Some Ideas for Future Posts

Holy shit I'm alive. School has been pretty terrible honestly, but that is starting to turn around now. Currently, this entire semester only consists of one class, so I don't have to stress out so much anymore. When the semester is over, I'll finally graduate from college... and then I have no clue. I like to believe that I will have more time to play video games than I did last semester, when I literally had work due every twelve hours on top of having to go to class, but if I need to devote my time to an actual job, I'm going to have to. Still, I feel pretty optimistic about it, plenty of people my age work and still play video games. It's not like I wouldn't have weekends either (I think), so I shouldn't have much to worry about. I just don't see how anything could be worse than the last semester I had here.

Anyway, I'm digressing a lot here. I'm sorry I haven't kept up the pace with this blog. Everything has been pretty much set aside so that I could focus in school, and now, to still focus, catch up on a lot of sleep that I lost last semester, and to catch up with some games I've been meaning to check out. I played through The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, after having them for over three years now. I don't think I am going to write anything really about those games, though, but I might make a post for Dreamfall Chapters, the newest installment to the series. It also happens that Dreamfall Chapters, an episodic format game, is wrapping up with its final episode I think sometime this year (do not quote me on that), so I think the timing to get the game would be really good.

I'm going to list some games that I've been planning to get, and some of these might end up being written about here.

• No Man's Sky
• Hyperdimension Neptunia (the first remake for PC)
• Hyperdimension Neptunia 3 (the third remake for PC)
• Megadimension Neptunia VII (potentially if I end up liking Hyperdimension Neptunia)
• Grand Theft Auto V
• World of Warcraft: Legion
• Doom
• Fallout 4
• Rise of the Tomb Raider
• Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remaster (for PC)
• Dark Souls III
• Possibly Life is Strange 

Off the top of my head, these are games that I am very certain that I want to get. Of these, I'm not sure how many I will write about. Fallout 4 might get a pass, as will FFX, Life is Strange, probably Dark Souls, probably Legion (I always do a terrible job trying to write about WoW expansions), and possibly Doom if I take too long to get around to it (same applies for Tomb Raider and GTAV). For certain, I will do my best to write about No Man's Sky, Hyperdimension Neptunia I and III, and Megadimension Neptunia VII if I end up getting it. If I don't, then I've failed this blog once again.

In addition to that, though, there is more. Come August, the new "Metroid," Metroid Prime: Federation Force, will be released, and the Sixth I believe is actually the day of Metroid's 30th Anniversary. So to build up to this new Metroid game, whether I like the game or not, I am writing a post about each Metroid game for each week leading up to Federation Force. If I remember correctly, this should begin on June 3rd. But wait, those who might have actually followed this blog for some time now might say, I remember you wrote some posts about Metroid already. True, I have indeed actually already covered Metroid: Zero Mission, the NES Metroid, and Metroid II: Return of Samus. Honestly I think for the first couple of weeks, I am just going to move those posts up front by changing the date if I can do that, rather than shamelessly duplicating the post and adding to the post count on this blog. I'm thinking of doing these in chronological release order, so the Zero Mission post might be delayed.

I probably will go by chronological release order, so June 17th should be when I finally finish what I started and continue with my post on Super Metroid. After that would be Fusion, then Prime, then Zero Mission, then Prime 2, Prime Hunters, Prime 3, and Other M. Prime Pinball will fall somewhere in there too, I just forgot when that game came out. Then when Federation Force is released, you can bet that I will absolutely write about that here as well.

Hopefully I can get some of those games I listed above as soon as possible, because between the Metroid series, some extraneous posts in between, and at least some reviews on No Man's Sky and the Hyperdimension games, there should be a good workflow going through here. My concerns are time to be able to play these games and money to be able to purchase them, but again, I am optimistic that nothing will vacuum my time the way last semester did. During the week, I'd wake up, go straight to class, come home, make dinner, do homework, go to sleep. On the weekends I often slept in because of how little sleep I'd get during the week, so I'd have pretty much only time to wake up, get lunch, do homework, and maybe play a bit of Fire Emblem: Fates before having to go back to sleep. Like my parents would have time after work to watch TV, I didn't have that luxury last semester. Now I have a bunch of time to play and do whatever I want but not enough money to actually get any of the games I want to get. I'd get a job, but I'm only going to be here for three weeks. Three weeks and then I leave Tallahassee, so I think I'm better off just waiting until I come back home.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, I'm also getting Overwatch. I really don't know how to even talk about that game critically, so I don't think I am going to post a review here. From what I've played in the beta it was definitely insanely fun and was one of the most polished shooters I've played in years, but that hardly even covers a thing about the game. I'll probably post some highlights though, thanks to the games highlight feature, and maybe I'll write about balance updates if I feel I have anything to say about them, but other than that, I wouldn't expect a lot from myself about the game.

New Best Time in Metroid II!

