Great Nintendo Switch Games

I really enjoy our Nintendo Switch console, and we have several games on it that I like to play, so I thought to myself “Why not write about it?” Here are the Switch games that I’ve played so far, starting with my favorite:

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Octopath Traveler – This is my favorite Switch game! It’s a traditional Japanese RPG, in the same vein as the old Final Fantasy games for the SNES, but modernized. The combat has the traditional, turn-based JRPG bones of selecting an action for a character from a menu (like attacking or using a skill or item), selecting the target of that action, then watching the effect of that action. The unique mechanic this time is that after each turn each character gets a bonus action, which stores up until it’s used later in the combat. So after a few turns you can unleash 5 attacks in one turn, or use those bonus actions to empower a massively damaging spell attack. The other unique mechanic is that each enemy has several weaknesses, and hitting it with that weapon or spell type will break down its defenses, eventually causing it to be stunned and take extra damage for a turn or two. It’s a lot of fun that helps reduce the tedium that can happen with this type of game, where you will likely get into hundreds or thousands of combats by the end.

Another part of the game that I really enjoy is the music and graphics. The composer for the game, Yasunori Nishiki, has done a fantastic job making fully orchestral music tracks that still evoke the far simpler music of early video game music. There are a few excellent analysis videos on YouTube on the Octopath Traveler soundtrack, detailing how the composer was able to prevent the music from falling into the “pretty, but forgettable” category of music that so often accompanies modern video games. As far as the art design goes, it has a very interesting aesthetic of 16/32-bit sprites for the characters, NPCs, monsters, and so on, but with a very modern set of special effects (lighting effects, particle effects, fog and water effects, camera effects, etc.) that give the game a unique look. It does an admirable job of straddling the line between old-school pixel art and contemporary high definition graphics.

Finally, Octopath Traveler’s plot follows not just one main character, but actually has the player go through eight different character’s stories, that all weave in and out of the various locations you visit. I love this game, and I might go so far as to say it’s my favorite JRPG of all time… Well, maybe Final Fantasy VI will keep that crown, but Octopath Traveler is still a game I’d recommend to almost anyone.

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Cadence of Hyrule – This game is basically Crypt of the Necrodancer (as I spoke about in my previous post) with a Legend of Zelda skin. Needless to say, it’s a very fun game. I think it’d be easier for a new to get into than the original Necrodancer game too, so that’s a bonus for anyone who hasn’t played the original.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – I’ve been playing the Super Smash Bros. games ever since the original game came out on the Nintendo 64. I’ve gotten better at Super Smash Bros. than any other fighting game (not even close to professional level, but good enough to win consistently against my friends), and I really enjoy the Nintendo crossover appeal of being able to fight Link against Mario, or have Princess Peach fight back against Bowser.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – I played, and thoroughly enjoyed, Link’s Awakening back when it came out on the Game Boy, so when it was announced that a remake was being made for the Switch, I was pretty excited. Now that I’ve played through it, I can say it is still a really good game!

Dragon Ball FighterZ – Dragon Ball FighterZ is a fighting game where you can pit characters from the Dragon Ball series against each other, like Goku vs Vegeta, or Majin Buu against Cell. It’s certainly the best-looking Dragon Ball game I’ve seen, with the characters, backgrounds, and special effects looking like they’ve been pulled straight from the TV show! The gameplay is frenetic, with characters dashing, jumping, flying, and teleporting all over the place shooting all sorts of energy blasts at each other, or closing in to deliver a punishing combo of kicks and punches. It’s a lot like the Marvel vs Capcom series, which I also liked back in the day, where each team has three characters that can be tagged in and out on the fly, or who can all come in at once for a devastating trio of super attacks. This game is great fun, and I really enjoyed it.

Shovel Knight – This game is a platforming game in the style of Castlevania, with the art aesthetic of an old NES game. The art style is ok (I prefer my pixel art in 16-bit SNES style), but the gameplay is tight and engaging, if fairly challenging.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – This is an honorable mention, as I haven’t actually played it on the Switch; I got it on my Wii U long before we bought our Switch. Any list of great Switch games would be incomplete without it though, and I’m sure the Switch version is at least as good as the Wii U version. Short summary: Open world Legend of Zelda game that’s one of the very best games in the franchise.

