Late night gaming

      As you can tell by the times that I write all my posts I am one hell of a late night person. I usually stay up until at least 3 am everyday that I work late nights. On my days off I stay up till 2 am, and other times I don't go to bed until 4 or a 5 am. I keep late hours and that's just the way I like it. If I ever get a more organized job or a another part time job to earn more cash I would have to change my schedule drastically and go to bed much earlier. Anyways, this post is about the games I play late at night. There are some nights where I just write and watch videos and don't play any games at all. Sometimes I'm just too tired and I watch anime (thank god for crunchyroll). But when I force myself to game I never regret it. It's always a blast.
     I used to play a lot of games on my 3ds XL in the past before I fell asleep. I played a lot of Smash 3ds, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, and Xenoblade Chronicles (I'm really feeling it!). I might go back to playing Mh4U and Xenoblade at some point after I finish Fire Emblem Fates. I even used to play Mario Kart 8 on my Wii U gamepad before bed sometimes. It's a super fun game and I like playing against people in Japan and Europe.
     Lately I've been playing a lot  of Heroes of the Storm at like 2 in the morning. Its such a fun game and I don't always get the time to play it during the day before work. Game queues are usually super fast even at 2 in the morning and it gives me the chance to earn that in game gold (from completing quests) so I can get more heroes. In addition, I've been playing a lot of Fire Emblem Fates Conquest. I'm on Ch.10 right now and the story is just getting interesting. I would say the whole story as of right now is very convoluted and that perhaps Awakening had a better story-line. However, I never played Awakening but my brother does own it so I can play it whenever. Sometimes when I'm done playing a few Heroes games I'll play some Starcraft II for a bit. Lastly, my other go-to late night gaming session game is Diablo III Reaper of Souls. This game has the perfect evil atmosphere for late night sessions.I definitely want to get back into playing Monster Hunter at some point. It's like the perfect handheld multiplayer rpg and I really want Monster Hunter X to come out in America at some point (its only out in Japan). What games do you play late at night? Have you ever played horror games at night with the lights turned off? That seems like a great idea for a twitch stream. Stay classy readers. And stay gaming.

Update 1.08

     Life has been good. I'm getting good hours at work, making that extra bread. As ZZ Top sing, "Just got payed, got me a pocket full of change", I think that every week when I get my check. As a customer at my work likes to say every time I see him, "Life is good". Usually when I say that to customers they usually say, "It's better than the alternative". It seems rather drab to say that but I get it almost every day. Here's an update on what's been up lately. 
      For one thing I've been doing my usual schedule at work working until 1 in the morning. So I've been having long nights, staying up until 3 or later. Most of the time I'm just listening to free jazz, writing for this blog, and looking up things online like email, games, and twitch streams. It's a super fun night life. At the end of the night before I go to bed I play Wii U (Mario Kart & Smash), and sometimes 3DS (Xenoblade, Monster Hunter, & Smash). I would say the best part is just listening to the music. There's something about listening to jazz that just gets me inspired. Jazz has become my favorite style of music. I would say I'm not even really a fan of metal anymore. Although I am impressed by Animals as Leader's Tosin Abasi, he is a beast guitar player. I wouldn't become better than him even if I was practicing 4 hours a day. Which leads me to my next point.
     Today I had my guitar lesson with my teacher. It had been about 2 weeks since we last had a lesson so it was a good return to learning. We jammed on John Denver's Country Road, jammed a funky blues, improvised over Four on Six, and started playing a bit of Billie's Bounce by Charlie Parker. I couldn't quite sight read it that good but I'll get there. I haven't been putting in a lot of time on the guitar but I have been playing here and there. Its hard to devote time to the guitar with all the new gaming stuff on the horizon, especially next month with Xenoblade Chronicles X, Starcraft II Legacy of the Void, and Starwars Battlefront 3 coming out. I'm going to have to start a practice schedule every day in order to keep up with my lessons. No point in taking lessons if I'm not practicing everyday. But I digress. Let's talk about games!
      Gaming has been great lately. There was a new patch in Smash, patch 1.1.2, which adds the Super Mario Maker stage and the Pirate stage from Wind Waker. They're both pretty cool. I really like the Super Mario Maker stage but I don't see it becoming viable for tournaments, although the omega version of the stage looks just fine for that purpose. Nintendo also balanced some of the characters again. Every time they do this its like Smash is becoming a different game, which is good and bad in a way. It's good because we get to experience buffs and nerfs to certain characters but sometimes its good when a game is done and completed and there doesn't have to be anymore updates. We live in an era in gaming where everything needs to be updated. Its a blessing and a curse.
     Not only was there a patch for Smash but there was a big patch for Heroes of the Storm, another one of my favorite games at the moment. They added some balance updates for the characters but they also added a new hero, Lieutenant Morales, the Medic from Starcraft Broodwar. That ain't even the best part of this story folks. They added a skin that makes Morales look like the Apothecary from Warhammer 40k's Dawn of War series! That's it at the top. I don't know how Blizzard got the licensing to do something like that but its arguably the best skin in the game. So in total now I have the Novazon Nova skin, Medic Uther, and the Apothecary Morales. Not too shabby.
     Lastly, as I sit here listening to free jazz I'm reminded that this is suppose to be a blog about music. But in some ways it has transcended music and has become an almost personal blog, something that I did not intend nor think think was possible because I always thought writing about my life and what I do was super boring and that nobody would want to read about that. And somehow I was wrong because the blog has been getting lots of views, every month, and every day. Thanks for reading folks! I will eventually make a return to writing more about music-particularly free jazz, which is mostly what I'm listening to these days. Au revoir.

