Category Archives: Gaming

Setting a Baseline

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So I went in for the first session with a personal trainer yesterday. Initially it was only meant to be an intake conversation but due to him having enough time, and me being there anyway, we decided to do the first session right then and there… And boy was I sore all over. Today the muscle aches and pains seem to have subsided a bit, except for my shoulder area which still hurts quite a lot.
To establish a baseline for me to work from he needed some info about my age, weight, height and ofcourse the resulting BMI. I’m on a BMI of 28 which means I am overweight, but not obese. It’s not the worst out there but ofcourse I want to be closer to 23 or 24 which is more or less ideal. After talking for a bit, establishing what I wanted from him and why and how, we started doing some exercises so he could see “how I move”. I found this to be a bit of an odd term, but now I understand it completely.
Basically it comes down to seeing how I use the muscles in every part of my body and from there see which are the problem areas that need the most work. He asked me what personally bothered me the most and for me it’s the area right below my shoulderblades. Due to excess weight hanging in the front I always need to “compensate” my stance with my shoulders and I definately noticed when he started poking and prodding the area there. Next to that we found out that the muscles in my left leg are much stronger than in my right and that I have “core muscle” problems, like most people that sit all day do, which means my back, butt and hips are much too weak to offer proper support. What was also an uncharacteristic issue was the fact that the muscles in my calves are always tensed, even when I’m not actually tensing them. He was unsure what caused this, but it would explain why I often get pain in my calves when I walk for a while.
All in all I think I had a good evaluation and we ended with doing some exercises that train about 70% of the muscle mass that is a problem area for me. Now that I’m sitting at home though I can really feel the fallout of this “light” training, and although pain and soreness is usually a good sign, I worry if I’m able to get out of bed tomorrow!
My next training appointment is in a week and then we are really going to establish a routine for me to follow that optimizes both muscle growth (and thus make it so I burn more fat) and fat reduction at the same time. No this doesn’t mean I aim to get ripped, but muscle mass makes it so you burn more calories during the day. Which is good when you want to lose weigh

Catching up on Pokemon
So I’ve been playing a lot of Pokémon Blue lately but I also have other games in the series that I have left unfinished. As you can see in my widget bar I am trying to finish atleast Alpha Sapphire right now, but I’m quite lost as to where I should go. I am 6 badges and about 12 hours play in and I know I need to teach Surf to one of my Pokémon so I can advance and start working towards getting Kyogre. I’m kind of bummed though because I already picked a Water Pokémon as my starter, which kind of renders Kyogre useless. I could reset if I wanted to, but with all the promotional Pokémon I have obtained over the past two years I really don’t want to, so I’ll just chug along the game and not use Kyogre in my team I guess.
I know there are ample guides online for almost every game in existence, I prefer playing without them though. I like figuring stuff out on my own, even if it means not 100% completing a game. It’s how I’ve always done things, the trial and error way. However in this case I think I’ll look up an Alpha Sapphire guide and retrace my steps a bit, just so I can advance in the game and the story again.
I really want 2016 to be a year where I actually finish off games, instead of just expanding my collection and not touching half of the things I own. So I’m working towards a lot and use guides and tools a bit more to help me along the way. Ofcourse I want to do most of it on my own, but sometimes a little help is needed. I’ll keep you guys updated on how my playthroughs of various games go! It might not be a separate topic for me to write on, but I will include it in some of my posts.

Weird Evening

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Yesterday I went through my Twitter followers on a whim. I had noticed the bot spam and I figured I’d root out all the crap from my account. I swear Twitter bots are a huge annoying thing and count for about 10% of my follower list. I can only imagine the people with thousands of followers and how many bots are among those.
Anyway, I went through my follower list and got hit hard by a few people I still saw on there. I have been active on Twitter for quite a while now, I think since WotLK  in WoW, which is around the time I started to blog a bit here and there aswell. Let’s just keep it at 6 years of Twitter activity. Back in the early days there were a lot of WoW blogs out there, Righteous Orbs, Cynwise’s Warlock Manual and the Barrens Chat. I name these blogs for a reason seeing as I got confronted with still having Ercles and Wulfy among my followers. Ercles unfortunately passed away in 2010 and seeing his name again made me swallow hard. The same goes for Tiny Tori who passed away around this time last year and Cynwise who said goodbye to the gaming community in 2014. These are all people I have interacted with at one time or another. All good folk with a passion for gaming. And they are all a part of me one way or another.
I got quite emotional seeing some of these people who aren’t around anymore, and I wasn’t really prepared for this either. I didn’t know I’d be so impacted by things that were, but apparently the past comes up to bite you in the ass sometimes, and that’s ok. Ercles and Tori deserve to be remembered and a part of the community still misses Cynwise and the awesome guys from Righteous Orbs.

