Updates

Backlog Report – January 2023

DaNamesX3 Comments

It is a new year and I have wrote diddly squat. It is not from a lack of trying, but from me not knowing where I want to start this year. I normally put out a post about what I want to achieve this year, but those things never work out so I didn’t feel the need to write about it. I am taking this year with an open mind as much as possible. Instead of trying to plan things out and stressing about things yet to come, I am going to ride the waves and see where life wants to take me from once. I have unnecessarily created stress for myself already, so I just need to empty my brain and remind myself that things always work out at the end.

On the writing front, I have written a few things that just need a second readthrough and some edits here and there. One thing that I wrote was really fun for me to write, and I hope I did that game justice while talking about it. It may take some time for that to come out, but I hope you enjoy it. I am going to continue just posting when I feel like the moment is right. When I feel like I am completely done with the post, I will release it like normally. I noticed my blog stats took a dive last year, but that has never bothered me from the very start. I just want to write fun things that I like to write and people enjoy reading. I’m too busy to get sucked into the numbers game.

There is also the matter of EXP Share. Earlier this month I asked the community if they would like to see this event return. I received a large positive support for it, so it will be officially returning. My plan at this point is to aim for March since I still need to sit down and hammer out the changes coming to it. Please look forward to it!

Games Finished This Month

Star Fox Zero

The best way to start a new year is to start from the bottom. I had hoped that I would be able to overcome Star Fox Zero’s unique control scheme, but it quickly made me frustrated. There were some parts where I had brief moments of enjoyment. The on-rails portions made changing my view from the Wii U Gamepad to the TV was easy enough to overcome, but once all-range mode started, my orientation would always be off. All the different vehicles were a headache to control with the landmaster being the worst. The game is pretty to look at, and the soundtrack is one of the best from the Star Fox series. I just wish like everyone else that the controls could be adjusted and accessible for different playstyles.

Marvel’s Spider-Man

I wouldn’t say that I am the biggest Spider-Man fan, but he is one of my favorites. I had no real interest in playing this game, but I decided to give it a try after owning it for a while. My impressions? This was one of the best times that I’ve had playing an action game. My problem with most action games is that at some point the combat gets too heavy and complicated that half of my moveset is wasted since I quickly forget about them. Not to mention that sometimes you have to remember different combinations with light and heavy attacks and how to chain into a specific move. With Spider-Man, all you have to remember is the melee button, the web-pulley button, and the get-out-the-way button. Just by remembering those actions, the combat becomes a simple rhythm dance that is easy to follow. What also helps is that if a special action is available, the game will tell you which buttons to press which eliminates my weakness of trying to remember how to pull off a specific action. I was really not expecting to enjoy this game as much as I did. So much in fact…

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

I decided to keep the spidy train going by finishing Miles Morales. Since it is a shorter game (and I didn’t feel like completing everything), it only took me three play sessions to finish the story. I enjoyed playing as Miles as we get to see him starting out and getting used to his powers and responsibilities. This is something we hardly get to do as the OG Spider-Man since most of his games start off with him being Spider-Man for a while. While I am now looking forward to Spider-Man 2 later this year, it might be something I don’t play immediately at launch.

New Additions

Ys (Origin, The Oath in Felghana, & The Ark of Napishtim)

The Ys series is one that I’ve been interested in for a while. I played Ys I and found the bump mechanic to be a learning curve at the time. Now that I am deep into The Legend of Heroes series, I want to take the time to visit Falcom’s other signature series. My friend described the later games as Zelda on crack, so I will eventually see if that is true.

Harvest Moon 64

No. My quest to own almost every Harvest Moon game has not ended. I never knew this game existed until I did my research on Harvest Moon games. I’m just happy to own a genuine copy since most I found online were reproduction carts.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

I have never seen this game in the wild. I’ve heard mixed things about this game, but the only opinion that matters is mine. So far just by looking at it, I don’t know if I will finish it (like the original FFXII). If anything, I now have a complete collection of Final Fantasy games that came out for the Nintendo DS!

Star Fox Command

From one bad Star Fox game to one that I’ve heard little about. The back of the box should give me all the information that I need to know (like the good ‘ole days…). I’m just happy to play a Star Fox game that isn’t a retelling of the first. Speaking of which, I need to get Star Fox Adventures from my brother at some point…

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

Adding this to the collection means that I now have all the Castlevania games released on the DS. That means that for this October, I will be playing through the DS titles. This also means Konami will announce a DS trilogy collection this year. I will feel slightly defeated if that happens.