My Active Hobbies – November 2019

As a serial hobbyist, I regularly find new hobbies that catch my interest, so the hobbies that I am spending my time on in any given month could be quite different from the previous month

Miniature painting – A month or so ago I got in a new order of 6mm miniatures for my ancients wargaming, and I’ve been slowly getting them painted since then. So far I’ve finished 2 units of German warriors, 1 unit of Roman legionaries, and 5 units of Parthian cataphracts. I’m currently painting 9 units of Parthian horse archers, though I ran out of muddy brown color paint after painting the ground for only 3 units’ worth of miniatures, so I’ll have to get more of that to finish the rest of them.

Units I’ve finished so far

Parthian horse archers in progress

De Bellis Antiquitatis – This is my main miniatures wargame of choice, and therefore is the reason that I’m painting these miniatures. So sometimes when I don’t feel like painting, I’ll just pull out my existing miniatures and pit my two armies against each other for an hour.

The Lord of the Rings Online – My current PC game of choice. I recently purchased the Helm’s Deep expansion (covering western Rohan), since I was nearly done with the Riders of Rohan expansion (covering eastern Rohan). Since then I finished Riders of Rohan and am in the middle of the first area of western Rohan.

Bass guitar practice – I recently got a new bass guitar, after using my cheap beginner bass guitar for the last two years. My new bass is in the “good quality beginner” level – an Ibanez SR300E in Black Planet Matte Color. I like it a lot, and I’ve been practicing with it a fair bit since I got it a month or so ago.

Ibanez SR300e in Black Planet Matte

Archery – I have an inexpensive beginner recurve bow and a little foam target that I shoot at in my backyard when the weather is nice. It’s a lot of fun, and now I’ve done it enough that I want a new bow, one with a bit higher draw weight (my current one is 20 lbs. and I’m thinking of getting a 30 lb bow). I’m considering either a Samick Sage recurve bow, or an Alibow Mongol Asiatic bow.

My current bow

Reading – My main reading recently has been split between Battletech short story anthologies and issues of Ancient Warfare Magazine. The thing I’ve noticed about my interest in history is how interconnected things are. Painting my Parthian army has led me to study more about the Parthian empire, and by extension about other nearby kingdoms and peoples, such as the Greco-Bactrian kingdom and the nomadic horse archers of the central Asian steppe. That in turn got me interested in horse archery (which I’ll probably never get into because I don’t own a horse and likely never will), which has influenced my choice of the next bow to get, as well as my practicing a thumb draw for archery in addition to the Mediterranean draw I’ve been using up to now. Then after learning about all that, I went to a couple of back issues of Ancient Warfare Magazine to look for reference artwork for painting my Parthians, and found several articles with topics related to central Asia and its peoples, which I found far more interesting this time than I originally did when I first read through those issues. Who knows where my studies in history will take me next!

My Recent PC Gaming

I’ve played quite a few PC games in the past year or two, and I’d like to highlight a few of them that I particularly enjoyed.

Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey – I played and enjoyed all the Assassin’s Creed games up to Black Flag. My least favorite part of Assassin’s Creed III was the ship travel and combat, so finding that Black Flag had the ship as a main part of the whole game was a real turn off. After that I never played any of the new games in the series until Odyssey. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey is based in ancient Greece, during the Peloponnesian War, which has been an interest of mine since I was a kid. One of the biggest draws for me to the Assassin’s Creed series is the level of detail and fidelity in recreating historical settings, and I really enjoyed just being able to travel to Athens, Sparta, Olympia, and so on. Even just admiring the landscapes in the middle of the wilderness was delightful. It helps that the gameplay of Odyssey is really good, the best I’ve played in the series! I also liked meeting various historical figures, such as Herodotus and Socrates. Overall this is one of the best games I’ve played in quite a while.

