got it this time around. I don't like doing the Gymkhana events though. The racing events on the other hand, still pretty fun. I'll see if I can at least finish the single player events here.
• Bit.Trip Runner 2 - Yeah, I already beat this game, but I found this game to be pretty calming in a weird way and been playing it as my "cool down" game as of late. I may go for an S-rank of this game.

Q1 Non-Gaming Notables

• Neurosis/Baroness Concert at Union Transfer in Philadelphia
• Read two books! [The Signal and The Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail, But Some Don't by Nate Silver; The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker]
• Searching for Sugar Man [Won Best Documentary Film in this year's Academy Awards, fabulous film about searching for the elusive musician Rodriguez and his strange big influence his music had in South Africa.]
• Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind LP [I've been listening to this album a lot this quarter and helped me get through some of my unhappiness after reading an interview with the singer on some of the song's messages in this album.]

Q2 Gaming

New Additions

• Definite: The Last of Us; Pandora's Tower (to complete the Operation Rainfall library)
• Maybe: Injustice

Goals

• High - HAVE FUN!
• High - Not to buy too many games.
• High - Finish Fire Emblem: Awakening.
• Mid - Finish Atelier Meruru and work on game wiki page.
• Low - Finish Dirt 3.

Backlog Attack? (Per Platform)

• PS3 - Atelier Meruru --> another JRPG (not sure which game)
• 3DS - Fire Emblem: Awakening --> Etrian Odyssey IV --> Code of Princess
• X360 - *groans* Borderlands 2?
• Wii - *groans* I don't think I'll get going on the Operation Rainfall games...

---

Q1 Additions [AKA: Where I Burn My Money]

Video Games

• Anarchy Reigns [PS3]
• BIT.TRIP Presents: Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien [PSN]
• Darkstalkers Resurrection [PSN]
• Earthworm Jim HD [PSN]
• El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron [XBL]
• Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan [3DS]
• Fire Emblem: Awakening [3DS]
• Final Fantasy Tactics [PSN]
• Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch [PS3]
• Paper Mario: Sticker Star [3DS]
• Retro/Grade [PSN]
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time [PS3]

DLC

Dirt 3

• Asian X-Games Track Pack
• Monte Carlo Track Pack

Fire Emblem: Awakening

• Champions
• Golden
• Lost Bloodlines
• Rogues
• Smash

Rock Band 3/Blitz

• Aerosmith - Aerosmith Pack
• Buckner & Garcia - "Found Me the Bomb"
• Duran Duran - "Girls on Film"
• EMF - "Unbelieveable"
• Jackson 5 - "ABC"
• Magnus "Souleye" Palsson - "Positive Force"; "Potential for Anything"
• R.E.M. - R.E.M. Pack
• Soft Cell - "Tainted Love"
• The Zombies - "She's Not There"

Music

A majority of music albums I buy are on vinyl format. There are a few that are CD format and a couple that are in digital format. Yes, I buy way too many music albums.

• Action Bronson - Blue Chips
• Andy Stott - Luxury Problems
• Arms & Sleepers - Bliss was it in that Dawn to be Alive
• Arms & Sleepers - Matador
• Brian Eno - Here Comes the Warm Jets
• Chelsea Wolfe - Apokalypsis
• Clutch - Earth Rocker
• Codine - When I See the Sun (Box Set)
• Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind
• Divine Fits - A Thing Called the Divine Fits
• Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
• The Evens - The Odds
• Genius/GZA - Liquid Swords
• Iceage - You're Nothing
• Jawbreaker - Bivouac
• The Joy Formidable - Wolf's Law
• The Kinks - The Village Green Preservation Society
• Kool A.D. - 19
• Kool A.D. - 63
• Lee Hazlewood - Trouble is a Lonesome Town
• Lone Doe - Marion EP
• Low - The Invisible Way
• L.W.H. - CIA TV
• The Men - New Moon
• Minot - The Ringing is Silence Between Your Ears (7-inch)
• My Bloody Valentine - mbv
• Nas - Illmatic
• Neuorsis - Honor Found in Decay
• Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away
• Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version
• Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction
• Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold
• Pig Destroyer - Book Burner
• Rodriguez - Coming from Reality
• Roky Erickson (w/ Okkervil River) - True Love Cast Out All Evil
• Scott Walker - Bish Bosch
• Shin Joong Hyun - Beautiful Rivers and Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound of South Korea's Shin Joong Hyun 1958-1974
• Shin Joong Hyun - Shin Joong Hyun & The Yup Juns
• Sleep - Dopesmoker
• Stars of the Lid - The Ballasted Orchestra
• Ty Segall - Slaughterhouse
• Ty Segall - Twins
• Veronica Falls - Waiting for Something to Happen
• Yo La Tengo - Elect-O-Pura

Other Additions

• The Age of Miracles [fiction]
• Girl Friends Complete Collections #1 & #2 [manga]
• Haganai: I Don't Have Many Friends Vol #2 [manga]
• Searching for Sugar Man [documentary]

Secret Images

Shots of my turntable, vinyl collection, and a cool looking vinyl.

Gallery

[I'm writing this blog to not only pour some thoughts off from my head, but to see how the blog works under the new Giant Bomb site.]