All emotional stuff aside, I’m quite looking forward to starting my training. I really hope that with some help I can reach my goals this time and stop feeling bad health wise and also about the way I look. I’ve also thought up a proper reward for when I do get close to reaching my goal: travel to Berlin for a weekend and visit the LCS studio’s. I really loved the atmosphere of the LCS playoff finals in Rotterdam and even though there are obviously less people in the studio, I hope to recapture that atmosphere again there. Plus it might give me some time to talk to some of the casters instead of just getting 20 seconds to take a picture and then having to leave again.
I’m a huge fan of the LCS and the whole show surrounding it plus I may or may not have a slight crush on one of the casters, so it would be awesome if I would be able to strike up a conversation with him. Seeing as I’m already more or less in touch with said person I hope he doesn’t mind some small talk IRL either.

FFXIV and Timezone Woes
I’ve been trying to reach my goals like a good little girl when it comes to FFXIV but I notice heavily that I’m slowly getting bored of the game again. Not that I don’t like leveling, but more that I don’t have anything to do besides leveling. And I’m starting to notice.

Due to not having a proper raidgroup on Moogle I just miss out on a lot of things. Not only progress wise, but also fun/casual wise. I haven’t touched a Pony Farm group yet and as DPS they are actually quite hard to find. Add up that my friends list is more or less barren and I can only really ask 2-3 people to come farm with me and you can see the issue.
I really wish I had some more motivation to keep on logging and playing. I’m missing the sense of community a lot and I feel a bit lost within my current FC. Although I have been around there since forever there has been such a huge flow of people coming and going that I never really get to “befriend” anyone within the timeframe that I play. I’d love to switch over to Cactuar and be more active in Greysky Armada, but the timezone thing is just seriously terrible. The hours the guild is alive there are the middle of the night for me and when I’m online during the week everyone is still at work. I guess during the weekends it’s not that horrible, but if the people you want to play with are 6-10 hours behind you timewise… It gets a bit tough. And it’s such a shame because I would love to play with Chestnut and Belghast to name a few examples… Bluh. Life isn’t fair I guess. It’s also one of the main reasons I never stuck around in Wildstar. All the awesome folk I want to play with are NA based and well, I’m not.
I guess it’s the bane of any person who is in touch with people all over the world. Maybe if I didn’t have a fulltime job I could turn around my sleep schedule, but alas, that is not going to work. So for now I’m just playing on EU based servers with EU based people… Atleast the ones that are still around.

A Breath of Air

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Yesterday evening I had invited myself over to a friend’s house on a whim for today. We met eachother through gaming and it’s always nice to spend a day with a fellow geek that loves games and anything games related as much as you do. He asked me to bring over my copy of Bravely Default so he could see what it was about, seeing as he was thinking of picking up the sequel. In return I nabbed his copy of “Ocarina of Time 3D” so I can play even more Zelda games than I’m already doing.
Speaking of Zelda, I’ve been poking around in “A Link Between Worlds” and am currently at my second dungeon, the House of Gales. I saved just before so I haven’t really peeked in yet but so far I’m enjoying the game. I have a little witch who flies me everywhere and I can rent any weapon I want, which ofcourse is super neat. I’m also carrying around monster guts. No idea what purpose they serve but hey, I’ll figure it out sooner or later. I do like the Zelda games. I’ve never really been into them as kid, but now I can appreciate the line of games a lot. They all tell a nice story and the Action oriented RPG is a nice breath of relief after being used to playing games like Pokémon and Final Fantasy, which are all turn based when it comes to fighting stuff.
I hope I can push through on LBW so I can start OoT, which apparently is one of the better installments in the series. That will also probably help me understand Majora’s Mask better.

As me and my friend were hanging out at his room and PC he decided to fire up Witcher 1 and play some. Having bought Witcher 3 myself I do know the series, but I never played enough to really get into anything. Not long after playing we came to the conclusion that Witcher 1 basically evolves around having sex with people, getting drunk and killing stuff. Ofcourse this is more hilarious to play together while commenting on what decisions to take and to try and find out which ladies we could talk into bed. We managed to woo some kind of princess by feeding her raw meat but other than that no one seemed to be really interested.
We laughed hard though at all the options in the game, and although it may not look that good graphics wise it’s still a seriously good game, firing up the desire within me to pick up my copy of Witcher 3 again and give it another go. The problem is that right now I have so many games to divide myself between that I don’t think it’s the best idea if I do that, but my interest in playing is certainly back.