Battletech – I’ve been enjoying playing the Battletech tabletop game for quite a few years now, even backing the recent Battletech Kickstarter project, and when a PC version of the game was announced a few years ago, I was pretty excited. I think the developers did a good job of implementing the core of the Battletech experience to a digital format – they changes to the rules were mostly minor, and helped make the game more streamlined and exciting. I enjoyed the single player campaign, and I’ve played a few skirmishes against the AI, but I haven’t picked up any of the expansions for the game yet, mainly because reviews are saying that the amount of content in the expansions isn’t worth the price tag.

Crypt of the Necrodancer – Crypt of the Necrodancer is a mash-up of a rhythm game, such as Dance Dance Revolution, and a dungeon crawling game. It’s such a unique concept, and it could easily have been a failure, but it’s actually a fantastic game! You can move up, down, left, or right, and you attack enemies by moving towards them. The catch is that you can only move if you press the key on the beat of the background music. Enemies move in predictable patterns, also on the beat, so once you learn their movement patterns you can practice dodging them and counter attacking. Killed monsters drop gold that you can use to buy better weapons, armor, and other equipment. The game is hard, and has a steep learning curve, but I enjoyed the fantastic music and nostalgically cute pixel art so much that I kept playing until I got good at the game, and now that I’ve beaten it several times I’ll occasionally load it up to play for a while. Several of the songs are on one of my Spotify playlists, even! A Legend of Zelda themed sequel to Crypt of the Necrodancer came out recently for the Nintendo Switch, but that’s another post.

Kingdoms and Castles – Kingdoms and Castles is a cute little game where you build a tiny kingdom on an island in the ocean. The graphics are a very simple 3-D, reminiscent of a zoomed-out and simplified Minecraft, with adorable little houses, villagers, and other town buildings. You send your villagers to collect wood and stone, then use that to build more buildings like charcoal makers, markets, wells, and so on that will satisfy your villagers’ needs. It’s much simpler than other games of this type, which makes it nice for a relaxing game. But not all is well in the kingdom, because vikings and dragons will raid your kingdom, so you need to build city walls and archer towers, as well as train up soldiers, to defend your kingdom! I really like this game, but I’m not sure if I’ll still be playing it in a couple years.

Celeste – Celeste is a 2-D platforming game, where you move your character from screen to screen by a combination of perfectly-timed jumps, air dashes, and interactions with various environmental features. It’s hard, but satisfying when you finally get past a screen you just failed on the last 30 times you tried it. I like the pixel art aesthetic, and the story of the game is pretty interesting. It’s not a game for everyone, but I really liked it.

ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove – Back when I was a kid, my grandparents owned a Sega Genesis console, and my favorite game on that system was a weird game called ToeJam & Earl. It was about a couple of aliens that crash landed on Earth, busting their spaceship into parts scattered across the world. ToeJam and Earl need to move through the levels, avoiding unfriendly earthlings, until they collect all of their spaceship parts and can return home. I played ToeJam & Earl a ton, and even played the sequel a bit (which was for some reason changed into a side-scrolling action game). I didn’t own an XBox, so I never played ToeJam & Earl 3, but I don’t regret it because it was poorly reviewed. Anyway, a few years ago the original creators of TJ&E launched a Kickstarter project to make a new game in the series that was faithful to the original. I backed it, and the game was released a few years later. I am happy to say that it is a good, fun game! It definitely evokes the spirit of the original, while being updated and modernized in the gameplay aspect.

Towerfall Ascension – I really seem to have a thing for games with 2-D pixel art! Towerfall is a multiplayer game where each player is an archer with three arrows, trying to shoot the other players and be the last one standing. This is a fantastic, fun experience to play with your friends and family! We liked it so much that we bought it on our Switch even though I already owned it on PC.

Minecraft – I still play Minecraft every once in a while, which shows how much staying power the game has. The fact that it still gets updated with new (free) content keeps bringing me back, and I’ll play around in the game for a while again (either alone or with my kids) until another game pulls me away from it.

Terraria – Like Minecraft, Terraria is an older game that I occasionally load back up. The free-form building and exploring makes it new and interesting each time, though not quite as fresh as a new Minecraft world. Still, I highly recommend this game.