Working and Sleeping Blues

It’s only February and I feel like my body’s already been through more than a year’s worth of work. It hasn’t been easy for me as I force myself to go to the office on some Saturday afternoons and even do some work from home. My company is known to be pretty aggressive in getting projects in the door and during the job. I’m having a hard time keeping track of the numerous projects the project managers are managing over. I try my best to keep track of the tight budgets from about fifty projects, as well as contracts if we actually got one from the client we got the job from. That’s only part of my workload. I’m also responsible for contacting clients who don’t pay, dealing with vendors who don’t like out paid when paid policy, co-workers requests, and do a bunch of administrative tasks such as copying, filing, and mailing.

It doesn’t help that I haven’t been sleeping well as of late in concurrence of work ramping up in the last couple of months. Part of it is my fault, staying up past the time I should be sleeping by playing games (primarily Persona 4 Arena at the end of 2012), or speaking with the few folks still hanging around in the Giant Bomb IRC P4A channel. [I apologize to those in the chat room since I haven’t been speaking much as of late.] It’s taken me longer to fall asleep and been hard for me to stay asleep. I always wake up before the alarm goes off at six in the morning. I try my best to catch up a bit by taking naps on the train commutes going to and coming from work, but it’s not enough. The weekends help a bit, but I never feel like I’m fully recharged in a long time.

I wish I could take a vacation. I’ve got plenty of vacation hours on hand to use. I just have no one to really back up my work in the office. Plus it doesn't look like my workload is going to subside anytime soon. Ugh.

[I also realize that there are many folks out there that are working even longer hours and have longer commutes just to do what they have to do, and I do feel like I am complaining a bunch lately. I’m doing my best to enjoy things and not get so stressed out from work and other things.]

Worn Down Fight Pad & Broken Fight Stick Blues

I’m still surprised that I’m still playing Persona 4 Arena at this point. A majority of folks after the Giant Bomb P4A season moved on from the game. There was a decent showing for gravitypenguin’s King of the Hill tournament a couple of weeks ago, but not sure if the participants there are still playing. However, during my time with the game last week, I’m noticing that some of my inputs are coming out during matches. I don’t mind losing so much as my winning percentage is pretty low anyways, but it’s not fun when you push a button and the action doesn’t come out. I know I’ve put a lot of use on the MadKatz PS3 Street Fighter x Tekken fight pad I play on, but I’m finding it disheartening that it’s worn out to the point that it’s starting to miss inputs. I am looking for a new fight pad, but aside from the typical MadKatz one, I’m not sure what alternatives are out there, and if they’re good too.

Not only have that, but my MadKatz PS3 WWE Brawl fight stick malfunctioned about a month ago and is inoperable at the moment. My brother was using the stick when he noticed that the stick was acting funny. After some inspection, he found the stick to be the culprit. My brother hasn’t bothered me regarding whether to buy the replacement part of buy a new fight stick completely. Personally, I’d spend money on a brand new fight stick. I’m leaning to get the same fight stick that my friend Foo has. I believe he has a Hori fight stick. For now, buying a new fight stick is on the back burner, but I'm still considering getting a new one down to road to see if I can get decent on using one with the fighting games I own.

Ashamed of Looking Up Too Much Help to Complete This Game Blues

Back when I had more time to tackle games, I usually try for hours to get through a section of a game myself before resorting to help. I also try to refrain myself from looking up guides for the most part. But since work has taken up more of my energy, I’ve started to break down and go look on a guide whenever I get stuck much sooner and more often. Right now, the game that I’m starting to have this issue is Pushmo. I’ve managed to solve almost all the puzzles up until the second half of puzzles from the third set of Deluxe Murals. I’d give the ones I needed help a good amount of attempts before I get frustrated and then look up the solution. I’m on the final set of puzzles at the first one of the final set is already giving me fits. I want to complete it, but I think I’ll have to put an asterisk next to it when I put it on my games completed list due to the number of puzzles toward the tail end of the game that I had to look up solutions for.

Another game in which I may complete the game by following a walkthrough route is Atelier Totori. I actually tackled Atelier Totori on my own, but reached a game over when I failed to accumulate enough points to move on to the final license rank. The worst thing about it is that I put so much time into playing Totori, only to fail to get to the ending after so long. I still have Atelier Meruru that I haven’t started yet. If I get around to it, I’ll go ahead and play Meruru as I’m determined to fill out the game’s wiki page on Giant Bomb, and then go back to Totori after whatever result I end up getting from Meruru.

JRPG Blues

I still have a boatload of games that either I haven’t started, or stalled so bad that I’d be best to start over rather than continue from where I left off. The genre that seems to get hit hard from my backlog of games are JRPGs. Here’s my current list of JRPG games where I have not completed.