In other news. I’m back on Azeroth.
I had gotten my tax money back last week and figured ah what the heck, I’ll buy a WoW sub. With Legion coming out in about 3 months time I’ll have enough time to earn some gold before it actually hits. Or well “earn”. Basically abuse the Garrison mission system while it’s still in place. It’s nice to just log in and do my daily gold stuff and log out again. When I feel like it I log in for a bit longer and farm some old raids for mounts that I haven’t obtained yet (I’m looking at you Invincible) and sell the gear, which in turn makes me money. It’s a nice thing to do and WoW has been, and always shall be, my comfort game. I’ll mostly be online after work just sorting out missions etc, so I don’t think it’ll take away too much of time from FFXIV which I still see as my main MMO for now.
I do kind of feel like the spark to game and get stuff done is slowly getting back to me again and it’s a very nice mood to be in. Coupled with my team coordinator being back again at work and me starting a rigorous training this Thursday to finally lose weight I can only say I’m feeling really positive at the moment. And I hope I can hold on to this feeling for a while.

Pokémon Day!

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Unless you’ve virtually been living under a rock, Nintendo made a few announcements about the new and upcoming Pokémon games, Sun and Moon, today. They officially released the release date for both Japan/US (November 18th) and Europe (November 23rd). I already have it bookmarked in my agenda and have the Moon version pre-ordered.
With the announcement came a look at the three new starter Pokémon. I made my choice immediatly, I’m going for Rowlett the Grass/Flying Pokémon (first time for that type combination too!). The visuals you saw in the trailer so far looked stunning. Game Freak decided to go with an Hawaiian theme for this game and I’m very curious to see how it pans out. Ofcourse this means I will have to hurry along and finish my other Pokémon games before this new one hits. Which means figuring out where I was in Pokémon Alpha Sapphire and finish atleast the Elite Four and Delta Episode on that and finally get to play through Pokémon X completely. And yet here I am playing Pokémon Blue.
I’m not sure why I’m enjoying that emulator much more than the newer games, but I think a lot of it has to do with childhood nostalgia. It’s also a much harder game compared to the newest installments and everytime I advance it feels like I’ve overcome a real challenge. Right now I’m at Vermillion City beating some trainers along the route down there and waiting to board the S.S. Anne so I can get my first HM: Cut. Having traded with my co-worker (who owns Red) I’m now the proud owner of an Oddish, Ekans and Mankey. All Pokémon normally unobtainable in Blue. I even put Mankey in my standard team of 6, replacing Nidorina, and take it to face the S.S. Anne and subsequently the third Gym with me.

Work, Fatigue and New Lipstick
I wish I could come up with a better, more hyped up post about the Pokémon announcement and delve a bit deeper into it, but the truth is I’m just very tired. Having slept badly for two nights in a row, getting less than 6 hours of sleep in, I have felt like a zombie all day. Having to go to your job while the only thing you want to do is lay your head on a pillow and sleep isn’t the most fun to do, especially since Tuesday is usually a messy and busy day for us… I was happy when I got out at 17.00.

The happiness to come home got strengthened by my two new lipsticks arriving. I may have mentioned it before but I’ve become hugely into make-up over the last few years and have now switched from the common retail brands to the more exclusive brands as my skill with applying make-up goes up. It sounds so very cliché but I do really  notice the difference between lipsticks and foundation between the shelf brands and the prestige brands. So seeing my two new MAC pink lipsticks in a neat box today made me really happy. I’ve already packed one to put on for when I go to work tomorrow, it’s a soft baby pink, and the other one I tried on right as I got home. It’s a bright pink and I love it. Next to looking great they also smell great so I really have no regrets from this purchase at all!

All in all the Pokémon announcement coupled with my lipsticks finally arriving has made my day a lot more positive than I imagined it would be getting up this morning. Now I just need to make sure I get to bed in time and the world will look much brighter when I wake up tomorrow…

