The vast majority of my day was spent doing one thing: walking around and catching Pokémon. Pokémon Go, the new augmented reality/location based game from Niantic, the creators of Ingress. For anyone who doesn’t know what this madness is, it’s the newest mobile game craze that allows anyone to become a “real” life Pokémon trainer. In some ways it is very similar to the main series Pokémon games, in others it really isn’t. You catch Pokémon, but instead of manipulating a virtual sprite with a pad on a Gameboy Advance or DS, you walk around in real life while your phone tracks your location and Pokémon show up on the screen for you to catch. Your location is represented by a 3D avatar on screen, and your real life surroundings are represented around that character as a map. Streets, buildings, fields, and rivers are shown on screen, all with Pokémon hidden away for you to find. Once you are near enough to a Pokémon, you can tap on it. Bringing you into a first person view which renders the Pokémon over video taken from your phone’s camera, allowing you to see a Pokémon on the sidewalk you’re walking on, or a table you’re sitting near. Or even by your wife as she gives birth. Anyone on the Pokémon Go subreddit or on Twitter has seen many strange places to find a Pokémon in your augmented reality.

Today was my first real day of playing Pokémon Go, I’ve had the app since the pre-release Field Test and the launch but had never left the house to play it. Today I went out with a friend to various busy locations in Santa Cruz, California. What I experienced today was very strange, kinda scary, but definitely amazing. As my friend drove downtown we hit traffic (do NOT drive and PoGo), which allowed me to actually grab some Pokémon because we were going slow enough for that to be possible. I started to see how many Pokémon, PokéStops, and Pokémon Gyms were out here, not to far away from my home. I got excited, up until that moment I had only seen the tens of Zubats, Rattatas, and Pidgeys around my house. All of which are Pokémon that can be found in heaps everywhere. You can barely go a few blocks without coming across these.

We hit downtown and explore, there was PokéStop with a “Lure” nearby. A Lure is a player-placed buff on a PokéStop which increases the likelihood of Pokémon appearing in that area. We walked the few blocks to the park, as we turned the corner there were three people standing on the spot where the Lure was placed. We all knew why everyone was here, and I say: “This game is crazy.” One of them turns to me and my friend and says “How’sa goin’ guys?” This is when it really hit me; people were being brought together by this game. This was my first encounter with other players, we didn’t talk much. But the little that we did was about the encounters they are having with people. Sadly we didn’t get anything too exciting, a Fearow appeared to both me and my friend. The nicest thing about this game as an outing with friends is that the Pokémon nearby are not first come first serve. The nearby Pokémon are consistent to everyone, so if anyone sees something rare, we all catch it. We walked around the area to claim all the free goods from the PokéStops. By the time we were done we could claim them all again because the refresh is around five minutes, which honestly is probably too short. This is fun.

Next we go further into the busier downtown area, even more Pokémon and PokéStops, it’s overwhelming. The fact that other people are playing Pokémon Go becomes more apparent the more people I see. It’s starting to feel a little creepy, as we point at people inconspicuously and whisper: “They’re playing,” as they do the same to us. We walk down the street when two women behind us do the same exact thing, and I can’t help but smile because Pokémon Go has changed everything. We walk over to a clocktower memorial that serves one of the virtual Pokémon Gyms. My friend tries to take it but the bug that makes it impossible to defeat the leader kills his attempt. The game still isn’t perfect. Many issues need to be sorted out. We see other people around us fighting the same gym leader. We walk around town getting more Pokémon and PokéStops, all while easily spotting many others doing the same. I overhear two friends talk about a 900cp Magmar defending a gym nearby, “How?!” He says.

Later, I walk into a favorite comic book shop I frequent. The guy running the store today looks at me and smiles. He sees my phone in hand, he asks “Team Mystic?” I apologize, (for some reason) because I’m team Instinct. He shows me his main, it’s a 900cp Magmar. It clicks with me and I tell him that earlier there were people just talking about this Magmar. This game is crazy.

Pokémon Go is a unique experience that is bringing people together and reuniting them with the characters from their childhood. Other players tell us there are a lot of good Pokémon up on campus at UCSC, and that a few towns over there are some rare Pokémon.

After this long day, I get home, my incubated egg hatches, a Cubone comes out. A Nidoran is next door. A Jigglypuff is down my street. And an Abra eludes my search.

This game is crazy.

