College has really murdered my game time, but I am still doing my best to get through .Hack Infection and Final Fantasy 6.

I'm 9 hours into Final Fantasy 6 and I'm starting to warm up to it. Terra went all super sayian and now I'm trying to rescue and/or find her. My party is Locke, Cyan, Edgar, and Celes. One of my big worries is that I am going to miss out on a bunch of characters because I didn't explore enough or something. Hopefully the other characters that haven't been introduced yet are in mandatory cut-scenes or found in painfully obvious places. I've reached the city of Zozo and I think it is an awesome area for a Final Fantasy game. A derelict town full of enemies, jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper, and a cool puzzle with clocks just feels right in this game. Also Edgar's auto crossbow is an amazing ability and should be used without discretion.

Where Final Fantasy 6 has been constantly improving in my mind, .Hack Infection has been maintaining the status-quo. Gardenia joined my group so now I have a long arm that I can recruit to my party. I definitely need to stop and do some grinding though. A friend warned me that if I don't farm the early virus cores now it will be hard to get them later. I'm also plagued with constant feeling that some party members are way under leveled (I'm looking at you Natsume). I should probably raise some more grunties as well but I keep getting noble grunties. For that matter, I don't understand what grunties even do. I can trade with them for some okay stuff but that's about it right? Add to the .Hack chore list Trading with NPC's as well. Somebody must want those Golden Axes I have. .Hack has a lot of nuances that I need to work on.

The real sleeper hit was the random games of Spelunky my girlfriend and I have been playing. After watching so much Spelunkin' with Scoops I looked up some streams on Twitch. One late night I found a stream with an exceptional Spelunky player Latedog. In his stream were a few other top tier players and just generally nice fellows. These guys and gals were a delight to talk to and answered any and every question I had about the game. I actually bought the game because the community seemed so nice.

Most of the Spelunky I have seen is single player, but let me tell you, if you haven't tried the multiplayer you are missing out. My girlfriend and I play with each other and we have a blast. We aren't too good yet, but we always laugh and carry on. The best part is that even when you are dead you can control a ghost that floats around setting off traps and pushing treasures down to a more accessible area for your partner to grab. That small touch makes the game consistently engaging for every player. It's a rare game that leads to multiplayer laughs and not multiplayer fights.

Comments are always welcome,

-Chemystery