Sun on Sundays

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Spring has finally arrived in the Netherlands and seeing as we don’t have that much sun in our country, I felt like I needed to take the opportunity to enjoy the warmth and sun. So after spending yesterday walking around in the shopping area, getting my eyebrows done, shopping for new clothes and a new phone cover and picking up sunscreen for this year, I felt today was perfect to pick up my 3DS and sit in the backyard and play while trying to get some tan on my legs.
So I did just that and played about 2 hours of Pokémon Blue, defeating Misty in the second gym and talking to Bill to get my S.S. Anne ticket. The average level of my Pokémon is now 18, which isn’t too bad after gym number two. My team currently exists of Wartortle, Bellsprout, Pidgey, Nidorina, Geodude and Jigglypuff. I’m hoping to replace the Jigglypuff and Nidorina with a Fire and Electricity or Psychic type Pokémon, but for the third gym Geodude will be amazing, so I’m definately keeping him on my team.
Playing through the first Pokémon game I realize how easy the later generation games have become. Training Pokémon and beating trainers on Blue is significantly harder than it is on Pokémon X and Alpha Sapphire, the two latest installments I have from the series. It’s really nice seeing this oldtimer again though and I’m having as much fun playing through it now as when I had when I was 10 years old.
My coworker has picked up Pokémon Red and we’re kind of navigating through the game together, picking opposite things so we can trade Pokémon to eachother later on for completion of the Pokédex. Ofcourse there is no way to get them all without atleast a third person with a third game around, but we do our best.

Another game I’ve been poking around on my 3DS in is The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. I bought this game heavily discounted thanks to My Nintendo and I have to say it’s a lovely game to play. Having only seen Majora’s Mask and The Windwaker so far this feels like a more real Zelda game than the other two. I’ve only just started so for now I’ve only seen the top-down gameplay, but it’s cute and simple and something I can see myself putting time into and even finishing within the considerable future. Together with Pokémon Blue though this takes up most of my “handheld” game time, leaving little room for other games to be played.

Progression in FFXIV
I gave my Miqo a new haircut. Normally I’m not fond of short hair, but this particular cut is super sassy and I love it on her. Pixie cuts are cute and if you have the right face for it they can look amazing, something FFXIV shows. I also am a huge fan of bubblegum pink hair so naturally I had to dye it that colour. Although the gear looks horrid (level 35 leather gear just doesn’t do it for me) I love the way she looks right now and I don’t think I will change it for a while.

So about that progress…
Yesterday I dinged level 40 on my Machinist. It’s kind of funny that the more skills I unlock, the more I seem to enjoy the class. It’s kind of what Bard was in the last expansion, only with more gadgets and more cooldowns to keep your eyes on. Playing Machinist is quite intricate, but if you play it well and use your cooldowns wisely you can pump out much more damage than meets the eye.
At level 40 you also get your first turret, the Rook variety. It has two forms, an attack form where it performs single target attacks on the same target you’re using weaponskills on. If you upgrade it, it turns into a TP restoring turret, which is really nice if you run with melee. I immediatly got to take the turret for a testdrive versus Svara in the Coerthas Central Highlands. Yes. That Svara. I’m not really sure why Square Enix raised her from the dead just for a Machinist quest, but I’ll take it.

We took her down as a bunch of Machinists and all was well.
Having my Machinist on level 40 means I can focus on the Monk a bit again and bring that to the same level. Although Monk as a class isn’t new to me, I’m still happy to play through the jobquests again and unlock the skills that turned Monk into the best Melee DPS in the 2.0 expansion.
All in all I had a really nice, relaxed weekend. I got to play through a bunch of Pokémon Blue and The Legend of Zelda and got some nice personal time in, which is about as important. I noticed that I can still lose myself in a game, I just need to actually sit down and play. And with that knowledge I hope to be able to push through a lot more stuff over the coming weeks.

Hype?

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With the announcement of the new Battlefield game it feels like the internet has exploded once again. Set in World War 1 it seems Dice is catering to a call coming from a big part of the FPS community that they want games going back to the past instead of games that look to the future.

Personally I wonder if it’s good to “hype up” games like this. I feel like the gaming community is hopping from one game to another. Creating massive expectations only to be disappointed in the long run. I’ve seen it happen to so many games and expansions now that I don’t even bat an eyelash anymore when another game get’s marked as “the next big thing”. We’ve all seen what happened to Destiny, The Division, Warlords of Draenor, ArcheAge. They were all games who promised to do something different, something new. Something worth spending your money on. In the end they were all disappointments in one way or another. Destiny didn’t deliver what they had promised at launch, basically being a ghost of the previews of the game given earlier. The Division had an amazing launch but fell off after people started to reach max level. Their first real added content was a major disappointment, not to mention the countless and countless of cheaters and hackers and bots in the Dark Zone. It really makes the game unfun to play.
Warlords of Draenor had a great launch but turned out to be Blizzard’s most disappointing expansion yet, next to Mists of Pandaria. I hope and pray that Legion won’t suffer the same fate, but I’m fairly skeptical. It’s why I can’t get really excited for the expansion and I actually shy away from all the information that’s being spread by people playing the Alpha. I’m happier if I just go into the game completely blank and then experience everything for the first time, like I used to do.
And now we have Battlefield. I’m personally not a fan of the genre, although I did play Battlefield 3. Shooters in general make me nervous and especially ones that are more PvP oriented. One of the few reasons I can stomach Divison and Destiny is because PvE is such a big part of the game, that I can just avoid PvP entirely and still enjoy my experience. So I’m not hyped up for this game at all, which might be good for my wallet in the end.