Playstation 3

• Atelier Meruru
• Atelier Totori
• Final Fantasy XIII
• Final Fantasy XIII-2
• Ni no Kuni
• Resonance of Fate
• Tales of Graces F
• Valkyria Chronicles

X360

• Tales of Vesperia

Wii

• The Last Story
• Pandora’s Tower [on pre-order]
• Xenoblade Chronicles

DS

• SMT: Strange Journey
• The World Ends with You

3DS

• Fire Emblem: Awakening

Unfortunately, JRPGs require so much time and attention that I’m going to have a hard time even getting through one of those games. I could knock out a couple of other games from my backlog in the time dedicated to complete one JRPG game. I still enjoy JRPGs as some of my favorite games of all time are from that genre (Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Radiant Historia), and I hope I can get some of those games wrapped up eventually, but the sad truth is that I’ll probably never get around to most of those games.

Other Items

I hope no one is bothered with these blogs I write about. I think for the future, I plan on doing a quarterly summary of games and some other things and write about certain items that I really enjoyed over the quarter. I also have one silly special blog in mind, though I’m not sure if I want to follow through on that one.

I want to give out my personal good luck to a few of my friends competing in Winter Brawl 7 this weekend. My good friend Foo is participating in three games: King of Fighters XIII, Street Fighter x Tekken 2013, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. You can watch the main big games on Team Spooky, while Team St1ckbug will handle Persona 4 Arena and other anime-like fighting games (BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend and Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus).

Thanks for reading!

[This entry is a follow-up to my 8 October 2012 entry regarding my personal experiences regarding Persona 4 Arena, where I’ll pick up my personal thoughts from that date to now.]

My personal ride with Persona 4 Arena has its share of ups and downs. I’ve had my share of highs and more than my share of lows. I tend to take things from a glass half-empty perspective and do not always recognize the progress that I have made in this game. I know that I don’t play Chie as well as the experts play her, but I do my best to put forth a good fight. Though I probably could have used part of the time I spent sparring against GB folks in player lobbies and ranked to possibly train to play a better Chie game, it’s hard for me to be to not only carve time, but be in the right mindset to do so. I don’t have much time during the weekdays and starting to lose time on the weekends due to work. Part of me is always kicking myself that I can’t spend the time to get potentially better, but looking back with a clearer mind, I did what I could under the circumstances.

Before the Giant Bomb vs. GameFAQs tournament, I used to play a very defensive Chie, which is the opposite of what her character is supposed to be played, rushdown style. I would always block and wait for an opening to attack, or wait for the opportune time to use Chie’s DP. I pretty much played that style going into GB P4A Tourney #4 and Team Tourney #2, where FluxWaveZ pretty much carried me through that team tourney. I did get my lone GB tournament win in that fourth tournament against TheFakePsychic, before losing badly to both FluxWaveZ and gravitypenguin. Shortly after the completion of the fourth tournament, yuut came to Giant Bomb issuing a P4A team tournament challenge from GameFAQs. Flux accepted and thus started recruitment and frequent sparring. I put my name in, in part to provide some sparring practice with fellow GB-ers. I thought there’d be a more entrants representing Giant Bomb’s side, but when it came down to it from the list of people who signed up, I was enlisted to my surprise.

Once the lineup was set, the Giant Bomb team got serious. I was advised by Flux and others to step up my game by playing more aggressive. And so my transition from being totally passive to aggressive began and I guess I was doing alright. It was bad at first because I was going in recklessly and was getting beat good. I finally got some of my defense back and for a time being, felt like I was going somewhere for once. One of my highlights was the night where I somehow (and I still don’t know how I managed to do this) won six straight matches. Another night, I managed to defeat Flux for my lone victory against him. [The group also had a surreal experience that night I beat Flux when the mysterious stage appeared, at midnight EST no less.]

The Giant Bomb vs. GameFAQs tournament came to much fanfare. Flux got the Giant Bomb team a huge lead, knocking down GameFAQs’s team one by one until Nard stopped him. Then Nard’s Liz/Shadow Labrys ran through Giant Bomb’s team, including myself. Aside from the two rounds I won against him using God Hand, I got my butt whooped. Nard’s reign on Giant Bomb ended when aznjon came up to bat. Aznjon battled TSK in an exciting anchor battle. Unfortunately, GameFAQs won the tournament. I felt bad that I couldn’t contribute more on Giant Bomb’s behalf, though I was honored that I got to fight on the website’s behalf.

After the exciting team battle tournament, the momentum that the GB community had with Persona 4 Arena started to fade a bit. In one final hurrah, Flux quickly announced the GB P4A season. We got around twenty people signed up for it and most people did show up each week to play in each session. I had a decent time with the season, although the second session was a mess for the group I was in due to Spikes unable to be in the IRC chat and the severe lag that haunted all matches. I was also slightly disappointed that I didn’t get to battle against some of the other participants during the season, such as aznjon, Xomero, and others. I also felt like my eighth place finish in the season was skewed due to the fact that the groups I was in had numerous no shows, giving me points that I probably wouldn’t have earned if those folks showed up and battled me.

Through all the time, I started to hang out more with a few regulars in the IRC GB_P4A chat room. When the game came out, it was Soki, Servantey, and Keystone that I hung out from time to time in the chat room. Since my previous entry, it’s been Brodehouse, FluxWaveZ, gravitypenguin, IrrelevantJohn, LiquidRob, MakeMeMad, and TheFakePsychic. Most nights I don’t even chat, but I love reading what the fellow folks in the chat room are talking about in a wide range of topics. I tend to be the guy who’s there but mostly looks around and listens in. I’ll chime in from time to time, but not often. I didn’t think I’d get a shoutout from Brodehouse and others on that thread on favorite GB users.