Pokémon HeartGold

RIP my wallet on this one. If I had the foresight that I do now, I would have “held on to” this game from my younger brother. He lost it after a move, so congrats to whoever finds that game. What made buying this sting even more is that there was a cheaper copy at a different booth that was selling games (about $25 dollars cheaper). I was saving that blow for a copy of Dragon Quest VI on the DS, but settled with this since it would have hurt just as much. Now I am just missing two games to have the entire mainline set…

Final Fantasy II (PSP)

I am one of those sickos who actually enjoys Final Fantasy II. The PSP version looks good, but I will have to see if it will allow me to teleport all my enemies away.

Fire Emblem Engage

I wasn’t planning on getting this so soon, but peer pressure finally got the best of me. From what little I have seen and heard, this is a fantastic Fire Emblem game. As someone who wasn’t crazy about Three Houses, this looks like it is up my alley with the heavier focus on tactical gameplay. Can’t wait to play through it (need to finish it before Theatrhythm).

Currently Playing

The first half of the month was supposed to be Fire Emblem Engage time to shine. That was until a demo for Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Final Bar Line was released. I hardly ever play demos for games since they are more or less incomplete versions of the final game, but I cave when it is something I really want to play. I will definitely play Engage, but it might be after a few rounds of blissful music.

I am also almost done with my first playthrough of Romancing SaGa – Minstrel Song Remastered. I have hardly talked about this game since it is a bit complicated for new players. I am at the final “dungeon” and I’m still finding mechanics that I never used, or learning more ways that made the game 10 times harder than it should be. I imagine at this point the final boss will take me about two months to beat, so I will keep you posted when I am victorious.

That’s all I got this month. I am going to continue patiently waiting for my game of the year to come out now.

Thanks for reading. 

Vacation is Over. So What’s Next?

DaNamesX4 Comments

It’s finally over.

After two and a half years of working on my Master’s degree, it is finally over! For those of you who don’t know the origins of this blog, I created it as an escape from writing research papers while still improving on my writing skills. I needed an escape from the pressure of writing for a grade and just for fun on topics I actually wanted to talk about. That escape lead to this fun journey where I have meet new people and found an online community that I’m happy to be a part of. Thank you all for allowing me to be a part of the community and reading the random content that I write.

But enough of the mussy stuff. Now that I have more freedom and less stress to worry about (laughing at myself), what am I going to do with the extra time and energy that I will (pretend to) have? I have many ideas on how I want to expand myself a bit more and really concentrate on things here on the blog. So let’s start with one project that I’m excited to get started on!

My 50/50 Challenge!

While I’m happy that I was able to finish grad school, there were two negative effects that happened during the course of it. The first one is my health. Besides increasing my anxiety levels to a whole new plateau, I really let myself go in the weight department. I would definitely consider myself overweight to my standards and have been trying to diet and exercise when I could. Now is the time for me to fully commit myself to getting healthier and reduce a lot of this body fat. So for my first challenge, I want to lose 50 pounds (22.68 kg) by this time next year. Sounds simple enough since I was able to lose a lot of weight in one summer (but that was due to walking everywhere in the Summer heat and only eating one meal a day. I do NOT recommend). I’ve already started a routine and made changes to my diet to avoid overwhelming myself to get started. So far the routine is fun and manageable minus the soreness I feel everywhere. The gym that I go to is fairly empty during the summer months, but once students return to campus in a few weeks I may have to invest in some home gym equipment (I don’t like crowded gyms…).

That’s one half of the challenge. So what is the other half? My waist wasn’t the only thing that expanded these past two years. My backlog has expanded to a level that I was not anticipating when I started collecting. There are many games on my shelf that I picked up during a sale or found a good offer on that I could not refuse. I originally had the hope of playing them sooner than later, but I have games that I got five years ago that I have yet to play. It is time to make amends with this betrayal by finally reducing my backlog a bit. So for my second challenge, I want to finish 50 games on my backlog by this time next year. It would be simple if they were shorter games, but I’m a RPG fan and I like to take my time while playing; so this part of challenge may be the hardest. The good thing for you is that I will write about every game that I finish, so expect lots of new content for each game I finish*.

*The posts on SaGa: Scarlet Grace – Ambitions and Mario Golf: Super Rush do not count as part of my challenge since I finished them before the challenge began.

So that is my new challenge from me to me. I don’t want to flood the blog with updates with my challenge since most of it would be small updates. I will instead use my old almost-abandoned Instagram account to post updates there (and hopefully start using it more). I’m really looking forward to see if I can beat this challenge.