What is hype?
I want to take things a step further and say that I’ve honestly not been really hyped for any game release for a very long time. There’s a few games I really want to have, Ratchet and Clank was one of them, but I’ve not been scouring the internet for every breadcrumb of information about X game, intensifying my expectations and excitement about it releasing. Maybe it’s because I didn’t really grow up as a gamer, maybe because it’s just not in my nature to get excited about stuff like this. It’s not just games where I don’t have this. I’ve never been super excited to see X movie coming out either or X show. The only thing I can be excited about are books. I can’t wait untill the 6th installment of a Song of Ice and Fire comes out, like I couldn’t wait to get my  hands on the new Harry Potter book all those years ago.
But hyping up games? It’s not in my nature. I will look forward to a new installation in the Pokémon universe, I will look forward to a new World of Warcraft or FFXIV expansion coming out. I look forward to a new Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy game. But that’s about it.
Instead I get excited when I know I’m going on vacation. Or when I know I’m going to see a concert, or visit a special event, or meet up with a friend I haven’t seen in a while.
But games and their hype? I will never really understand.

The Backlog part 2: PC games and MMO’s

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Welcome to part two of my backlog series!
In the previous part I talked about the catalog of games I own for my Playstation 4, WiiU and Nintendo 3DS.  With a list of about 40 games to complete there you’d think I would have my work cut out for me. Well guess what! Next to my consoles I’m also an avid PC gamer with a (not that big) catalog of games going on there aswell.
Like most people who play on PC I have a Steam account. Even though I never really got into Steam in the first place, I was forced to make an account so I could play Tomb Raider. Ever since then I’ve been selectively buying the games I would like to play. Steam sales are therefore never really an attack on my wallet because I’m not the type of person to buy a game just because it’s on sale. There’s plenty of games I will never enjoy and thus will never buy, even if they are 80% off on Steam sales and thus “worth” buying.
Because it’s easier to just post a screenshot of my Steam Library than to type up the games I have manually I’ll do just that… And then comment on the games that are listed.

As you can see I don’t really have that huge of a collection of games, resulting in me actually having played atleast an hour or more on most of them. There are a few there which I haven’t touched at all yet which are Child of Light, Rayman Origins, Jet Set Radio and Sega Genesis & Mega Drive Classics. The latter two I got for free with a SEGA/Steam special collaboration. Child of Light was one of those games I was always attracted to but never purchased untill it was on a very big sale. Rayman Origins ties in with refusing to install the damn Uplay client.
As I said, I have put some time in almost all the games that are listed. Usually making my way through atleast the first level or the introductions or whatever. The two games I have played most are DuckTales Remastered, where I am actually close to finished and Civ 5, which I have played on a few weekend nights with my ex. We would start at 22.00 and play untill 04.00 and still not be finished with our playthrough. I have very fond memories of these gaming sessions and although I haven’t really touched the game in a while, I think it was more than worth the money I spent on it.
As you can also see most of the games on there are platformers, my favourite genre. I do really want to start working through these games and I think I’ll pick up where I left off on Ducktales first. It’s the game where I’m closest to actually finishing so that should not be a real issue.
As far as other games on the list go, I am doing a Trine 2 playthrough with a friend and I really want to get into Stardew Valley. Although I have started a playthrough I feel like I messed it up already and I’m a bit lost as to where I was so I think I’ll start anew and stick to it for now.

Non Steam Games
I have a few games that are not tied to steam hanging out on my shelf. I haven’t played much of these at all. Not more than playing past the tutorial anyway. Which is kind of a shame since they are all good games! The (tiny) list consists of:

  • Assassin’s Creed III
  • Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
  • Warcraft III + Expansions

I never played any of the Warcraft games and the third was the only one still readily available so I picked it up a few years ago to see how it plays. I played through a bit of the initial campaign but due to being busy with my studies and other stuff I didn’t really have the time to dig too deep into it. Same goes for my Assassin’s Creed games.