Total War: Rome II – Yet another fairly old game that I recently played through again. Despite some of the game’s flaws, I really like playing it. I find that the older I get, the less I’m interested in a challenging gameplay experience, and the more interested I am in the narrative of the game, so I tend to just play on easier difficulty levels. As a wargame, this doesn’t have a narrative in a plot sense, but it absolutely has a narrative in the sense of the emergent gameplay that evolves throughout a campaign. For example, which countries I end up allying with and which I conquer this time playing through the game. Watching my empire expand in a different way than the last time I played is interesting to me, and at the end of the game I like to retrace my steps and see how I got to where I ended up. It’s a lot like why I enjoy history as a hobby.

So those are some of the games I’ve been playing lately on my computer, though this year my son keeps taking over my computer to play Roblox while watching Netflix. I could kick him off, but the situation gives me an opportunity to get off the computer and spend more time on my other hobbies, so I allow it (most of the time).

So Many Games!

I have played a lot of games over the past four years, so I’ll just cover the highlights.

Role Playing Games

Right after we moved to St. George I tried to keep up with my California D&D group by playing over the internet, but it just didn’t work out for me. A year later, after we moved into our house we met some people in the area that were interested in RPGs and board games, so we formed a group. We played D&D 4th edition for several months, then I discovered Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, which really caught my imagination. After the D&D campaign died due to lack of interest I decided to run a short S7S campaign, and everyone involved in the 4-episode adventure really enjoyed it. Unfortunately shortly after that two of our group moved to Alaska, where they lived for a year before moving back.

Board Games

Since the RPG group broke up I started getting into board games more, facilitated by the fantastic BoardGameGeek website. I found a few other people in my neighborhood who enjoy board games and play with them whenever we can find the time. I learned how to play Battletech by playing it on the computer via MegaMek. I played board games online at Yucata.de. Recently a primarily board game focused store opened up in town – Game Haven. I found out about and started attending the Saint George Area Board Game Group, which meets weekly at a local library.

PC Games

So shortly before the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft came out I started getting pretty tired of the game. I got the expansion and played it for about a month before dropping WoW for good. I haven’t even touched the game since the Mists of Pandaria expansion came out.

So years ago I posted how I really disliked the Lord of the Rings Online, but every few months Turbine did a free weekend for returning players. After playing the game a few more times courtesy of these free weekends I really started warming up to the game, so much so that I ended up buying the first expansion, then the next, and then the game went Free-to-Play. I got my father-in-law and most of his sons into the game, and I bought the third expansion, but unfortunately started petering out on MMOs in general. At some point during this my wife and I got Star Wars: the Old Republic MMO, which was pretty awesome for a while, but rapidly lost interest and had zero interest in playing once it too went Free-to-Play. I played Age of Empires Online for a while – I was even in the beta – but haven’t played it much recently. My latest favorite is Mechwarrior Online, a team-based Free-to-Play online game based on the old Mechwarrior games, which themselves were based on the Battletech board game. MWO is really great, and I love the strategy of choosing your ‘mech and its weapon loadout and the tactics of helping your team achieve the battle’s objectives.

As far as single-player games go, here is a list of some of my favorites I’ve played in the last four years (in no particular order): Minecraft, Assassin’s Creed (I, II, Brotherhood, Revelations), Batman: Arkham Asylum / Arkham City, Sonic Generations, LEGO Lord of the Rings, FTL, Sins of a Solar Empire, Terraria, Mass Effect (1, 2, 3), Civilization V, Half Minute Hero, Cthulhu Saves the World, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Greed Corp, and Atom Zombie Smasher.

Blizzcon 2009

I’ve been a slacker recently about updating my blog, I know. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to.

I have until the beginning of September to play WoW. Once again, in order to save some money, Chiemi and I have canceled our WoW accounts. On the bright side, I’ve managed to level Kinz, my rogue, to level 80! Yay! It’s about time the guild master reaches the level cap. I went through a real lull in my interest in playing a rogue from about level 73-76, but once I got past that block I started enjoying him again. He’s doing some pretty decent damage now (considering the crappy gear he has currently), and he feels like he serves a purpose again.

