First day of GDC

I'm in San Francisco whoo! This is my first year attending the Game Developers Conference and it's awesome!

So happy to leave the snow

I brought 3 other software engineers from CU with me. Today we wandered around the Expo hall and went to two panels. The first was a recruitment panel for Playstation.

Playstation panel

Looking forward to applying to their internship program.

We also went to Turning the Tide: Hiring and Retaining Women in the Games Industry.

Women in Games panel

The ladies here are all from awesome companies, like EA and Sqaure Enix. I had the opportunity to chat with them after the panel and got some great leads for jobs! 

Overall the first day of GDC was great, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to attend such a cool conference. I'm also super eager to go back home and keep working on the game we're developing. Life is good.

After a long break....

Boy it's been a while since I posted in this. But no time like the present!

I think I'll just briefly go over where I'm at right now as far as the Three Game Rule goes. It's bad. I'm in serious game debt right now.

We'll start when I was not in game debt and tally them from there. Keep in mind a game beat counts for +1 a game purchase is -3

11.21.2014 I hit level 100 on my Paladin in WoW. Very exciting. This brought my game beat Game count to 0

12.2.2014 I beat Game of Thrones Episode 1
Game count +1

12.5.2014 I broke down and bought Dragon Age Inquisition for PC. It was short lived fun, as the game crashed repeatedly relatively early on.
Game count -2

12.5.14 - I also bought Pokemon Omega Sapphire, whoops, just can't resist a new Pokemon game
Game count -5

1.3.15 Bought Super Smash, Final Fantasy Explorers, Youkai Watch, Dragon Quest Monsters, and New Super Mario 2 for a Japanese New 3DS (I also bought a Japanese New 3DS)
Game count -10 (I didn't have it in me to count each one of these as -3, so instead I decided they should be -1 each, because learning!)
Game count -10

1.10.15 Beat Pokemon Y, whoo about time
Game count -9

1.12.15 Collected all puzzle pieces in Mii Plaza thing. I've counted this before, but I collected over 1000 pieces, I thought it was worth counting again since they keep adding puzzles
Game count -8

2.5.15 Bought PS4, Dragon Age Inquisition, and Destiny. I was having a bad day and wanted to buy things, so I did. This is why I need someone keeping tabs on my spending habits haha. I also told myself a console would be worth 30 game beats so we'll do -30 for the PS4 purchase and -3 for each game.... ugh
Game count -44

I'm never ever going to catch up. I certainly have 44 games to play (in my Steam library alone...) I might have to toss this whole rule out. Oh well.

Here's a photo of my Japanese games and new 3DS whee!

In closing I'm currently playing Final Fantasy 6 and have a story for that. Also I started collecting Amiibos, and am trying desperately hard to not go overboard in buying them.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Thoughts After Completion and Randomly Picking a New Game to Beat

So I finished my first traditional shooter (according to Kyle Borderlands doesn't count because it's a RPG). I tend to avoid the entire shooter genre because I don't enjoy it. Something about mowing down tons of dudes with guns just doesn't do it for me. So you can guess from the title I finished Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I'm told this is the best of the CoD games and if that's a case I think I can pass on the rest of the series.

The last time I played a CoD game it was Modern Warfare 3. I'm pretty sure all CoD games have confusing story lines and lackluster characters, because both games had that feature in common. And guns, they both had those too.

I thought it was funny I was playing as Soap, so he was the only character who's name I actually remembered. The title itself bothers me. "Modern" Warfare, I'm pretty sure in "modern" warfare you don't mow down hundreds and hundreds of mans with only a gun and survive. Though what do I know, I've never been in a war zone. Also how were the Russians and the Arabs linked? I missed that. I think the game was just about killing people who Americans don't like. Should have been some Germans in there too. Because you know training people to dislike entire countries is really healthy. *Too liberal for war games*

The difficulty curve was frustrating. For the first time ever in a shooter I played on Normal difficulty instead of Easy because the game decided in the beginning through a tutorial that's where I would fit. And most of the time I felt it was accurate. Until random missions were nearly impossible to finish... I'm pretty sure I'm bad, but the difficulty curve was annoying. It was a snake not a curve, moving around all snake like.

Dressing up as a mop was the highlight of the game for me. Also sniping is easy mode so I'm good at that.