Back to work, I've got a good rhythm going!

   

     Today I went back to work after a long three day weekend of gaming, guitar, and hanging out with my friends and family. It was refreshing to go back to work because work is good for the soul and is necessary in order to buy all the things we want-in my case food and games. I've got a much better attitude coming back to work and I'm going to do my best there. I would say there's dignity in any kind of work, even in the retail service industry. In addition, I'm waking up earlier at around noon everyday to work on guitar, game, and eat before I go to work. It's been working out for me pretty well. I've been playing Mario Kart 8 and Smash lately as well as Call of Duty Advanced Warfare and Ghosts. I gotta say that Ghosts is the most campy CoD game I've ever played. I think all people do in that game is just sit and wait for people to walk by to snipe them. Its quite difficult for me to play. I'm not the best CoD player in the world but I'd like to become better.. It doesn't take rocket science or amazing motor skills. But it does take a fast trigger finger. But when it comes down to it, all you're doing is running and shooting with a mouse and keyboard. It seems easy until you go up against some good people online. That's the best part of online gaming-testing your skills against real people.
     Also, I'm thinking about all the other stuff I'm going to need to get for my Wii and other games in general. For one thing, there's Metal Gear Solid: The Phantom Pain. I really want to get it after seeing the 9.5 it got in Game Informer and the 9 out 10 AngryJoe (YouTube personality) gave it on YouTube. Then there's things I need like a Wii Remote Plus and the Mario Kart wheel that I want just to try driving with. Then there's Street Fighter V that I want to get for the PC. I just checked it out on the Steam page and if you pre-purchase it you'll be able to play the beta, and tons of people are playing the beta. I was talking to a friend I work with today and he said for the first time in a game they are doing cross servers for the PS4 and PC in SFV! I also want to get this cool Solid Snake shirt because I became a Snake fan after owning my friends in Brawl with him. These are all things to think about for the holidays. Some of this stuff I could get my older brother too because he would totally play the Phantom Pain and Street Fighter. Also, my brother ordered the new steam controller so I'm looking forward to seeing how that owl looking thing works out for him.
     On a side note my younger brother sent me our old copy of Super Smash Brothers Melee as a birthday gift. He was even able to find our old memory card so I'll have everything unlocked when I play it with my buds. Whatta guy!

Exceptional Birthday Weekend, Arcade, and Starcraft II.