Reorganize Content

For a while, my content has kinda been all over the place with the types of post I upload to the format of them. After much consideration, I have decided to go with these formats to help structure my posts a bit more:

  • Backlog Tales – Posts about games that I have recently finished for the first time.
  • Collection Tales – Posts about games that I’ve already finished, but want to talk about.
  • Opinions Are Just That – My opinion pieces on various topics that I feel like talking about
  • One-off Posts – These would be things like holidays, events, collaborations, the January Awards Ceremony, etc.
  • EXP Share Posts* – Community engagement posts
  • Monthly Reports – My monthly blog report at the end of each month.
  • Updates – Ye ole updates.

I have decided to alter the EXP Share posts a bit. To me it felt like I was heading into generic territory when coming up with prompts each month. I like to be creative when coming up with questions, and I feel like I have been for the most part. So from here on, EXP Share posts will no longer be a monthly thing, but instead pop-up only when I can think of a really good topic that most people will enjoy writing about and/or reading about. I think this will make the posts feel more special rather than a monthly obligation for you and I.

Recording Gameplay

One thing that I really want to get into the habit of doing is recording most of my gameplay. Eventually (and with practice), I want to start creating videos with highlights of my gameplay. Just a fun idea I’ve been playing around with that would also serve as extra content. This also goes in hand with my return to streaming throughout the week.

“BuT Danames,” someone might be saying. “Didn’t you try streaming before and found it weird and stressful?”

Yes. But I realize that that was entirely my fault for making it weird. I was still in the mindset that I needed to be “entertaining” at all times. This resulted in me stepping outside my comfort zone of forcing myself to talk when I have nothing meaningful to really say. I have learned that I am more entertaining to myself when I tell little jokes to myself that turns into a running gag later on. So that will be my strategy going into streaming; and if that doesn’t work for me then I will give up on the streaming idea. This is what my tentative schedule would look like:

Sunday – TBD (most likely in the afternoon)

Friday – 7PM EST – 10PM EST

I will be streaming over at ye olé twitch.tv/danamesx. Come watch me struggle with control inputs and talk to myself as I start to get tired and loss my mind (I talk to myself a lot when I’m tired).

That’s all I got. I’m excited to get back to writing for fun and sharing more gaming related posts in the future!

DanamesX

First Update Post of 2021

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Hello Hello.

Normally, I would post a monthly update on what I’ve been playing this month, but I wanted to use this time as an update post to let you know what my current and future plans are.

Personal Garbage

At the time of this writing, I am two tasks away from finishing up my Masters program. I have a test at the beginning of June to take and a one month web development class in July; and then I will be done. Finish. Over with. Never again. Stick a fork in me, I’m done. I am a tired man and wish to rest. My free time will be restored and hopefully my anxiety levels will start to fall.

On another quick personal note, hi! I feel like in the past months I have become less social than I was before. Its to no one’s fault as I tend to go into hyper introvert mode and recharge my social energy when needed. Almost all of my Discord and Twitch notifications have been turned off for a while since I felt like I wasn’t contributing anything and I wanted to focus more on what I needed to do at the time. I do still lurk, so if you see an extra eye looking at you it could be me who knows (chanting my name three times at your screen will not summon me). My shell will start to crack again soon and my efforts to be more social will surface again…once I get enough sleep which doesn’t happen a lot. I do plan on going on vacation late June, so hopefully the time away from my normal walls will help with the healing process.

Plans For the Blog

Between now and August, post from me will be all over the place for the most part. I have new material for post that I want to write about and slowly getting my butt into gear writing them. The one thing that I am focusing on right now are post for the month of June. June is normally my month to write multiple post about a specific series/topics with a little more “polish” to the post. I will be talking about Monster Hunter again, but more of a retrospective of each game that I’ve played. Shouldn’t be bad since I only have to cover Tri, 3 Ultimate, Freedom Unite, 4 Ultimate, Generations, Generations Ultimate (XX), World, Rise, Stories, and soon; the original. That’s…going to be a lot to write and talk about. They will mostly be in the style of my Backlog Tales with maybe a little less humor but still have that charm I like to put into my post. So if you are a Monster Hunter fan, I hope you enjoy these posts because it will probably be the last time I talk about it….until the next game comes out.

After that, it will be full on post about the other games in my backlog and anything interesting that comes along. Collaborations posts are always a good time and I’m happy to contribute if I have something to contribute. Whatever comes after that will come after that then.

Streaming Attempt Number Who Knows At This Point

I promise nothing, but since my calendar suddenly just opened up, I have time to do other things. I have attempted streaming in the past, but I couldn’t keep it consistent and only did it on a whim. I want to start utilizing the technology I have to start capturing my own photos and videos for projects, and streaming would kill two birds with one stone. I think the other motivator is that Kat has gotten a sudden interest in streaming. So for now, I will say that I will be streaming more here and there at twitch.tv/danamesx. Also please consider checking out Kat’s streams when she does. I do play games with her there and make cameos as her tech support.

