mDuo13

It seems I've unintentionally continued a trend in this website, where I post a lot one month, skip nearly the entire next month, and then return. I dunno what the deal is with that, but I at least have a pretty good excuse for not posting in the past month: I got a new job. I am now an employee of social gaming startup Playdom, where I'm documenting internal processes and things like that (in the hopes of making the company more efficient and less confusing). So that's been taking a pretty big chunk out of my week, and besides that I've been keeping up with a reasonably large number of anime and hanging out with friends about as often as not... this blog kind of fell by the wayside in between. But I'm not satisfied with that, so here's a brief rundown on what I've accomplished in the last month.

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Well, I'm now breaking what I think is the longest streak of not writing any blog entries since I updated this site. And it hasn't been for a lack of things to write about; closer to a lack of time to write about them. In the time since my last post I've finished ARIA The ORIGINATION, Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 and a few other anime series, graduated from college, played Metal Gear Solid 3, gone to Fanime Con, started smoking, gotten married, gotten divorced, lost my job, gone to the moon, fought off cancer, climbed Mount Everest, and played a lot of mahjong. Okay, I admit, a few of those were made up. But really, a lot has happened.

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I finally, today, finished Okami (for Wii) after almost 37 hours of game-time. Now, compared to some other games like Tales of Vesperia (Current playtime: 74 hours, 27 minutes, and that's not even finished), that may not seem like much, but Okami was deceptively, perhaps even unpleasantly long. On one hand, I can't say that it's a bad game - it has a host of qualities aside from its unique art style that are quite commendable - but nonetheless, I can't unequivocally say that I liked it, either.

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I've finally finished Chrono Trigger DS (including the bonus dungeons and the special ending, but not all of the original endings). It was a special experience revisiting this game - one I've placed among my 2 all-time favorites (with only Super Metroid as company), but have not played in almost a decade. The DS version sure packs a lot of bonus material, none of which detracts from the game, but none of which is really, ultimately, necessary.

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I've finally finished the third and final Metroid Prime game. It was a pretty good game, on the whole. Each individual aspect of the game is quite good, and the structure is much the same as the previous two Metroid Prime games. Nonetheless, I have a few reservations about it that cause me to conclude: It's a fun distraction that even the hardcore fans can enjoy... while they wait for a 'real' Metroid game.

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I've always hated how the most frustratingly difficult puzzles in some games (RPGs especially) are not actually meant to be hard. They're the "puzzles" where you simply did not see the place where you were supposed to go next, the button you were supposed to press, or whatever, and you spent hours wandering around looking for it under the misconception that it's actually much harder than it really is. The problem is, this happens to me all the time.

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