When I played CoD: MW3 I wrote a list of ways that I died. I'm going to do the same again, but sadly this time there were no trees to kill me.

All the deaths
1) Dogs
2) Cars
3) Tanks
4) Barrels
5) LOTS of grenades, I swear I see the indicator and walk into it

I'm pretty sure I'll play a CoD game again, because we own Black Ops and it's a really quick way to get a game beat. But for now I'm going to my random list and picking one.

These are in totally random order:
1. Okami
2. Bioshock Infinite
3. Last of Us
4. Far Cry 3
5. CoD Black Ops
6. Skyrim
7. Mass Effect 3
8. Dragon Age 2
9. Persona 4
10. Fire Emblem (3DS)
11. FFIV
12. FFXIII-2
13. Katamari (some PS3 version)

Ya those are all games in our collection I haven't beaten (note: there are a lot more games than the ones listed I haven't beaten). Hell some of those I haven't played. Time to go to the random generator. I'm going to be pissed if I role a 5. I should have taken it off the list.

I'm so game ADD this is the only way I can even pick one ><

2 WINS! Looks like my next challenge is Binfinite. I'm just glad I didn't get 5.

I'm a little disappointed I won't be killing Big Daddys with wrenches....

I enjoyed Bioshock, so hopefully this one is just as good.

On a side note I'm doing a really good job of beating quicky games and might actually be able to buy a new game soon! I'm looking at you Beyond Two Souls, I don't care if you have mixed reviews. 

Game Progress #4

Oy, it's been a while since I've written anything, which is a shame since it was motivating me to play single player games. Ah well, let's see how this writing blog thing works :D

Games beaten
I have a slew of games to report being completed. Here we go.

Borderlands for PC

Behold a random promo photo!

Ok I beat this months ago. The ending was, uh confusing? I remember sitting there scratching my head wondering why there was
****SPOILER***







no treasure in the vault. We were greeted by a giant monster instead. Kyle assured me Borderlands 2 would be better at explaining things. Uh haven't finished Borderlands 2 so who knows if it really does any better at explaining things.

90 in WoW for PC

Not my Death Knight, but whatever

So I don't remember if I wrote about my Priest hitting 90 or my Death Knight. I'm going to assume I wrote about my Priest hitting 90. The Death Knight making it to 90 was relatively uneventful, and I haven't been playing WoW for the last month or so.

Ni No Kuni for PS3

Man I love this game

Also beat Ni No Kuni months ago, but man what a great game. Go play it. That's all I have to say.

Kingdom Rush: Frontiers for iPad

Ok if you have an iPad go download this game. It's a fun little tower defense that will have you hooked for hours. I should have gotten two game beats out of this. One for finishing all of the levels and a 2nd for finishing all the challenge modes, but they released three more levels before I finished the challenge modes. Ugh, must finish all new levels and challenges for a 2nd game beat. Lamesauce. But seriously download it.

Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty for PC

Ok I've owned this game since the day it came out and I finished the first campaign Wings of Liberty today. It was a lot of fun, but I feel the dripping masculinity a little bit frustrating. I'm looking forward to playing Heart of the Swarm to have an actual female character in the story. All the women-folk were weak and did not play major roles. I was annoyed that Kerrigan was portrayed as the "damsel-in-distress" for the majority of the game, even though she was a badass Zerg leader! Is it really that bad to ask for strong female characters in games?

On a side note I doubt I'll become a competitive Star Craft player anytime soon. I did remember how much I enjoy RTSs however :)


Games played this week

Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn for PC

Pretty game!

I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIVARR since it released a month ago. I had the pleasure of taking part of the Titan challenge at PAX and have a shirt to prove I took him down. ^^ My job is 37 White Mage, but I was a lot of time dabbling with other jobs and gathering, particularly fishing. My fishing almost caught up to my white mage level which seemed sad, given that it's pretty slow and boring. Ah well. I should probably dedicate a post to how awesome FFXIVARR is and why you should play it.

Beat Buddy for PC

http://beatbuddy.com/

Beat Buddy is a fun little platformer by a German game company. We ran into them at PAX and I played a quick demo, fell in love. Kyle gifted it to me on Steam when we got back. The levels are pretty long, take 40-50 minutes on average (well average for me, but I'm hella bad at platformers...) If you're looking for a cute little indie platformer with some sweet music check this one out.