Games I Have Played, Finished and Acquired in April

Since this post is replacing my normal end of the month recap, I thought I would still share the games that I’ve played, finished, and bought this month. I am a little upset with myself this month since I had the opportunity to finish more games than I did. There would have been three more games on my finish list if other things and Monster Hunter Rise didn’t get in my way.

I started Astral Chain on a whim and found myself enjoying it. I definitely have hit the point of repetitiveness with chapter structure, but things move fast and the chapters don’t last that long, so I would say that I am enjoying myself. Looking forward to talking about this one.

On to a frustrating topic, I finally bought Katamari Damacy REROLL on sale and gave it a try. I don’t know if I’m just trying to hard or what, but the controls make me so mad. There are days where the controls make sense and I have no problem playing the game, and then there are times where I barely beat the clock. I know you can change the controls to make it a little easier, but I’ve been practicing with the default too long just to abandon ship and change now. Minus the controls, I enjoy all the other aspects of the game including the not-so-intimidating-whatsoever King of All Cosmos.

There were two games that I finished this month and one of them was obviously Monster Hunter Rise. I will save my thoughts about the game for the post in June. I thought I was done after doing the village quests since that is normally the “story” mode in these games, but nope. The games decides that you need to do the multiplayer hub quest in order to get the “true ending” and regular Monster Hunter experience (some mechanics are like decorations, layered armor, and monsters are locked behind the hub quest and can’t be unlocked through the village quest). Again, I will tackle more of this in June.

The other game that I finished this month was It Takes Two with Kat. We streamed the entire thing on her Twitch channel and I can honestly say I enjoyed 95% percent of it. The game has a lot more going for it than simple cooperative platforming that made it hard to stop playing at times. I wrote a post on it already, so if you want to read my full thoughts on it you can do so there.

As far as games that I got this month, it wasn’t a whole lot. I did find a copy of Super Monkey Ball 2 for a not so bad price and I remember having fun with this game with a friend from college. Didn’t expect my GameCube collection to still be expanding, but here we are. The only other thing that I got was New Pokémon Snap. I originally did not care about this game since I found the N64 game fun, but boring after going through each level. I never understood the hype around it then, and I kinda don’t get the hype around the new game. Kat convinced me to get it for us, and after watching her play and finish it in one day, I can see the “long lasting” appeal to this title. There is definitely more to do in this one and different things can happen depending on when you visit the stage. So I will say New Pokémon Snap surprised me with its content, and I hope those who were counting down the days for this are happy.

Ok that’s enough out of me for the time being. One of these days I will figure out how to end something properly, but until then….go play some games?

Thanks for reading,

DanamesX

Blog Anniversary Refresher

DaNamesX6 Comments

Break time is over.

One year ago, I started this little blog site to talk and share my stories about gaming. I created it on a whim, and didn’t put much thought into what I really wanted to do with it. Over time, the blog started to take shape, and  A year later and I noticed a problem, I really haven’t been doing that.

When it comes to making unique content, you have to make it fun to write. I enjoy writing stories about gaming, but the last proper story from my past was back in May (I kinda wish I could rewrite that post). Early on I tried reviewing games that I recently finished, but I quickly learned that I hated writing them. My experiences are and will be different from others, so why should I try and convince someone that a game is bad or good? I want to focus on just my experiences and share with others, and in return learn about their experiences.

Then, an idea came to mind. I would like to present something new I want to try.

EXP(erience) Share Post

(Real creative name)

Similar to weekly tags that have been floating around, I want to try something similar, but on a once a month basis. The idea of this came from my wife Kat wanting to write about some of her gaming stories on my blog, but felt it was inappropriate (even though I told her I had no problem with it). My idea with this is that anyone regardless of being a blogger of games can participate and share their stories. Kinda going to the old tagline of my blog, “everyone has a story to tell.” Some might just need the right space and motivation in order to share it.

The idea is each month I will announce the topic for the month. There is no pressure in trying to come up with something for the prompt if you cannot think of anything. If you would like to suggest a topic, please please please let me know! At the end of each month, I will try and compile them all into one post. Just please tag me and the prompt so that I can easily find them!

With that, I would like to go ahead and announce the first prompt for this series! Since we are currently in the middle of October, this prompt will go on until the end of November. So you have until then to share your story! The first prompt is:

The video game that got you into gaming.