Ever since patch 3.2 came out I’ve been running heroic dungeons a lot with my paladin. Getting emblems of conquest is great for non-raiders like me, and the new Trial of the Crusader has a lot of great loot – of which I’ve acquired all of the tanking gear except the dang shoulders. I’ve been stuck with my Tempered Saronite Shoulders for forever! I’ve run Gundrak a ton, but never got the tanking shoulders there, and I’ve run ToC a bunch and no shoulders there either! What’s the deal Blizz? 😉

In other news, the upcoming MMO The Old Republic is looking awesome! It’s like Knights of the Old Republic, but multiplayer and much refined. I totally want to be a Jedi, but I’ve been really impressed on how Bioware is making the other classes just as cool as Jedi and Sith. For example, the smuggler is a ranged class that uses a cover system. Moreover, the smuggler is supposed to have a bunch of awesome one-liners, gets to flirt with/romance a bunch of NPCs, and is generally the rocking Han Solo type. Pretty neat! The game is also completely voiced! Crazy! I’m totally going to try this game when it comes out. I felt sure I’d end up switching to this game once I was done with WoW in a couple years, but then I went to…

BLIZZCON! Woo! It was just as awesome as when I went two years ago, only bigger and with more people! This time my sister Jennie bought 5 tickets, one of which she sold on eBay, so we each had a ticket with one to spare. My brother went for the first day, but somehow got bored and left early. Go figure. The biggest news for me was the expected announcement of the next WoW expansion – Cataclysm. The theme for this expansion is that this super-dragon named Deathwing escapes his prison in the elemental plane of earth and bursts out into Azeroth, causing worldwide catastrophe. As a result of this, Blizzard will be revamping all the zones in the original WoW, improving and streamlining the leveling experience, changing the terrain of many zones, and almost doing a reboot of the franchise. If you’re interested, check out the World of Warcraft website, or a news site like wow.com.

Other interesting things we saw at Blizzcon were the vendors. There was a vendor called WarcraftPrints.com, where you can have custom posters, postcards, etc. featuring your character printed! It looked really cool, and I can’t wait until the website goes live in a couple of weeks. Another vendor, FigurePrints, has a similar idea except they make a 3D figurine out of your character. I’d never seen them in person before, and I have to say I was blown away. They look fantastic! The only issue I have is that the colors look a bit whitewashed. They could stand to be more vibrant. It’s still amazing!

nVidia had a booth where they were showing off their 3D technology. When paired with a compatible monitor and a recent nVidia graphics card, their 3D glasses create a pretty impressive experience. I was able to log on to my character and play around for a while. Flying on my netherdrake was really neat, and large mobs actually become rather imposing. The glasses themselves are a far cry from the 3D goggles of yesteryear. It’s still nothing you’d want to wear out of the house, but they’re basically just the size of bulky glasses, and quite light. If I had the cash to spare, I’d seriously consider getting these.

We all got to play the demo of Cataclysm while we were at Blizzcon. It was pretty cool. We got 20 minutes to play the starting zone of either the goblins or the worgen. I played the goblins this time. I really liked the look of the zone – very Gilligan’s Island in my opinion. Chiemi and I also got to play the Diablo III demo while we were waiting for my sister to get her face painted. It plays really nicely. I played the newly announced monk class, and Chiemi played a wizard. She said she liked it, but there was too much gore. I agree; if there’s a reduced/no gore setting in the final game, it’ll probably be a game we buy.

After the Diablo III demo, we met up with my sister again, shortly after which we were approached by a man from WoW Stories who asked us if we had an interesting story relating to WoW. After hearing our vague assertions to the positive he directed us to his booth. On the way there we were given winning tickets by an Intel booth guy because we were wearing the Intel buttons that we had been given the day before. We were excited to actually win something! We continued to the WoW stories booth, where we were recorded on video talking about how Chiemi and I got into WoW as the only game Chiemi was interested in that we could play together as a couple. After that we went to the Intel booth to claim our prizes. My sister and I both got a little Intel-branded bag and Chiemi got a cool little folding chair! (Our girls loved the chair when we brought it home.) Blizzcon was a blast, and I hope to be able to go back a third time!