Due to buying Final Fantasy I'm in game debt right now. I did not have three game beats when I bought it >< I only had one. Beating StarCraft today means I only have one left to be caught up but a bunch of awesome games are coming out this month!  I need to finish 4 games to buy Beyond Two Souls on Tuesday.  Back to the gamesors I go!

Game Progress #3

I know I promised a post for last Monday, but I was in San Francisco for the week and got completely distracted. I do have some exciting news however, I beat two games!

Games Beat

Find Mii 2 for 3DS

Venture Forth!

As stated above I was in the lovely city of San Francisco last week. This gave me ample opportunity to collect Street Passes (though no where near the number I got during Denver Comic Con) and finally defeat the boss! I was very happy to finish this one. Next step get all the puzzle pieces!

I have already started a new version of Find Mii and Find Mii 2. So many more hats to collect!

Bioshock for PC

How sweet...

I completed the first Bioshock today. I decided two things, first person adventure shooter types aren't my favorite genre and I think it's time I take myself off of easy difficulty when I play shooters. I was happy to complete this game, but honestly the gritty depressing world got to me while playing. This is a game known for it's "awesome story" and frankly I think the world is well done, but I prefer more character development in my "awesome story" games. There were some fun twists, but by the time the final evil dude was revealed I had completely forgotten who he was and had to ask my boyfriend how he fit into the story. Ah well.

The question now is do I waste a game purchase on Bioshock 2 (which we don't own) or move directly onto Bioshock Infinite (which my boyfriend has on the PS3). I'm pretty sure Bioshock Infinite will win, because there are other games I would rather purchase.

Gameplay Recap of the Week 
So obviously I played Bioshock and Find Mii 2 but here is an update on the rest of the games I played while sitting in airports.

Pokemon HeartGold for DS

My egg hatched!

I defeated the first two gym leaders and my Togepi hatched! This is all I really have to report. Pokemon is a great game to grind in while everyone around you pulls out their iPhone and plays various games. This happened a couple times while drinking with the Backflip guys in San Francisco.

Persona 4 Golden for PSVita

Characters, so many characters

I love this game and forgot how much I did until I played it again on Friday during some free time. I hope this will become a game I beat soon. I won't talk about where I am in the story because I'm 40 hours in and it would be too spoily.

I did realize however that I sold a quest item and have no way of getting it back. Lucky for me Persona 4 let's you play through it again after you've beaten it once! Oh good, because you know this 100+ hour game wasn't long enough for a first play through... Must finish all quests though...

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy for 3DS

Not quite how the game really looks, but a cool image either way

I played this while sitting on the plane both to San Francisco and coming back to Denver. Makes a 2 hour long flight feel like 10 minutes. It's just a fun music game and features such great tracks! If you haven't picked this up yet for your 3DS I recommend doing so, it's just tons of fun.

If you don't have a 3DS, go buy one now and get this game to go with it. Then find me so we can Street Pass. I'll write more about how awesome Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is later in the week because it really deserves it's own post.

World of Warcraft for PC

Yes my Priest totally looks this cool in game

I hit level 86 on my newly transfered shadow priest Ninakas. I'm really enjoying playing through the Panda content from the Horde perspective. Why did I ever go Alliance anyway? FOR THE HORDE!

Desires the Game Tabletop

While in San Francisco the boyfriend and I decided to head over to our favorite hobby story GameScape for Monday Night Board Games. We were pleasantly surprised to be asked to play test Desires the Game. This is a work in progress game by Bay area designer Daniel Penny-Packer. Here is his introduction to the game.

"Desires: The Game takes place during the 1984 season of the hit TV show "Desires". You and the other players are members of the exclusive Club Desire, where the prestigious and powerful mingle and decide the fate of the city. You'll need to assemble a clique of characters who share your desires, and make sure that only certain plots succeed in changing the face of the city."

This is basically a simple card game. You start of with your secret goal and a minion (who are considered your crew, I'm going to call them minions). Your secret plot has your win conditions for the game which are a combination of symbols (Wealth, Glamour, Vice, Passion and Revenge). In order to win your minions and successful plots must match your secret goal. Plots are publicly shared (think Texas Hold'em) while your minions just count for you.