However, after playing some ranked and sparring matches against the GB folks still around so far in 2013, I feel like I’m back to where I was at the beginning of this entry. Unfortunately, work has clamped up significantly in the past couple of months and I knew from the start of the P4A season I wasn’t playing at my peak. I had a few moments this month, I ranked up in ranked matches up to a B+ grade at one point, and I think I held my own over a long sparring session with TFP, MMM, John, and Brode two weekends ago. But I’ve had my rough patches too. Two nights ago, I went against my better judgment and played a long ranked session where I lost a lot of matches where I was downgraded back down to a C. In the meantime, I see the fellow P4A who have stuck around see their games stay strong or improve dramatically. TFP’s Naoto has improved significantly, John’s still pretty good with Yu, gravity’s Yukiko is amazing, MMM’s Kanji is good as well as Brode’s Teddie, and Flux’s Shadow Labrys is still as powerful as it always was. As of late, I’ve seen SeriousSam0 beef up, going up to a B+ grade himself. Commisar, Bloo, and MDYu are still at it too. I wonder if the others from the season are still playing this game.

It’s been hard for me to see my personal accomplishments in this game. I guess it’s an accomplishment that I’ve been able to change my gameplay style, as well as slightly increase on my win percentage in both player and ranked matches. There have been nights as of late where I feel like I should finally let go, but there’s a part of me that somehow wants me to stick around with it more. I guess that’s where the social links kick in. I’m still down for sparring with the folks that are sticking around if I’m in the right mood. I would enter into gravitypenguin’s King of the Hill tournament if it wasn’t for work this Saturday. I’ll still keep at it and at least put up a good fight. That was my goal all along when I started to go deep into this game, so I hope to others that I’m providing a decent fight.

Thanks for reading.

P.S.: I would like to thank everyone whom I sparred against in P4A. Though some bowed out early (phatmac, InfiniteGeass, davidwitten, TheOtherBelmont), some down the road (Soki, Keystone), and recently after the season ended (Vashyron, YI-Orange?, Servantey?), all of you have brought an amazing experience that I will definitely cherish.

I also hope P4A gets good showings in the upcoming FGC majors as well as its inclusion in EVO this year!

In a week from now, we will enter into a new year. With the new year, people write down resolutions on what they hope to accomplish to enhance their lives. For me, one of my minor yearly resolutions is to complete more games from my increasing gaming backlog. Unfortunately, ever since my workload at work has increased significantly year after year, I’m having a tougher time not only to carve personal time to play these games, but also enjoying my time with them as well. The constant stress of my job, compiled with supporting my family (my parents in particular with their struggling grocery business), and other things. It hasn’t been easy ever since I started working at my current job (still my first) five years ago, coming home each weeknight feeling tired and not always in the mood to play games. I even have trouble playing games on the weekends, where I'm usually off from work.

I was off to a pretty good start in the first couple of months, as I was able to wrap up Radiant Historia [DS], Rayman Origins [PS3], Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet [XBL], Kirby’s Epic Yarn [Wii], Rhythm Heaven Fever [Wii], Sonic CD [PSN], Shadow Complex [XBL], and Journey [PSN]. I thought I could keep the momentum going, but a run of family drama, work, and tackling Devil Survivor [DS] put a halt into my completion goal for some time. I toughed out and completed Devil Survivor in May. The work at my job slowed up in the early summer months and I found the time to finish Sly 3 [PS3], Atelier Rorona [PS3], Bastion [XBL], Devil Survivor 2 [DS], and PixelJunk Shooter [PSN] in June and July. I was progressing through Atelier Totori [PS3] while working on the Giant Bomb Wikipedia pages for both Rorona and Totori until a certain game released in August that not only killed all momentum I had in working down my backlog, but ate up most of my gaming time entirely and ended up being my game of this year.

That game was Persona 4 Arena [PS3]. I wasn’t going to get the game because I haven’t completed the original Persona 4 [PS2] (*gasp*), but my fighting game friends (all but one haven’t played P4 either) convinced me to get it, as they’re fans of Arc System Works games (Guilty Gear, BlazBlue). I placed my pre-order to get the bonus arranged soundtrack and got my copy on the day of the retail release. I remember on that night I played up until one in the morning with a couple of Giant Bombers. Obviously, it didn’t help that it made me feel like shit at work during the week, but I had fun. I was disappointed that I was unable to compete in the first Giant Bomb P4A tournament as I had to work on that Friday it was held.