The past few years have been fantastic for video game remasters. Metal Gear Solid, Devil May Cry, Ratchet and Clank, God of War, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper, Tales of Symphonia. Many of the best games of the PS2/Xbox/GC generation have made a fantastic 1080p comeback. Most of the remasters are specific cases where all the game really needed was a bump in resolution, some anti aliasing and texture filtering, and of course the gloriously smooth 60FPS! There are many games that would need a lot more work to be remastered. It's an extremely jarring feeling when you get when you go back to play one of your favorite games, and find that it doesn't look nearly as fantastic as your memory served. When I actually look back at games played years ago I forget that arms used to look like two rectangles with a stub on the end. Or in Cloud Strife's case, impossibly large rectangle hands, a pool noodle for an arm, and a diamond shaped shoulder.

I hope that we continue to see remasters. I'm very happy to see Grim Fandango again. The Grim Fandango remaster is something I would have never imagined. I've been playing it on PS4/Vita and it hit me that I was playing Grim Fandango on a modern console. I'm pleased that the game is so much more readily accessible now. For years I'd been waiting for a Gog.com release. A remaster is much more than I was hoping for. And so far the remaster has been excellent. It's strange to say, but when a remaster doesn't look that much different to how the game looks in your memory, its a good remaster. I didn't know the remaster had the swap feature, where at the click of a button you can switch between the original and the remaster. I was just pressing buttons and BOOM. The 3D models switched to the original low texture versions, the new dynamic lighting system was disabled. It was night and day. Yet I felt more comfortable with the remastered graphics.

Nostalgia can do a lot to you.

Video games are very important to me, been gaming my entire life. Gaming was never a just a hobby to me since it was only thing I was ever interested in. I grew up wanting to make games. But never knew which part of the process I wanted to be involved in. A few years ago I stumbled across Giant Bomb, started listening to the podcast on and off. I discovered how fantastic this website is. I've never involved myself in online forums that much, but I've always felt that if I did ever delve into discussion forums I would definitely start here. I love the community and I love the Giant Bomb crew. Lately I find it hard to motivate myself to play games for more than a few hours. I have way too many steam games (around 500), and far too many of them are unfinished, or even worse: unplayed. Most of the time I end up buying a new game then put a few hours into it and then never touch it again. I want to stop this vicious cycle in my life. Other than enjoyment the biggest motivation I have for playing games is discussing them with my friends. I want to use this site as my motivation to play games like I used to. Let's see if I can keep this going - LastBestHope 1/22/15

According to my save file it took above 80 hours to complete this game. Now I don' t know if that's true because I am playing this on PCSX2, and when I'm in dungeons I use turbo mode to save time grinding, which most likely resulted in the game clock speeding up. A friend of mine beat this game in 40 hours, so I'm going to assume that this game took me 60 hours to beat since I spent a LONG time grinding.

I got the True Ending, ended up with some pretty high level personas, Level 83 Kohryu, 63 Black Frost, 70 Loki.

Kohryu wasn't utilized fully since the final form of the boss absorbs lightning magic. I avoided use of all lighting magic and used the main character for buffs and the occasional Mind Charged Aragidyne (heavy fire) to the boss. With Mind Charge, Increased Damage, and the bosses defense lowered, Aragidyne did about 700 damage. But having all those three buffs and debuffs on at once is very difficult to keep up.

I am starting New Game Plus as a type this.

I was just one spell away from defeating Shadow Mitsuo, and I forgot to use Me Patra. One thing I don't like about this game is the fact that if Yu/main character dies, it's over. It may make sense according to some story point or something to do with the fact that Yu is the Fool Arcana. So I guess it's just one of those chosen one things.

Persona 4, is among my favorite JRPG's. I know this is true because I am 45 hours in to it. And when this is true, all other factors must be, other factors being that I love this game.

I actually enjoy the social parts a lot more than the dungeons, but lately, now that I have a powerful Persona, Black Frost, I love combat because I am a monster.

Currently I am fighting Shadow Mitsuo, the weirdest boss in the game, which is saying something since one of the last bosses I fought was a rainbow stripper that was pole dancing AS I WAS FIGHTING IT.

Other JRPG's I have beaten, a short list;

• Final Fantasy 7
• Final Fantasy 9

Soon to be Persona 4 if I keep this rate up of 5-10 hours a day. Next game on the list is Persona 3, or maybe I'll go back and finish Dragon Quest 8 and/or 9.