There are two randomly revealed plots and two random minions associated with them. The players take turns choosing a plot, picking a person, and then determining whether the plot succeeds or fails. Players each have a card which says Support on one side and Sabotage on the other. If both players select Support, the plot succeeds and they each get a minion. If one player chooses support and the other sabotage, the sabotaging player chooses one of the minions and the plot fails. If both players select sabotage they get nothing and the plot fails.

It was an interesting little game, but still needs some work. You can follow the game's blog here. I'm planning on introducing the game to the board game players at Karliquin's Game Night later in the week.

Conclusion
And that's it for another week of gaming! Check back for more awesome game posts as I continue to slowly making my way through my massive game collection.

Game Progress #2

It's been two weeks since I last posted my game progress. Time to go over what I've been playing lately. This past weekend and week were surprisingly light on the gaming front. I did however finish my novel and started on the 2nd draft :)

Onto the games!

Borderlands for PC

Mordecai and Bloodwing

Last week my boyfriend and I played Defiance. We decided it wasn't a game worth buying, but it did inspire me to play Borderlands again. My BF even had an extra copy to gift on Steam so we no longer have to deal with the lousy split screen on the PS3.

We've been playing a little bit every night and it's a blast! Having my own screen makes this game much more enjoyable. I rolled Mordecai because the BF keeps saying snipers are easy mode, so instead of picking the girl (like I did last time) I decided to just start with the type of character who could ease me into shooters. My skillzors are improving faster than I thought they would. Who knows, maybe some competitive FPS over xbox live is in my future?

And hey if you want to jump in on some hot PC Borderlands action let us know. Maybe you can join us a couple times.


Rift for PC

Death Rift and a shiny sword

I'm logging onto Rift every day, mostly to do the Instant Adventure daily and buy and sell shinies on the auction house. I was hoping to be level 52 by Monday, but am still lingering at 51 (It's Friday O.o)

I'm almost done with the Freemarch achievements (which also would count as a game beat!! Achievement sets count as a game beat in the three game rule) The artifacts that I need to finish the achievement all average about 15 plat on the auction house, and I need about 9 of them, which is out of my price range T.T

Leveling is going slowly as well, mostly due to lack of time. I did swap from the Necromancer to Harbinger/Chloromancer/Archon, with the majority of my points in Harbinger. It's a fun spec, but I followed a guide and set up macros which makes combat a bit boring. Not that my rotation on the Necromancer was much more interesting. Things die faster now, so that's good.

I've also been rare hunting in Silverwood. Haven't found a single one, not going as well as Freemarch did. I think the trick is to just camp at one of the rare spots and do something else while glancing at Rift on occasion. Ah well, one of these days I'll kill some rares.

I think I want to play a Cleric next.



WoW for PC

Newbie Warlock

For whatever reason I've logged into WoW a couple times this week. I don't know if I'm burning out on Rift or what... This is my little Undead Warlock. FOR THE HORDE! I think my biggest problem with playing WoW was playing Alliance. I'm a lot more comfortable with Horde.

We will see how this goes, still not in the Colorado guild so perhaps my Draenei Mage will find herself becoming a Troll. My Mage is a high population server and the Colorado guild is on medium. I'd rather play on a high pop server than medium if I were to go back to playing, you know unless I actually had people to play with. Weird concept. Maybe the BF can be wrangled back into WoW... Oh the Mage is already level 90 and maxed out on professions, so.... no slow leveling grind if I converted her to Horde.

We will see. WoW is doing a character service sale, so if I decide the Mage should be a troll I should make that decision tomorrow and take advantage of the sale.



Pokemon Heart Gold for DS

ZERMERGERD A LIGHTNING SHEEP!

So I swapped Pokemon games. I recently beat Diamond so playing through Pearl was a little bit too similar. I never made it through Heart Gold and I really appreciate it being tuned for the DS more than Diamond/Pearl are.

I might be planning on buying Pokemon White when I get three game beats, and then play Pokemon White 2 (which I got as an Anniversary present I think, but haven't played). If I'm quick enough maybe, just maybe, I'll finish in time for Pokemon X/Y.

Oh I picked the Crocodile as my starter, because he's just too cute.