I think this is a very interesting topic. It could be the first game you played, a game that you played later in life, or an event that triggered the spark. Whatever your reason for getting into gaming, share it with us! I will make another post at the beginning of November to remind everyone of the topic again, and then on the first of each month I will post the next topic and so one. I’m really excited to give this a try and read everyone’s story!

Along with that announcement, there are a few others that I would like to make.

Monthly Activity Reports

If you noticed, I didn’t post my normal gaming report for September. The reason for this, I am redoing my entire game spreadsheet. It…is not a fun task, but an important one. What started as a hobby back in 2015 turned into a passion project that needed countless updates. What really made me want to redo my spreadsheet was that a lot of information was inaccurate and I was missing some titles here and there. Plus, all of the colors were starting to get confusing and on my nerves. My word of advice to anyone who wants to catalog their collection, do it while your collection is small. I enjoyed doing this, because I am a crazy person who likes to create and work with spreadsheets. If you know anyone looking for a cataloger of sorts, I’m crazy enough to do it. I will write a separate post at the end of the month to go over changes and a new grand total of my collection.

Streaming

(Geez, this is like the fourth time that I’ve had to rewrite this part.)

I have been going back and forth on this one for a long time now. For 5 years, I have been toying with the idea of streaming my gameplay and maybe entertaining people along the way. The problem in the past was that I didn’t have the minimum requirements to do it. Jump forward to this year and free time due to a certain worldwide phenomenon, I took the time to upgrade my computer and played around with my settings. I have done a few streams here and there just to test the waters, but I never really announced that I was going to start streaming or become a streamer.

So here is where the confusing part comes in. I am interested in streaming, but I don’t want to be considered a streamer. I mostly want to do it for fun and motivation. I want to share my gameplay experiences with people who want to watch, but I have no intention of becoming a full-time streamer or earn money from it. Streaming would also give me a chance to start and finish a game since if I start it on stream, I should finish it on stream. So, those are my reasons for wanting to stream. I do have some other ideas to do special streams that Kat helped me come up with like Co-ople (Co-op + couple (it is a dumb, ridiculous name and I love it)) streams, multiplayer with friends, and if we can work it out, a stream with the legend himself, my older brother Super CJ.

I want to avoid sharing a schedule yet until I get comfortable and in the groove of everything. I will always stream on Sunday as that has been a constant so far (didn’t stream last Sunday so record already broken). I normally post on Twitter when the mood is right and the brain is working.

I promise that I’m almost done.

I think that is about it for this super long (update?) post. I want to thank everyone who has enjoyed my silly blog space over the past year. I have met a lot of people during this time, and I’m glad that we are all able to talk and share our passions with others in this format. There are too many people that I want to thank for making my first year doing this a fun experience, and I will never stop being humble and saying thank you all the time. I would still be doing this even if no one was reading, but all the support makes it fun to do so.

Enough rambling. Back to playing more video games and sharing those experiences!

DanamesX

It’s Quiet…..Too Quiet

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Hello! Your friendly neighborhood DanamesX here. This is a quick post to let you know that things may be quiet on the blog for a little while. I work at a university and classes just started this Monday. I haven’t had to wake and be somewhere in about 5 months, so I’m slowly adjusting to my normal work flow (for how long we stay open). On top of that, I resumed my online classes Monday, so I am trying to create a schedule for when I need to fulfill my student obligations.

It has only been three days since things took off and I have been coming home exhausted each day. On top of that, I am trying to get a handle of my over worried brain so I can sleep peacefully at night. I’m enjoying the fact that my lazy days are coming to an end, but I was not prepared for the sudden burst of activities.

I have zero plans to abandon or let the blog fall to the side line. On contrary, I have several drafts that I have been working on, but I haven’t published for one reason or the other. I am slow when it comes to writing, and I like to polish things before publishing them. There is one post that I am writing that I wanted to put out this week, but again life dictates where I have to put my focus in. Once I get back into the swing of work and find a schedule for school work, everything should fall into place (unless a certain game coming out on Aug 28th doesn’t destroy everything).

If you are still reading up until this point, thank you for sticking around! I’m coming up close to the one year anniversary of the blog, and I want to start doing more things with the blog and within the community. To give you a sneak peak on what I have been working on in the background, I am possibly doing one of the stupidest things only I would have the patience to work on. I have been working on this all summer now, and I want to get it done before my one year. Along with that, I hope to have another announcement if I think I can get it to all work out.

So that is my mini life update I guess. I am very active on my Twitter if you need to reach me there, and I drop/ghost in the Support Role discord regularly. Again, thank you for enjoying my random thoughts and opinions and I hope to get back writing soon!

DanamesX