MMO’s and other “neverending” games
Here is the section with my favourite game genre: MMO’s. Although many games try to fit into this category for me it just means the MMORPG’s like WoW, Wildstar, FFXIV and the like. I have gamehopped quite a bit throughout my MMO career and still have about 4 big MMO’s lying around, of which three are waiting to be picked up and played again. With other neverending games I mostly mean games with ladder systems like MOBA’s and Hearthstone for example. Games that keep you busy and reset themselves often so you’re never actually done with them. Here’s the list of games of that type that I have installed, own and/or play.

  • World of Warcraft. Although currently being on hiatus untill Legion I don’t want to look at my /played time. I think I’ve sunk most of my time into this game out of all the ones out there.
  • FFXIV. My current MMO.
  • Wildstar. Bought it at release, never got past level 20 though, sadly.
  • Guild Wars 2. Same story as Wildstar. Liked the game a lot, but never got past level 25.
  • Diablo III. Still actively playing. Season 6 just started and I have a level 70 character! I just really want to get the rewards so I should start working on finishing up Chapter 4.
  • Hearthstone. Somewhat active play. I make sure I get rank 20 atleast in every season for the card backs and slowly work my way through the adventures. I don’t do serious ladder play.
  • League of Legends. Dormant at the moment. Ever now and then I fire it up for a game. I don’t seriously rank.
  • Heroes of the Storm. See League of Legends
  • Overwatch. See this game isn’t technically out yet, but I know I’ll be playing a lot. A LOT of my friends pre-ordered it and from the beta stuff I’ve seen it’s an awesome game so I’m really looking forward to putting time into this. Not sure if I will ladder, but you never know!
  • I’ve also dabbled around in Blade & Soul, Lord of the Rings Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic but never really enjoyed those games so uninstalled them and never looked back.

This really concludes my PC “collection”. Most of the games I own are in my Steam library and I have a lot of games that I play that I can’t really finish. I’ve tried playing multiple MMO’s at once, but just couldn’t make it work. I really hope I can keep up playing both FFXIV and WoW when Legion launches, but I’m sure my other games will suffer for it. Especially with me being in the working force I just have much less time to play games than I used to have. And now I regret not using the free time I had before to go through atleast a part of my games catalog.

For part three I will have to dig around and dig up my old games collection. Although I have gotten rid of a lot of my old games (we used to borrow stuff from family and copy it with CD-key, yes I was a pirate of the digital times from very early on!) I do have a lot of original copies of stuff lying around. I also still own all my old SEGA games plus the console, all my old various Gameboy games and old Nintendo DS AND a Playstation 2 with a nice catalog of games. Not sure when part three will be arriving, but I’ll do my best to not keep you guys waiting for too long!

The Backlog Part 1: Consoles and Handhelds

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game coll

Although I can’t really boast the size of the massive game collection shown in this picture, I have quite an impressive backlog of games of my own. Owning two consoles, a PC and a handheld I have accrued quite some games over the past years and I haven’t played much if at all of any of them. I mentioned it in my previous post that I’m notoriously bad with playing through my games, and I’m really not joking. I’ve actually gotten to the point that I’m now forbidding myself to buy any new game (unless I already have it in pre-order) untill I have finished atleast some others that I have decorating my shelves or my harddisk.
I’m really embarrassed by the awesome game collection I do own and that I can’t really tell anything about most games because I simply haven’t played through them at all. Ofcourse I also own some games that you never really “finish”, mostly being MOBA’s, MMO’S and TGC’s but you can boast about atleast achieving some stuff there by defeating X boss, attaining X rank or even levelling to max level. Especially in MMO’s I see max level as the real big achievement, seeing as I’ve started so many chars in so many different MMO’s and never leveled them past the level 20 or 30 point.

This year I made a gaming goal list, which mostly consists of goals for FFXIV, my main MMO. However I really want to start working through the catalog of games I have lying around, and just so you guys get a glimpse of what this means, I made a list of stuff that I own. Because this post would become a monster if I would list everything in one go, I’m keeping this first post to console and handheld stuff. Part two will be about PC games, MMO’s and other “neverending” games. I also want to take a look back at my older game collection and share with you games that I have owned since my childhood, many of which I have actually finished but keep around for nostalgia sake, so that will be part three.
Let’s start out with…

Playstation 4
My first “next gen” console, decorating my room since 2014. I have about 15 games on that, not really counting the free PS plus indie ones since most of them are garbage that I never download anyway. So let’s take a look shall we?

