So when I left the bar on last Saturday night (no, the Saturday night before that) after watching UFC 126 I was feeling great after watching what was an interesting night of fights. But on Monday morning I found out one of the worst things that I could possibly find out. My wallet, which I had when leaving the bar since I needed it to pay my tab, was missing. After tearing the house apart and finding no trace of it, it's been the process of trying to get all of my information and being pretty much homebound with limited access to funds, becoming more limited due to the problems transferring my direct deposit into my new bank account. It's left me time to do things to try to divert my attention from how much losing all of your identification and access to money can be, which means lots of games and anime in the nighttime hours. Fortunately my bank was able to set up new accounts, freeze the old one, and transfer the direct deposit into the new account until my HR department gets the transfer to the new account solidified with the payroll company. Unfortunately, my first check after this happened is still vapor at this point, and to say I'm getting a bit nervous with a check that has nearly 30 hours of overtime in it being "somewhere" where somewhere doesn't equal the new bank account, is an understatement. Bah, on with the games:
Games
So I finally completed Fallout 3, after going back to it six months post first attempt at playing it. I still get why it's good, I still understand why people love it, and acknowledge that a PC is probably a better tool than a PS3 to play the game on. I understand that the reason I was able to get through it was going back to it with lowered expectations as to what the game was going to do for me. I still didn't completely love the game although the ending sequence was good, even if it was good due to my not thinking about the puzzle that ended the game until I was forced to do so or die by radiation. I again believe part of it was the games I played before playing Fallout 3 the first time, and those games still stand up as doing things better than Fallout 3 did. Bayonetta still had more enjoyable characters, and seemed to settle into it's own fiction better than Fallout 3 did. Bioshock's Rapture is still a more interesting place to be than the Capital Wasteland and I found it's propaganda more enjoying to search out and look at. Demon's Souls outright hostility seemed like something that should have been prevalent in Fallout 3 and wasn't to the extent that maybe I would have liked. It's not that I wanted Fallout 3 to be more difficult, but I wanted that feeling of fear going into a new place that just didn't seem to be there when I could just drop into VATS and start aiming my shots, or just pause to regroup and figure out how I wanted to handle whatever situation I found myself in. I wish that a music add on which was on the PC was available on the PS3, as I would have loved more variance in the music for such a long game, but all in all I'm glad I beat it, and I'm glad I'm done. Maybe someday I'll get the itch to go back and do some of the missions I didn't do, but that time isn't coming any time soon.One of the great things about PS+ was the free day one download of Stacking this last week, and I tore through the game with abandon. It had an interesting art style, some great puzzles, and rewards for just messing around in the world they created. I'm not going to judge whether $15 would have been something I was willing to pay for the game, but as a bonus treat for having PS+, it made my decision to subscribe to the service even better. Sam and Max was a great first get, add in Stacking and the interesting assortment of PS1 games my son is having fun playing and that I can take on the go, and it's a no-brainer, at least for me. PS+ has been absolutely the best investment that I've made on my PS3 since getting it and having over 13 months more of content coming my way is icing on the cake that I've already had a chance to eat.
I went and did more playing around with Little Big Planet 2, and I'm in the middle of trying to complete the "Aces in Spades" trophy for acing 10 levels in a row in the story mode. This has not gone well as I've made it to eight twice, and nine once before doing something completely stupid and forcing myself to start over again. Frustrating to continue starting over on this, and I might walk from it for a while and just mess around with something else to get some distance, but I might do what I did with the "Bomber" trophy on Super Stardust HD and decide to just bag it. I'd like to eventually play around with the level editor and see if I can make a level that's actually worth playing, but for now messing around myself and watching Malachi play with his "friends" is good enough to make sure the game stays in heavy rotation and always taunts me when I get on the PS3 myself.
Finished the story mode on Space Invaders Infinity Gene last night as well, and that game scratches a retro-evolution vibe nicely, although not as nice as Pac Man Championship Edition DX does. For $5 when it went on sale it was a good get, and beating the game on medium, setting it back to easy, then having my son jump in and beat the last boss to unlock that trophy was pretty funny, just for his reaction (which is always awesome when he gets trophies). He's also quickly figured out how to use the stored music on the PS3 to play around in Music Mode and it's amusing to see what he's playing to at any given moment when he does so.
I'm debating going through Enslaved again, and messing with Piggsy's Perfect 10. I feel a stronger pull back to that game than I had for Uncharted 1, which is interesting, and I'm wondering if that might be next on the list of games to knock down and pull a Platinum in. It's been a while since I've gone for that in a game, and I think Enslaved might be the one I go for it in.
Anime
So I've been going through a few shows from the current season and picked up one that I meant to watch a while ago and I've been tearing through it. If you think that "anime is for jerks" this is where you can stop reading, unless you're doing a tl;dr, in which case you haven't read to this point anyway.So I decided for some reason to start watching Kore wa Zombie desu ka? and strangely enough I've been really enjoying it. Why, I don't know, but it could have something to do with the main character being half zombie, half magical girl, and all bizarre. The slapstick humor has been working for me for some unknown reason and while it's not something I'm itching to continue, this season seems so thin that the diversion works for me.
I've also started watching IS: Infinite Stratos, and be damned if this show isn't completely derivative of more shows that I've watched than I'd care to admit. But like Zombie, something about it is just working for me. I don't know if it's again how thin the season is that lowered expectations is allowing me to enjoy this more than I should, especially when I haven't even started with Gosick which is the show that at the beginning of the season interested me the most.
Level-E has started off in an interesting way, and I'd probably be tearing through that right now if not for something else grabbing my attention more. There seems to be a rapid fire to the conversations that worries me about the subtitles and keeping up with it while missing what's happening, but the premise and animation style is intriguing to me. Maybe with more than one episode in I'll have a better idea of how good it is, but right now it hasn't lost me.
I've been continuing to watch Bakuman which the more it continues, the more it challenges Togainu No Chi as my favorite series from last season. It's painstakingly slow in it's execution which is a strength considering how enjoyable the characters and the struggles they face are. It reminds me of a more serious version of Comic Party in all the right ways, and while the premise is ridiculous the journey's been enjoyable.
So I reached back for the series that everyone who complains about the "moe" fad is doing themselves a disservice if they haven't watched, which is Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. It looks like every moeblob anime ever made, except it's evil and disturbing to it's very core. I started watching the second arc last night and found myself at 1:30am wondering if I should get some sleep or finish the arc by watching the last episode. Twenty-five minutes later, the question was whether to start the next arc or not, which fortunately for the people at my work I decided not to. Seeing these cute little moeblobs get their faces smashed in with baseball bats, or go psycho and start cutting people up with ridiculous glee just seems like those who are sick of the moe craze would be embracing stronger now than when the show originally aired. It's demented, crazy, and absolutely fascinating to watch this story get twisted around and so far reveal more of what's happening in the town of Hinamizawa. I'm almost tempted to see if there was an English language version of the game it was based off of to play around with it.
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