I kept playing despite my poor play with a few Giant Bombers and did carve out a weekend dedicated to completing the game’s story mode. I tried my best to play other games in the meantime, but I kept going back to P4A sparring with the GB P4A community. The only other game I completed in this long P4A stretch Jet Set Radio [PSN], which I already completed when I played it back on the Sega Dreamcast. I did compete in GB P4A Tournaments 2-4 and enjoyed myself despite only winning one tournament match. The Giant Bomb vs. GameFAQs was announced soon after the fourth tournament and I put my entry as a participant, thinking that there will be enough entrants that I wouldn’t get picked. Well, that didn’t pan out as I thought and was selected as one of the twelve members representing Giant Bomb in this cross-website battle. Those who were selected in the team spent many nights sparring each other in preparation for the battle. I didn’t fare well when I was up to fight, but managed to win two rounds against my opponent through Chie’s God Hands. Right now, the GB P4A community is down to the final session in the month long GB P4A Season this weekend. It doesn’t seem like there’ll be any future events held, but I sort of enjoyed myself playing all those sessions with all the GB folks I played against in this great game.

However, all the commitment toward P4A in the second half of the year not only hampered my effort in working down my backlog, it was also affecting my energy outside of gaming. I wasn’t taking care of myself properly, staying up later than I would normally would (screwing up my sleeping pattern in the process as well), then coming into work always feeling tired, then going back to play more P4A on some nights. During the time leading up to the GB/GFAQs battle, I had this nagging thought of not wanting to let my teammates down and wanted to improve my play to not look to bad when the time came. Luckily with the season, I’ve been able to take care of myself a little better although I’m still struggling to get good sleep.

Also in the second half of the year, I got a 3DS and purchased a bunch more games to further dump more games to my already large list games to my backlog pile. My workload at my job skyrocketed as my company won a bunch of projects that I have trouble overseeing every one of them in detail, making me feel very miserable and have been affecting my mood to play video games at times. Not to mention in reading the chat from the few fellow GB-ers in the P4A chat room of the many other games that I have not played (you would not believe the number of big or classic games that I haven’t played) that I hope to get to, but unlikely. I tend to avoid the big games at all costs as I want to focus on games that I’m more interested in.

I completed two games in the past week (Mighty Switch Force [3DS], Rhythm Thief and the Emperor’s Treasure [3DS]), as well as playing a variety of different games. I wish I had more time to tackle my backlog, but I’m resigned to the reality that I’ll never get around to most of these games. I’ve been putting unnecessary pressure on myself to get to all of these unfinished games that I should just let go. If I get to it, great! If not, then so be it. I just hope I don’t further burden myself next year with the amount of new gaming purchases. Life’s not getting any easier for me as I try my best to not let myself get so stressed out too much over things.

Next year, my video game goal is to not play more games or tackle my gaming backlog. My goal is to enjoy playing games again.

For those that actually read this entry, many thanks. (This probably wasn't the best of blog entries to read, but thanks anyway.)

My first blog post attached to a Giant Bomb wiki page.

Persona 4 Arena has been my most played game since it's release back in early August. I was going to pass it over on the sole reason that I have not played Persona 4 at all (I own the game, but did not have a functional Playstation 2 to play it) and heard that the game was going to serve as the game's aftermath to the events from the original game. However, just weeks before its release, a few of my fighting game friends convinced me and by luck with good timing, placed my pre-order of the game at Newegg at their promotional pre-order price of $48. Thank goodness that my friends convinced me into getting this game, because the game is very fun and I have made some awesome social links with a bunch of fellow Giant Bombers here.

My copy arrived in the mail on the date of the retail release date, which surprised me as I didn't expect it to arrive on day one. I put my name out on the P4A social links thread and with barely any training under my belt, found a few bombers to play with and had much fun, disregarding my concern for rest that night. I followed up the subsequent nights playing against other bombers and enjoying myself. Unfortunately, I couldn't enter the first Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena Tournament due to work on that Friday. However, further playing with fellow bombers and racking up the losses shook my confidence and after watching a fabulous finals to that tournament, I decided to put the game away, not sure if I wanted to go back to it.

I did go back to it after two(?) weeks later with a bit of a clearer mind and this time I stuck with it. I trained a bit more, did as much challenges as I could, dabbled with score attack mode, and most importantly, not to get deterred on how bad I was playing. There was something about fighting games that always ticked me off because I played so poorly against my friends and my few ventures online as well as not really getting into the games as much as I had hoped. But P4A clicked with me. I guess it's the simplified inputs for specials, easy to link combos, fast-paced gameplay with some neat tools to add some flavor to the battle (burst, one more cancel, furious action, etc.). I shook off my fear and decided to hit the ranked matches. I was doing okay, eventually ranking myself up to a D with a 40% win rate.

FluxWaveZ announced the second Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena tournament and decided to go into ranked hard as well as play some casuals with some fellow bombers. Soki was rounding up folks to play some casuals in preparations and though I had fun, I did express my frustrations at my play since I was getting beat pretty handily in each causal meetup we had, probably only winning a few matches. I had some early success back in ranked, getting up to C- before I hit a severe wall and started to take in a lot of losses, slowly lowering my win rate to the lower 30s. The day of the second tournament was coming close, I was excited as I didn't compete in the first one, but there were parts of me that was dreading the day. I was getting nervous. Would I make a fool out of myself? How bad was I gonna get pounded?