  • Knack. Actually finished this one (as in defeated the last boss) so not really counting that. I stilll have a ton of trophies to unlock though, hence it’s on the list.
  • Thief
  • Final Fantasy X/X2
  • Final Fantasy Type-0
  • Ratchet & Clank
  • Tales of Zestiria
  • Disney Infinity + All Star Wars playsets + Inside Out playset. I consider the playsets the things to finish really so technically these all count as separate games.
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
  • The Division. Again I feel like I technically finished this. Reached max level, grinded out good gear. Just not much to do in the game right now. I’m only 4 or 5 trophies short of getting my first platinum. Something I do really want though.
  • Destiny. I have one max level character there (my Warlock) and I have actually played a lot of endgame, so technically “finished”.
  • Driveclub
  • Fifa 16

All in all my Playstation catalog isn’t that horrible. I do consider some games “fiinished” but monsters like the Final Fantasy and Tales games I haven’t really set foot in much. I am slowly working my way through Ratchet and Clank though so that’s a thing. The only game I really regret buying on this list is FIFA 16 since I haven’t even played 10 minutes of it..

Next up: Nintendo! I own both a 3DS and a WiiU now, with the WiiU being very very new. Even so I acquired a lot of games. Splitting them up for the list!

WiiU

  • Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
  • Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
  • New Super Mario Bros. U + New Super Luigi U
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker HD
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD
  • Xenoblade Chronicles
  • Yoshi’s Woolly World.

Of the above mentioned games I really only played a bit of Yoshi and Windwaker. As said, the console is brand new so not having played much isn’t that horrible… Right?

3DS

  • Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I did play some, but never really got into the game. One of those games you don’t really finish either.
  • Big Hero 6: Battle of the Bay. Only just got this one on a discount. Haven’t played it.
  • Bravely Default
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D. First World played through.
  • Kingdom Hearts 3D
  • New Super Mario Bros. 2. First World played through.
  • Pokemon Alpha Sapphire. Played for about 12 hours I’m past the 6th gym and recently picked it up again.
  • Pokemon X
  • Super Monkey Ball
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Completed the first 3 day challenge, almost done with the second.
  • Pokémon Blue. Technically finished this when I was 10? I had 148 Pokémon and had beaten the elite four like… a lot.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. See Big Hero 6.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Picross. This one is 100% finished!
  • Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. This came with my new 3DS and I did actually play it a lot.
  • Epic Mickey: The Power of Illusion. First World and Second World played through.
  • Earthworm Jim
  • 3D classics: Kirby’s Adventure
  • Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble (Virtual console)
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Virtual console)

So yeah. I have a decent Nintendo backlog, but a lot of these games I have actually played more than I thought. I sunk quite some hours into Pokémon. Pokémon X I have restarted a few times, but with gaining a lot of legendary Pokémon I’m determined to see it through. For the rest I have made decent starts in both Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. In both games I have atleast beaten the boss of the first world and in Donkey Kong I’m halfway through the Second World. Off all the games in my backlog I have been actively playing my handheld ones the most, thus the most progress in them.

All in all this part of the list alone contains 38 games, most of which I have barely touched. I really do want to start going through this huge backlog though. It’s so much money invested and so little time gotten out of it. The easiest ones for me will probably the 3DS games since I actually play them a lot on the train. For a game like Mario I manage to do 1-2 levels every train journey, so that’s 2-4 levels per workday. As far as the RPG games go, I defeat a bunch of trainers in Pokémon and make small steps towards my end goal. These bite sized chunks are really nice for me and it also helps with finishing games. I also feel like it’s easier for me to pick up my handheld and just lie down on bed and game a little. I often don’t feel like starting up my consoles or PC to play anything, especially when I’m tired.

So yeah. This was the first of a three part post about my “big” game collection. It’s nice to see it all listed, gives me a nice overview but also shows that I have quite the spending habit. I really wish I could say that I have played through a lot of these games, but the reality is I just really haven’t. And that’s such a shame. I do hope that I can clear out this backlog a bit throughout 2016. If I plan my gametime right, I should be able to do it.

Stay tuned for part two: PC (Steam) Games and MMO’s coming later this week!

Creative Blogger Award

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Today, or well technically yesterday, the lovely Chestnut of Gamer Girl Confessions nominated me for the Creative Blogger Award. Apparently this means I have to write a post! I’m not fuzzy about it though since I’m still laying low on the gaming side due to being tired and not wanting to hurt my wrist more than I already have. So here I am writing this post instead!
I got in touch with Chestnut during the Blaugust month last August and I’ve been following her blog ever since. I love how passionate she is about Wildstar and I would probably play the shit out of it in her guild, if I wasn’t literally on the other side of the globe. Which makes me sad. Not having the same timezone sucks!