School is FINALLY letting up, so I decided to pick up one of my favorite games ever, Metroid II, and give it another speed run. I did use the game's save stations (no save states from the Virtual Console so no TAS) so the actual time is different from what it says on the screenshot, but I am not trying to be competitive here; I was just trying to improve my own personal time so I went by the time that the game says. My previous best time was 1:36 (that's an hour and thirty-six minutes by the way not a minute and so seconds).

I think what made a huge difference here was that I found that morph ball rolling is actually faster than running before you get the Varia Suit, so I did that as much as possible. I also found out about this interesting trick called the Spider Throw or something like that, where if you do a jump while in morph ball form and then enter the spider ball form your momentum becomes the speed as if you were rolling. This only works going left for some reason, and it's a cool way to cover some ground even though I only ever really used it like twice. I also managed to find a new route for one of the areas that really cut down on the time I spent there as well.

I'm really surprised I still beat my best time by a huge margin because I fucked up a lot of stuff that I'd normally get right on the first try. Now I wonder what my time could've been, but for now I am really satisfied with this result. I'd do something to celebrate a little, but sadly I still have some school left to deal with (uggggghhhhhh).

A Fairly Good Match

To be honest I did kinda play like shit here, but the times that I did do well were pretty damn good. I was just gonna make the first KO a highlight of the day gyf at first but then I pulled off that nice string on the second stock and I figured I'd might as well embed the whole video. This guy was really good with several different characters (and also really cool and not an asshole like 99% of the other good players I meet who leave in the middle of the match for no reason), and I was glad I was able to hold up well against him as this new character. He even said I was pretty good, which was awesome. There's going to be a Smash 4 tourney this weekend and I'm hoping to see what I can get out of Corrin in that event.

Smash 4 Highlight of the Day (Yet Another Corrin Post)

I once considered switching to Corrin as my main simply from the fact that every asshole abusing Link on For Glory suddenly shits the bed when I play as her. Of course I'm still sticking with ZSS, but Corrin is definitely my Number Two. Sorry Samus and Peach! You guys just have too many weaknesses for me to get a handle of. Sorry Roy! You're insanely good but also pretty boring for me.

Smash 4 Highlight of the Day

Day 2 with Corrin and I'm still pulling off all this crazy shit. Corrin's down air has to be the best "suicide" down-air in the game, because it's really not a suicide move at all. You can jump at the very last possible moment to not only ensure your opponent dies first but also, if your opponent has another stock, you can recover by side-b onto the wall of the stage (that's the catch, the stage MUST have a wall), and then jumping and then up-b back to the ledge. Usually I just mash the fuck out of the jump button and try to do the side-b the moment my opponent is dead as I would've jumped by then and it's sometimes hard to tell if you made it. One of Corrin's more hilarious jank tricks I must say.

Smash 4 Highlight of the Day

Thought this was going away, did you (also crap this gif came out like shit, you'll have to click on it, or wait for it to adjust)? Technically though I am not really continuing this anymore, but Corrin came out and of course the first match I have against Link (who I hate with a burning passion) I fucking wrecked his ass.

Okay so it's not that impressive I guess but I shat the bed when this happened so on here it goes.

Mah New Rig

How is it that I've had this new computer for two months now and I still haven't said anything about it on this blog? Well, because I've been too busy playing it, of course!

At long last, though, I'm starting to get pretty burnt out from playing it so much, and tonight especially since I got a pretty bad headache, so I decided to write for a change. I'm thinking of throwing up two posts here: first, this post talking about my new computer and my experience with it and stuff. Then my next post will be a quickie on my thoughts about WoW and Legion and stuff (by the way I am super hyped). But without further digression, let's jump right into my computer.

Before this semester started, I was really looking into putting together a nice computer. I was getting fed up with the performance issues I was having on my laptop, and there were points where I was getting performance that was even pettier than what these "next-gen" consoles offer. So for some reason, my school decided I was worthy of receiving a grant over the summer. This money turned out to be far much more than I needed to even pay off the rest of my tuition, so I was able to split it up and buy an awesome PC with the leftovers. At first, I looked into this by going to TigerDirect and checking out what the top-end stuff would total out to be. My calculations brought me to well over a thousand, which was way out of my budget (I was hoping no more than eight-hundred USD), and thus I went home depressed and thinking maybe it really did cost that much to put together a great computer that would leave consoles in the dust. I knew that, for the same price as a console, I could build a PC that could somewhat outperform consoles, but that's on the same settings as to what games are locked to on those systems. What I wanted was near, if not complete max settings, on 1080p, at sixty frames per second. After spending the day at TigerDirect that day, my dreams seemed shattered... and then, I went on the PCMasterRace subreddit. God bless that place.