I put up a status on my Giant Bomb profile stating that I hit a wall in my P4A play and Soki came in with some words of wisdom on my wall that I took to heart. It relaxed me a bit and also made me change up my play a bit. He did point out that I was way too reliant on using Chie's FA to counteract pressure from Soki's Yu and Servantey's Chie and being way too reckless, whether it's going in to attack or not blocking properly and completely making all the wrong reads. It calmed me down a little heading into the tournament. I did well by my own standards. After getting sent to losers by MDYu, I beat ESREVER and Phatmac in losers before succumbing to Brodehouse. Playing almost an entire day with tournament and casual fighting did have a severe side effect, extreme exhaustion which has affected my work productivity after the tournament ended. I decided to take a slight break from the game to try to recover as best as I can.

I went back to the game after I recovered and decided to go back into the labyrinths of ranked matches. The frustrations grew back a bit as I struggled to reach that elusive C grade. One night, I finally got into a little bit of a roll and achieved that C grade, an achievement I never thought I would ever achieve from the game's launch. I think getting to that point finally let whatever I was worried about playing P4A out of my body. It was like a baptism. From then on, I could care less on how bad I got beat. I continued on with ranked and even though I was raking up the losses (my current ranked win rate stands at 25%), I was at peace for once. I defeated a couple of B graders and an A grade Yukiko, my personal ranked match highlights. I also learned and adjusted my game slightly after getting matched up with the same S ranked Naoto and Yu player a bunch of times, probably due to my fast connections limit option I select in ranked matches. [Next time, I'll remove the limit to make myself open to others.]

Flux announced the third Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena Tournament and this time I strictly stuck with casual matches with fellow bombers. I sparred a bunch with Brodehouse and TheFakePsychic during the weeknights and with a bunch of other fellows over the weekends. Some fellow bombers think my game has improved, which I appreciate since I don't think I play that great of a game at all. I didn't advance far in the third tournament, but I put up a good fight against Grim-2-, taking a match from him and against Messenko. Messenko complimented my defense and not falling for a bait that he was doing when he had his Akihiko pinned against me in the corner. My main highlight of this recent tournament is actually beating Soki in the second match of the first round of the team tournament. I couldn't believe it myself when I actually got the win and I'll admit, had a pretty big grin on my face as I haven't beaten him much at all, even in casual play. I was promptly crushed by FluxWaveZ afterwards and our team got eliminated, but I was still happy nonetheless. I had much fun playing casuals in between tournament matches with some other bombers I haven't met before, such as LiquidRob, DiscoViking, and YI-Orange, who was my team partner for the team tournament.

Whether or not I can continue to play my game or even improve upon it is a question, as I plan to be off from the game again for a bit. As much fun as I am having now, all the casual sparring going toward midnight on weeknights and far into the morning on weekends has messed up my sleep quality. I'll get in a little bit of action sometime, strictly on Friday or Saturday nights so as I don't get too rusty with my play. I know Chie's supposed be a in-your-face rushdown character, but I'm comfortable with the style I play. I'm also starting to feel comfortable playing with Naoto, who's my main sub and warmed up to Yukiko recently. I still feel bad since my style of play tends to DRAG MATCHES, even leading to numerous time outs, but I guess getting a round to time out means something.

In the end, I feel like I'm mostly at peace with P4A. I may never reach up to the fighting levels of FluxWaveZ, aznjon, MDYu, yuu, Soki, and other top GB fighters, but if I feel like I gave my opponent a decent fight, mission accomplished. A win is icing in the cake for me. Yes, there are still times where I may lapse and be frustrated at the game due the competitive nature of the fighting game genre, but I know better that it's only a video game, and there are much more pressing matters in life that are more worthy to be concerned with.

First off...

I want to thank all the fellow bombers whom I versed against during my time with Persona 4 Arena so far. (Apologizes to those whom I missed!)

• Brodehouse
• Davidwritten22
• ESREVER
• FluxWaveZ
• Gravitypenguin
• Hadoken101
• IrrevelantJohn
• Keystone_Yinzer
• MDYu
• Pepsiman
• Phatmac
• Servantey
• _Soki_
• TheFakePsychic
• TheOtherBelmont
• Vashyron
• YI-Orange

A very special thanks goes out to Keystone_Yinzer, Servantey, and _Soki_ for some late night casual sparring for a couple of nights leading up to the Giant Bomb Persona 4 Arena Tournament 2. I had so much fun sparring with you guys and giving me as much encouragement during my times trying to improve my Chie game. I admit that the game has kind of getting the best of me, physically and mentally. Work hasn't been kind to me this past week and I expect work to continue to be a pain in the butt this coming week to. My sleeping pattern has been so screwy and I haven't had the best of rest as I was preparing for the tournament. I'm happy I made it through a few matches in the losers bracket before crumbling before Brodehouse in the second round of the loser's bracket.

Anyways, I just wanted to say that I am going to limit my Persona 4 Arena time to Friday nights and Saturday afternoon/nights where I'll be down for more casual sparring. I really need to get my sleeping pattern during the weekdays back to normal so I don't constantly feel so sleepy at work, which was the state I was at work this past week. Life isn't easy and though I had a ton of fun playing so much P4A, I have my priorities and need to get my personal stuff together again. I also feel bad that I haven't played a lot of other games that I need to get to.