I want you to stay cute forever...

StreetPass Mii Plaza for 3DS
Denver Comic Con was last weekend, and thanks to the loving BF reminding me, I brought my 3DS along. The 3DS has a neat feature called StreetPass and your 3DS comes with two mini-games built in using StreetPasses. Basically a StreetPass happens when you and someone else have 3DSes that get within a certain range of each other. Their Mii comes and plays on your 3DS and yours goes over to theirs. Some 3DS games also have StreetPass functionality, but I'm not going to go into that today.

The two mini games are a puzzle game called Puzzle Swap, and a very simple dungeon crawler called Find Mii (they also released Find Mii 2 to add more fun!) The reward for Puzzle Swap is completing 3D images from various games. Find Mii awards hats for your Mii to customize their look.

I know this sounds a little bit silly, but it's pretty much awesome. So if you don't have a 3DS go buy one now.

Did you do it? Did you go buy one? Good, I need more people to StreetPass with. If you didn't buy one, well... uh... poo on you.


So this weekend I was hoping to my first game beat since reviving this blog by beating Find Mii 2.
The following contains a spoiler, if you have not beaten Find Mii 2 and are planning on it in the future do not scroll ahead.

***********SPOILERS***********

Ya so I beat the two bosses at the end, just like you do in Find Mii. I know what's up Nintendo it's cool. Or at least I thought there were only two bosses until this guy appeared.

Bloody hell where did this guy come from?

I was so excited to get a game beat, but alas they threw another boss at me. At least he looks really cool. He's about halfway dead right now, but I don't have anyone to consistently StreetPass with, so ugh. We're going to San Francisco next week, so hopefully I'll get enough StreetPasses to beat him and have my first game beat in a long long while.


Dune the board game

We were playing a version from 1979. This picture pretty much looks the same

I decided to go to board game night at my local hobby store (which happens to be across the parking lot from where I live, super handy). I've never read or seen the Dune books or movies. I didn't know anything about the world, but I learned while playing this game!

You play this game as one of the factions battling over Dune. These include, the Spacing Guild, the Emperor, House Atreides, the Bene Gesserit, the Fremen, and House Harkonnen. Each faction (except the Emperor) has a special way to win the game unique to them, or anyone can win by controlling three cities.

I played the Spacing Guild. Mostly I was the asshole who sat back and collected spice, eventually bankrupting the bank and preventing the other players from seriously accumulating any spice. As the Spacing Guild the other players have to pay you to send their units to the planet.

The game lasted roughly three hours, and by the end everyone was tired of playing. I won. Apparently inhibiting everyone else's spice accural was a good way to go.

I plan on going back for the board game night after we get back from San Francisco. I had a great time and the people were really nice.

********

Wow I ended up rambling a lot about games. If you made it to the bottom of this page, congrats you get a virtual cookie!

OMG WANT! Candy Corn and Cookie?!?! What an awesome combination

Ok Monday there will be a post with goals for the week! Which *spoilers* will probably be handheld games since we're in San Francisco and I'm not bringing my gaming laptop.

Denver Comic Con

This post is coming a little bit later than I expected. I thought I would post something Monday, but then work attacked me and now it's Thursday... Anyway, Denver Comic Con was awesome and I want to post some pics from it. So sit back and enjoy.

Felicia Day marveling at my friend Erin's Codex costume

Same friend Erin cosplaying as Calhoun from Wreck It Ralph

It's a Dino!

I know it's hard to tell but this is the Guild panel. We showed up 15 minutes before it started so had to sit in the back. Panel was hilarious, hope they're at Pax too!

Thor v Cloud. FIGHT!

Tim's Thor is much better

Cloud and Tifa

Warehouse 13 panel. I was sitting a little bit closer this time, but it was still hard to get a good picture. These guys are hilarious. #Warehousemovie!

In case you didn't know Warehouse 13 has been cancelled, but Saul Rubinek encouraged us to get a movement going for the Warehouse 13 movie! Go forth tweat #warehousemovie and maybe we can continue this awesome story some more!

Denver Comic Con was a blast. I can't wait til PAX!

I'll post a gaming update tomorrow. I got really really close to beating a game at Denver Comic Con, but alas no game beats for Susi yet! Tune in tomorrow!