On the PCMR sub, I found a build that did exactly what I wanted for a hundred dollars under the budget I had set out. I didn't want to mess around and do my own thing too much, partially for fear of fucking up the computer, but also for fear of not being too savvy with shopping for parts as evidenced by my trip to TigerDirect, but I did switch out some of the things that were listed for a couple of better parts (which were, granted, also suggested on the thing but hey I was bold enough to make changes for myself!). I will upload some pictures soon, but for now here is the list of parts I put together!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor	$172.89 @ OutletPC
Motherboard	Asus Z97-E ATX LGA1150 Motherboard	$86.98 @ Newegg
Memory	Kingston HyperX Fury Blue 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory	$38.43 @ SuperBiiz
Storage	Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$44.89 @ OutletPC
Video Card	Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Vapor-X Video Card
Case	Fractal Design Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case	$55.99 @ SuperBiiz
Power Supply	EVGA 850W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply	$64.99 @ NCIX US
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$514.17
	Mail-in rebates	-$50.00
	Total	$464.17
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-14 06:13 EST-0500

And my goodness, those prices dropped so much in just a few months! Although in actuality, for some reason the video card (which is probably the most critical component for my gaming experience) doesn't have a price listed (it might still be trying to get a price from Newegg, which is the retailer I bought it from, and Newegg might not have that card anymore, I don't know), so the price would probably be another couple hundred dollars. Maybe less, since apparently now the R9 390 is around the same price I got my 290 for. I feel a little bad about it, partially because I've had to really cut down on spending in pretty much all other facets of my life, but also because now, so soon after I bought my computer, there are better parts for about the same price. But I guess that's just the way it's going to always be with computers. I feel like things move just so fast, all I can really do is find what will certainly last and be relevant for a few years before I have to upgrade. And my R9 290 is still quite a damn good card. I think the processor could stand for an upgrade already, but first of all things, I need to get an SSD, an actual mouse, and an actual keyboard (my mouse and keyboard are spare parts I bummed from my dad and my friend). And I could probably stand to get some speakers, although I am fairly certain I have a pair already. Then there are all these games that I want and ugh! Dude, there are like far too many games that I want. There's Metal Gear Solid V, Fallout 4, No Man's Sky, the Legion expansion, to an extent I want Overwatch, I want some of the Hearthstone adventure stuff so that I can put together a good deck, I want Fire Emblem Fates (not PC I know but still), I want Star Wars: Battlefront (but this I can literally wait a year for if need be)... the list goes on and on. So many possibilities are now open with this lovely computer! And that's the thing that really brings me satisfaction with this rig. For too long have I dealt with low performance and the mindset of, "If I can play it, I'll be okay." Ever since my roommate in my sophomore year introduced me to the whole PC Master Race "movement"(?), I've dreamed of one day getting to put together a computer that would render consoles obsolete, and that I can pretty much say I've achieved.

So yeah, that's my build. Not very original but it's still damn good nonetheless. I actually pretty much put it together by myself. My friends helped me just a teeny bit. The rest I figured out for myself, and I was pretty OCD about the whole thing, I'll admit. I used an anti-static mat (I mean come on, my entire apartment is covered with carpet), I was super nervous about forcing things, I was super nervous about pressing the cables into their places (forcing things) and putting them in the wrong places, and to make matters worse my case has a really weird hard-drive bay where it's more like a wall and you hang the hard drives off the side. When I finally put the whole thing together, I was certain I had fucked something up. When I turned on my computer, everything sounded like it was turning on, but I was getting a really strange clicking sound, and there was no video coming up on my monitor (I had used a monitor that only supported a VGA connection for a while).

I panicked and was convinced I had fucked something up. In my frantic breakdown, I called a friend and told him what happened and almost broke down into tears. He then asked me if I put in the video card. I said yes. He asked if I had it connected to an HDMI monitor. I said no. He said, Yeah, go do that. So I plugged it into the HD TV in my apartment's living room, the only HD anything I had in this place, and it worked! Very few times in my life had I felt such an overwhelming sense of relief. So I got my computer set up, eventually managed to save up for an actual HD monitor with HDMI support, and now here I am today, enjoying BioShock Infinite on complete max settings, 1080p, and running at over eighty frames per second (although I only see sixty because my monitor is 60Hz, but it's nice to know my PC can run it an extra twenty frames than what I was aiming for)! The only game I've been weary with has been World of Warcraft. Sometimes, my framerate in certain places would drop to the thirties and forties. The game's recommendations for my settings are on the High preset, but I can set almost everything to max (SSAO needs to be on high and not on the nVidia setting aka Sabotage AMD Card Setting, and the anti-aliasing has to be brought down to MSAA x8 but even that's still pretty damn good).

What a lot of stuff I've read seems to be indicating though is that the CPU is really what's bottlenecking the game for me, not the graphics card. It's a bit of a shame but it's not a huge deal. I rarely have performance issues in raids (in which I have the settings lowered anyway), 99% of the places I've been to in the open world run pretty much over sixty frames per second, and dungeons are pretty much where the glory is (I can keep things max settings and still be well over sixty frames since it's not as straining on my CPU, I guess?). And this is fairly much limited to WoW. Now granted, I haven't really played that many other games on my desktop, but I have played The Talos Principal's demo, and even on the maximum settings, I still get over ninety frames per second in the benchmark, which completely blows my mind.

That's all I've got to really say for now. It's so amazing to be finally living the dream with this computer, and I look forward to playing all these "next-gen" games on it!