It's been really fun and I'll do my best to get some more casual sparring done here from time to time, but as an adult working man working at a stressful job, some things have to take a back seat for a bit. Again, thank you all for an amazing P4A experience.

I've been meaning to get this blog post down for some time. Here are my thoughts on my personal experiences of playing various games in the fighting game genre and how I hope to retain the re-energized fighting spark with Persona 4 Arena.

---

I have been a long time fan of fighting games, though I'm having a hard time enjoying the new renaissance the genre has experienced this gaming generation. One of the first games I ever got was Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo and played that game to death. I also enjoyed playing Fatal Fury 2, Mortal Kombat I and II, TMNT: Tournament Fighters, World Heroes 2, and other fighting games that I either had or played frequently over at friend's houses during that time. Though not a traditional fighting game, I kept up the fighting spirit when I transitioned over to the Nintendo 64 with Super Smash Brothers. Killer Instinct Gold was decent though I made some bad purchases with Dark Rift and War Gods.

The following console is where my love of the fighting game genre blossomed. The following is a list of fighting games I owned for the beloved Sega Dreamcast.

• Capcom vs. SNK
• Garou: Mark of the Wolves
• The King of Fighters 1998 (dubbed The King of Fighters Dream Match 1999)
• The King of Fighters 1999 (dubbed The King of Fighters Evolution)
• Last Blade 2
• Marvel vs. Capcom 2
• Project Justice
• Power Stone 2
• Street Fighter Alpha 3

The Sega Dreamcast was the special console that got me fighting all the time along with some other classic games that I owned and played in that time (Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio, Skies of Arcadia). There was nothing better than spending most of the weekend with friends and family playing the Dreamcast, and a good chunk of time dedicated to those fighting games listed. I still own my Dreamcast copies of Garou: Mark of the Wolves, King of Fighters 1998 & 1999, and Power Stone 2 today, while "downloading" the other games and burning them onto a CD for the other games listed.

Unfortunately, the fighting game genre lost a good bit of momentum once the Playstation 2/X-Box/Gamecube consoles solidified the gaming market. There were still some good fighting games out there with [I think] Tekken carrying much of the fighting game banner during this time (Tag, 4, 5) along with a few others. I managed to purchase The King of Fighters 2000/2001 for the PS2, but missed out on King of Fighters 2002/2003. SNK was in dire straights at the time, they brought in a new developer to continue the franchise going but I didn't like the striker addition from King of Fighters 1999 and 2000/2001 just didn't click with me. I still had fun with the console, managed to squeeze in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, ICO, Burnout 3: Takedown and a few other games before college work became so much that I had to put forth more time and dedication toward my college studies. I did not play many games while I attended college. Anime took over as my big hobby at the time as it was experiencing a pretty big expansion as more people became exposed to anime. I was buying anime DVDs and downloading fansubs from torrents frequently during my summer and winter breaks and my fire with video games almost went out. It's odd that my desire for video games rekindled while my interest in anime is now at an all-time low.

I graduated college toward the tail end of the PS2's life in 2007. I was just browsing around Gamespot one day when I came across one of the trailers on Persona 3. After reading their review of the game shortly afterward, I purchased the game and loved the game from start to end. I also purchased P3 Fes, went straight into playing The Answer and falling short of the end boss because I under-leveled severely. I got a little bit of the fighting game spirit back up by grabbing Capcom vs. SNK 2 and King of Fighters XI. Capcom vs. SNK 2 is what a game between two long-running franchises should be, throwing the kitchen sink with tons of characters and bringing along each companies unique power gauges. Mix-matching teams from both companies was fun and the feeling of triumph when one of us finally beat Shin Akuma and Omega Rugal and having them unlocked and playable. King of Fighters XI was a nice fighter that honed in when they briefly used the Marvel tag-in system that started in 2003. It had a nice roster and featured plenty of unlockable fighters to go after and the gameplay was pretty fast and furious. After some time, the love for the PS2 dwindled and in early 2008, made the transition to the current generation of consoles with the X-Box 360 with Rock Band as the first game. I eventually purchased the PS3 and Wii later.

Side Note: I did purchase Persona 4 as a last hurrah for the PS2. Unfortunately, my brother decided before hand to mod our formerly reliable PS2 for him to play the Beatmania games. The modded PS2 was working at the time though it was exposed. I accidentally spilled a bit of water onto the console and now the console is rendered useless. I STILL own my PS2 copy of Persona 4, but never managed to play one second of it. ;_;

I went in pretty hard with fighting games this generation (and games in general since I got my job soon after graduating college) in hopes to capture some of the fun times I had with the genre's offerings with the Super Nintendo and Sega Dreamcast days, but I ended up being flustered with most of the games I went after. Here are the current list of fighting games that I purchased before getting Persona 4 Arena earlier this month.

• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift
• BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend
• The King of Fighters XIII
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3
• Mortal Kombat
• Skullgirls
• Street Fighter x Tekken
• Street Fighter IV
• Super Street Fighter IV
• Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition
• Tekken 6
• Virtua Fighter 5
• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Out of all the games listed here, the only game where I kind of enjoyed and put in some decent time into was BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. I was still in my anime phase at the time and loved looking at the art and animation of the game. I played around with everyone and decided to use Noel as my main. Looking back to it, I just spammed the hell out of her drive move when I played online as I didn't know any better. I eventually got to Level 30 and made a new X-Box Live friend or two through my time there, along with one nice message and a few mean ones mixed in. I was looking forward to Continuum Shift when that was announced and picked it up the week-of its release. However, after spending some time playing with Noel in training and playing through arcade mode, I felt sick to my stomach. I knew that they changed up all the characters to make the entire roster a bit more balanced but I was sort of put off with the changes they made to Noel. I didn't even bother playing Continuum Shift much after that as I set my sights on playing and completing other games.

I had high expectations for vanilla Street Fighter IV, vanilla Marvel 3, and KoF 13, but once I got around to playing them, I just wasn't getting into them as I used to. There's a multitude of reasons why I just haven't gotten into the fighting games from the generation, ranging from how much more critical I am personally instead of being carefree back in those days, to timing and having precise executions, little technical things to always look out for with meter, range, mix-ups, cross-overs, etc. Being exposed to the world of streaming and watching these fighting gamers play these games at such a level that I'll never attain has gotten me feeling pretty blue in owning all of these fighting games, though I enjoy watching them play at that level. I'm having fun playing numerous games from many different genres with the current generation, but fighting games has failed to engage me.

Until now...

I was planning to pass over Persona 4 Arena over the aspect that the game served as a story aftermath of the events of Persona 4. However, after reading about the fighting system of the game and watching some of the gameplay trailers, I decided to give it a shot. I pre-ordered my copy from Newegg when they held their per-order promotion one weekend in July where they were selling the game for $48. Newegg shipped the game pretty fast and I got my copy along with the arranged soundtrack CD on the retail release date of August 7. I had an early taste of the game when one of my brother's friends got the game early from buying it at a certain game store in suburban Philly that weekend. I was a bit worried playing it a first, but once I got into it, it just felt right. I ended up playing a good chunk of Persona 4 Arena with my brother's friends for most of that day and ended up having my arms cramp up in pain so much because I played so much.

What I love about the the fighting system with P4A is how much the simplified the fighting engine to where you don't have to be reliant on knowing the ins-and-outs of the entire engine and not having to know any out-of-the-box combos to be successful. You just go in there and play. There are certain parts to P4A's engine to be mindful of, with different types of bursts, furious actions, evasions, one more cancels and bursts, and other little things that more experienced fighters will take note of, but you can still be successful by playing a smart game, knowing what your character can do in certain situations and correctly assessing what your opponent is throwing at you. During my first casual matches with a few fellow bombers here, I just went in Chie knowing to be up close and personal, pressure them as much as possible, and throw in the God Hand at the right time and distance. Eventually, I am doing my best to integrate a few more aspects of Chie's game into my arsenal, such as using a bit more of her persona at certain distances and situations and using her furious action counter more times. In short, I applaud Arc System Works for crafting a great fighting engine that's easy for beginners to get into and hack away, but also having little things that can slowly be applied to a person's game as they dig deeper into the character and engine.

I'm not going to be as great as some of the pros who have started to pick up and run with the game, such as Nerdjosh (Teddie), ChrisG (Elizabeth), MarlinPie (Chie), and those that finished in top three in Flux's Giant Bomb P4A community tournament earlier this month, but I can definitely say that I can play a competent game. I had much fun playing with some of the fellow bombers here during the first week of the game's release, though my play couldn't compare to some of those that I fought against (Flux, Soki). P4A is also the first game I played online on a console game in a long time. I still get jitters playing online matches because I still get nervous on how I'll play out against others as I've had my fair share of licks playing online on other games. So far, I haven't received any bad messages and all but one of my matches went smoothly and fair for the most part. I'll still fight some ranked matches here and there, though I sort of feel discouraged at times since I was hovering in the high 20-low 30 winning percentage range before somehow going 6-3 with my recent ranked match session this past Friday, bringing my winning percentage up to the low 40s now. I'd still love to fight with other bombers here for a nice casual session. In the meantime, I'll do my best to get through the story mode of this game over this upcoming Labor Day weekend, though I had a hard time going through just reading walls of texts during my short initial run playing through the mode. I'll also try to get good with another character. I'm sorta doing alright with Mitsuru. I'm also gonna try to train up with Naoto with the trap/keep-away game, though my initial training sessions with her hasn't been great. I also hope my overall playing skills don't diminish over time.

In short, P4A brought the fun back to fighting games with me and I hope support for the game continues to be strong in the next couple of months in the midst of the upcoming Q4 gaming barrage (Assassin's Creed 3, Hitman, Halo 4, Cod: BO2, etc.). It seems to be doing pretty good in the fighting game community scene at the moment, where it's gotten top amount of entrants in Spooky's Big Two weekly tournaments in the past two weeks and drew in 128 entrants at this weekend's Summer Jam 6 event in Philly. Whether or not it maintains this wave of momentum it has and becomes a featured game in EVO 2013 remains to be seen, but I am enjoying this game very much and I think it'll have it's place as one of my favorite games this year.

[Oh, I'm playing P4A on the PS3 if you're wondering.]