Oh, one more thing. For lunch on Friday Chiemi and I decided to walk around the convention center neighborhood in search of a place to eat. After walking way too far we got to Mimi’s. We like Mimi’s, so we went there to eat. After much agonizing about what to get I ordered meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I almost felt bad about choosing such a boring dish at a nice restaurant, but I was really craving meatloaf for some reason. Well, I’m glad I chose the meatloaf because it turned out to be one of the best meals of my entire life. From the appetizer bread to the juicy meatloaf and slightly chunky mashed potatoes, the whole meal was phenomenal! I felt like I was in heaven every time I took a bite of that meatloaf, and I’m not one to get enthusiastic about food. To top it off, the service there was fantastic! The glasses were replaced right before we drained them, the waitress seemed almost psychic in her ability to offer exactly what we were wanting before we were even able to ask for them, and everyone was very friendly without being overbearing or annoying. It was great!

I’ve had a good month.

What I’m playing

Well, since I haven’t posted in a while I’ll make a quick update on what I’m playing recently.

I haven’t been playing WoW much recently. I’m not sure why, but I’ve been a bit bored of the game. I feel like I should be running at least the Argent Tournament dailies to get the mounts and pets, but I can’t muster up the willpower. I’m almost completely geared out in heroic/BoE equipment (I really only need to upgrade my shoulders), and I’m not in a guild that raids. I like to run dungeons, but I don’t need to run them for myself, so I don’t bother joining PuGs. Fortunately, my sister is out of school and is playing again, so I’ll probably run some dungeons with her to help her gear up.

One of our guildies was recruited by a somewhat larger guild that is raiding, and he’s enjoying it. Another guild member is probably going to switch soon. If he likes the guild atmosphere too my sister and I might join, leaving the Homestarmy for those members not really interested in raiding. I was concerned my wife would be unhappy if I left, but she seems ok with the idea, so that’s good.

Also, my father-in-law has been playing Titan Quest with some of his kids, so I bought it. It’s actually quite a fun game. At home I’m playing a warden, wielding spear and shield, while my work character is a soothsayer who lets his liche king and pair of wolves tear through enemies for him. I like how the game is classless, and your abilities are determined purely through which skill trees you put points into. I haven’t played multiplayer yet, but I’ll try to get a game going soon.

I’ve also been playing Spelunky a lot, since it’s such a fun little game that I can play start to finish (usually a grisly pixellated death) in 10-20 minutes. In that way it’s kind of like N. If you like challenging, reflex-oriented games you should try them out! You fail over and over until it finally clicks and you beat that section (big feeling of accomplishment), then you practice the next part over and over until you beat it too. I like these games because you’re expected to lose a lot, but the sections are short so you don’t lose hours of progress when you die. They give a real measure of how your skills are improving, too;  easily beating earlier stages after progressing past later stages (when those earlier stages were so hard to beat at first) really shows you’ve gotten better at the game. Go try them!

WoW Patch 3.1

So patch 3.1 just dropped for World of Warcraft, and so far I like it. My favorite thing about the patch so far is that Divine Plea is refreshed on autoattack when talented into Guarded by the Light. The upshot is that my Protection Paladin almost never runs out of mana as long as I’m fighting something. It’s awesome! Also cool is the new Argent Tournament. I just achieved the rank of Valiant today, and I’m enjoying the new daily quests. They’re good money too, and it gives me incentive to do dailies again, since I’m already exalted with the Sons of Hodir, the Kalu’ak, and the Oracles. (I’m not really interested in the Knights of the Ebon Blade dailies.) Anyway, good times!

Play the Distraction Game! See how well you can focus on the game itself, and not the distracting borders.

Welcome (Back) to the World of Warcraft

Rumors of WoW’s death have been greatly exaggerated. I can’t believe I forgot to blog about this, but a few weeks ago Chiemi and I reactivated our World of Warcraft accounts with a little of our tax return money. We’re really happy to have it back, especially me. I was content without it, but we both enjoy it for the social aspect as well as for the gameplay aspect. Just in case we get tight on funds again in the near future we set our billing for the 6-month subscription. That way we don’t have to worry about another monthly payment to make, and it’s cheaper per month that way anyway.