  • So yeah, apparently this CBA comes with rules.
    First one: thank the person that nominated you for being nominated (thanks Chestie!) and include a link to their blog (points up).
  • Second: Post five facts about yourself.
  • Number three: Nominate 15-20 ppl of your own (never going to make that)
  • Fourth: Notify the ppl you have nominated
  • Last: Post the rules so everyone will know what to do!

Now that we have that out of the way…

Fact number one
I am notoriously bad with finishing games. Like really. I will buy a game, play 3-4 hours of it, will love it to death and then shut down and never look back. I have so many games lying around with a few hours into them that I want to finish but never do… And instead of going through my backlog of games I keep buying more and more. I’m a disaster!

Fact number two
I am addicted to Diet Coke (or Coca Cola Light as it’s called here).  I can’t go without it for even a day. Although I have brought down my daily intake to two glasses a day now I still can’t seem to just stop drinking it. I guess it’s the combination of caffeine and coke!

Fact number three
Even though the post count on this incarnation of the blog goes back to 2013 I have actually been blogging longer than that. My old blog is deleted however, so I can’t really look back on what I did before Aeternus Gaming, but my blogging career stretches back way into 2011.

Fact number four
I’m actually a very huge lover of make-up despite having bad, dry skin. I’ve invested a lot of money into building a decent collection and my favourite make-up item is lipstick and lipbalm. Especially Baby Lips by Maybelline has been a bit of an obsession for me and I have about 7 of them lying around my room and bags. But lately I’ve been buying more expensive brands, branching out into MAC and Clinique.

Fact number five
If my ex didn’t introduce me to World of Warcraft I probably wouldn’t be a gamer right now. Before WoW I would only casually game in the form of some Sims or Zoo Tycoon. WoW became a real addiction and even though I play much less than I used to in general, it actually turned me into a Gamer and, consequently, a Gaming Blogger. So thank my ex for me being here!

Now onto the nominations. I actually don’t have that many people I follow, but the few I do haven’t been nominated as of yet (I think?)

Missy of Sparks in the Horizon
Belghast of The Aggronaut

So that’s it folks! Hope you enjoyed the read.

Setting Examples

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Blizzard made a very good move with the release of their new Hearthstone expansion: Whispers of the Old Gods.  Next to introducing another new set of cards (134 in total to be precise) they have launched a new mode of play: Standard. Standard mode will only use cards from the last two years of the game, meaning that older expansion and adventure cards will not be used in this format anymore. It will also be the new official tournament format, something I actually quite cheer on. For someone like me having a format where I don’t actually have to catch up on hundreds of cards is a huge deal. For new players it’s also very nice since it’s easier to create “good” decks due to limited use of cards plus there are some mandatory cards that are rendered more or less useless now (I’m looking at you Dr. Boom) giving people much more freedom in deckbuilding. It will also allow for a more shifting meta, all to keep the game fresh.
Ofcourse for the people who are disappointed and have a really big collection of cards there is a game mode called “Wild” where all old cards are still usable. And there will be some Wild mode tournaments going on as well, meaning all the money people may have put in their collection will not feel like a “waste”.

What makes the launch of this expansion so good, in my opinion, is that Blizzard compensated the reduced usage of cards with “free” Old Gods packs. Some earned simply by logging into the game now that the expansion has launched, others earned by winning a grand total of 9 games in the new Standard mode. All in all this earns you 13 WotoG card packs, giving you a nice boost in deckbuilding with the new meta in mind.
Unfortunately the cards from my free packs haven’t been that amazing, but I managed to gather enough Dust from disenchanting old unused cards that I run a decent Shaman deck for Standard mode now and I am enjoying myself very much doing so. It feels much easier to make a decent deck this way and the Old Gods cards themselves are interesting. Add up the fact that next to the 13 free card packs you also get a free Legendary card, C’Thun, and two basic cards to use so you can buff C’Thun. The how and why of this I won’t explain in this post, but it helps new, returning and old players build new decks easily, something the game desperately needed.
As added bonus, it also makes it easier to decide what Adventure one wants to unlock first. Since Adventure cards are rotated out aswell, it’s wisest to always go for the newest one. The downside to this is that not only are the Adventure cards rotated out, old “unused” Adventures are no longer available to be played to new players. Only the players who have unlocked atleast one wing of Naxxramas are able to unlock and play through the rest. Anyone who starts playing now will not see the Adventure at all, and that kind of makes me sad.

All things considered this expansion  caused me to promote the game among my friends, telling them that NOW is the time to get playing because the game technically got a soft reset. It also made me want to play more again and be more serious about climbing the ladder (and consequently get better rewards at the end of the month).
And when a game company achieves that with me, they have made a very good move.

Now, will YOU be inspired to play with the Old Gods?