     

     This has been a great weekend. I got the Wii U, Smash 4, and Mario Kart 8, and got to celebrate my birthday hanging out with my friends on Friday and Saturday. It was really fun. One of my friends got me a Zero Suit Samus controller for Smash, and another one got me $20 in Nintendo e-shop money cards. I'm deciding if I'm going to save it, use it to buy some old school Nintendo games on the e-shop or just use it to buy the Smash 4 dlc characters. I kind of don't want to rebuy the Smash dlc because I already bought it on my 3DS, it seems dumb to buy them again on the Wii U. Nintendo needs to sync the 3DS with the Wii U, that's really my only complaint about Nintendo's current gaming products. But on the other hand, I really like having my Smash roster with the all characters full. Anyways, on Friday my friends kicked it at my place to play Smash 4. It was a great experience playing with them on the Wii U for the first time. I gotta say that the Gamecube controller on the Wii U is much better to play with than the 3DS input buttons. One of my friends kept getting second place all the time and he was getting super salty (mad). We were all like,"We should sprinkle some salt on that wound". It was pretty funny.
      Saturday we went to a free arcade in Chatsworth. This place is the bomb! They have all these old school arcade games for free with no catch. The way this place stays open is that its only open on Saturdays from 11 am to 4 pm, and its a place where people buy arcades for cheap (like $600) and rent arcades. There was a lot of people there playing games and a friend of mine saw one of his old high school friends there and we ended up playing a lot of this game called X-Men vs Streetfighter, which is basically like Marvel vs Capcom. I was surprisingly pretty good at this game. Its one of those ultra fast combo fighting games where you kind of have to know what your doing in order to win. Learning how to do the ultimate moves and basic combos was pretty easy. I did pretty well using Chun-Li and Ryu. We kind of ended the time at the arcade by playing it vs each other one by one, it was super fun. Me and a friend also played Streetfighter II but I wasn't as good in that game. It seems old school Streetfighter is a little bit more difficult to play than the new ones, like Streetfighter IV Ultra that I have for the Xbox360. I tried playing a few other games but I'm terrible at those old school type shoot and move arcade games. There was so many games but it was in a small warehouse with no air conditioning, another reason why the place is free I guess. The most fun game there was definitely X-men vs Streetfighter.
     After that we went to my friends place and we ended up playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl 4 players in a free for all format. Somehow I ended up winning tons of games playing the character Snake, from the Metal Gear Solid series. He's so good in Brawl that I'm hoping that they put him in Smash 4 as dlc along with a great Metal Gear map, like the one from Brawl. Again, one of my friends kept getting 2nd place in all our games and boy was he salty! At one point he even threw his controller against the desk, haha. The thing is that he doesn't know Smash fundamentals at all but somehow he's good at free for all because he does the same basic cheap moves over and over again. It's actually really funny how cheap he is, especially with Dark Pit, who's really cheap in Brawl. It was interesting playing Brawl competitively instead of Smash 4. They are completely different games with different play styles but I kind of like Brawl more because it has Snake. I randomly picked Snake just to try him out and I guess I was just good with him right from the start. I especially like his punches, jabs, and air kicks he does while in the air. Nice moves! It was good 'ole clean fun.
     Later, when I got home, I played Heroes of the Storm for a bit, mostly messing around doing the quests for the gold. At some point I want to unlock some of the newer heroes that I've sort of missed because I thought they were sorta lame, but now that I've tried some of them I want to unlock them. After I played Heroes I started playing Starcraft II again for the first time in months. A while back I tried to play but I think because I was playing teams it sort of drew me away. Mostly because I hate teams and don't know how to play teams very well. All I really like in Starcraft II is 1v1 because of how challenging, engaging, and fun it is. You literally never know whats going to happen in any given game. I got promoted from bronze to silver in like one game, that was pretty cool. The guy that I beat in that game wanted to practice with me to get better and after a few games he was finally able to defeat me, using tons of colosi and stalkers, along with phenixes, a weird composition for a protoss army if you ask me. Basically I'm learning how to macro again, fast expand, and build an army composition. Most of the games in these low level leagues are pretty slow and you're just learning the game so nothing too crazy ever happens. I'm going to work at getting better at Starcraft to get ready for the next expansion, which is coming out in November. I have it on pre-order at gamestop. It's a super fun game and very relaxing after a long day like today. At the same time there's some pressure to try to win every game.
     Lastly, I've been playing the Wii U as well. When I got up I was playing Mario Kart 8 a lot, and I practiced Smash the night before using the Gamepad with modified controls. The Gamepad ain't bad to play on. As if all this wasn't great enough tomorrow in the afternoon the family and I are going to Dimsun (Chinese lunch) at our favorite Chinese Restaurant A&W's. I'm really looking forward to it. It was an amazing birthday and weekend. As Shulk says,"I'm really feeling it!"