So another thing I totally forgot about until recently is my blog at Path of a Hero. It’s a blog for your WoW character. You take a screenshot of your character and add it in when you make a blog entry. The website will then poll the Armory for your character’s equipped gear and list that along with the screenshot. You can see your character’s progression via means of a slider. Check it out and you’ll see what I mean.

In other news, I am continuing my Latin studies and am almost back to the point in the textbook where I was before I started over. I like learning Latin a lot, I just didn’t have the time or energy to do so back while I was in school. It was way too hard to do side studies while having to do lots of official studies at the same time.

Speaking of not going to school anymore, I really love working for the City of St. George. The people are great, the work is interesting, and we live in a beautiful house in a wonderful town. Chiemi’s blog has much more information (and pictures!), but I’ll just say that it’s small enough to be friendly and clean but large enough to have most amenities. And Las Vegas is only about 2 hours away, so Saturday trips aren’t infeasable.

Achievement Unlocked is a fun little game. The whole point of the game is to unlock all of the game’s 100 achievements. Many of the achievements are hilariously easy to accomplish, such as starting the game, dying, or jumping. The last few are a little tricky, but a hint is try pressing different buttons. I played through it times, just because it was entertaining and easy to play.

The End of WoW

The end of my subscription to World of Warcraft, that is. Chiemi and I have given up playing WoW for the time being to help our family save a little money. If all goes well we can renew our subscriptions in several months, maybe for summer or something.

It’s a pretty unfortunate circumstance, but I’ve been working hard the past couple weeks with the deadline (today) in mind, raising faction reputations that were close to leveling, clearing quests and accomplishing various achievements, and especially finishing all the Lunar Festival achievements in a matter of two days! If I’m lucky I’ll be able to resubscribe in time for the next holiday event. All in all, I got to do a lot of fun things and got a lot done before my subscription ran out, so I’m content with the way this ended.

On the bright side, now I have time for other things, like restarting my Latin studies and playing X3 with my X52. Lots of X there, probably some X-rays or something too.

Also, I haven’t been putting flash games at the end of my posts recently! What’s up with that? Anyway, today’s game is called Ice Breaker. You have to rescue vikings that are stranded in glaciers by cutting the ice around them and letting them roll/fall into their longboat, where a viking with a hammer will smash away the ice in which they are encased. It’s a fun little puzzle game, and I’ve never seen cuter vikings. Good cutting to you!

Miscellany

Well, we went to our new ward for the second time, and it was a much better experience than the first time, when hardly anybody talked to us. I got to meet several people whose names I almost immediately forgot. I’m not good with names. I met the mayor, who is also in our ward, and he’s super friendly. I’ll probably end up working on his office computer at some point.

Get Smart is a hilarious movie. We rented it from Redbox for a date,  but I wasn’t expecting great things. I figured it’d be fairly amusing in places, but nothing to write home about. Well, I was wrong. It was funny from end to end; Chiemi and I were busting up the entire time! I know the movie got mixed reviews, but for whatever reason the movie really got to us. I highly recommend checking it out.

My 3-year-old Kyla is a really sweet girl at heart, even though she can be a pain to deal with sometimes. This evening, I read her a little book before bed, and after finishing I gave her the book to read on her own, as she usually likes to do. Well, tonight she gave me the book back and told me to give it to Arwen, her 14-month-old sister who had been staring longingly at us the whole time from her crib. Arwen had been VERY unhappy to be put to bed without a bottle, but she’s been overflowing her diaper almost every night recently, so no more water before bed. She does NOT like this idea at all. Well, Chiemi and I figured she was finally asleep before we put Kyla to bed, but she woke up as soon as Kyla and I entered the room. I suppose Kyla sensed Arwen was unhappy, so she generously offered her book to her. It was a very kind gesture, and Arwen happily grabbed the book from me and sat down. It kept her quiet for a bit before the screaming began again. Fortunately she fell asleep faster the second time.

Quick shout-out to my aunt Vicki, who bought me X3: Reunion for my birthday. Thanks, Vicki! I’ll be sure to blog about it sometime.

After my first week of work, I have to say I really enjoy it. I’m still learning the ins and outs of the place, but I work with a great team, and it’s all very interesting so far.