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.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, Street Fighter IV Ultra, and Other Cool Stuff

     The other day me and my friends hung out and naturally we ended up going to Gamestop on my suggestion. My original idea was to pick up Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate for the new 3ds xl but I also had Street Fighter IV for Xbox360 in mind. My friend told me that the Ultra version is better and comes with like 44 characters in the game. I had to get it. We went back to my friends pad and played the game and it was super cool. It has a bunch of characters that I don't really know about but I can always learn more or play the arcade mode to get an idea of who and what kind of people the characters all are. Some of the characters look really cool and interesting. A lot of the female characters have sexy outfits too. I'm a beginner at fighting games so I tend to stick with Ryu, the original classic Street Fighter character. But I also love Chun-Li, she's pretty cool with her kicks of fury. There's literally so many characters to learn how to play, and thankfully the combo list is right within the game and easy to get to. I'm such a novice at fighting games but I really want to learn. Think about owning people online in Street Fighter, it would be amazing. But right now, I know if I tried to play online I would get annihilated.
     Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is a completely different kind of game. It's an action rpg but some of the stats and abilities you can get on gear make a lot more difference than say just upgrading your equipment for better defense or damage like in most rpgs. Today I played a lot with my brother, just doing easy star one quests, getting to level 6. It was pretty fun, probably the most fun I've had playing my 3ds since I got Super Smash Brothers. I'm tempted to try playing the game online right away but I don't want to completely suck and waste my time. So I'll learn more about the game and play solo and just do local play with my brother until I learn the game a bit more. There are so many different kinds of monsters, it's really crazy. There are so many bosses as well. The bosses are all tough motherfuckers man! In fact, out of all the quests me and my brother did today, we ended up only doing one boss fight and it was tough. Right now, I have my character, named Figuero (my name if I was a dark lord of the Sith) uses a 2-handed katana that does hella damage. It's a pretty good weapon but because its 2-handed its slow, but thankfully it hits hard. Interestingly enough, every time I watch streamers play this game on twitch, usually everyone in the party is using 2-handers. Maybe 2-handers are just the best weapons in the game? Not really sure but my brother is using a sickle and shield because with the shield you can block attacks. With a 2-hander you can't block unfortunately but you can still dodge roll to get out of the way of attacks. Another great thing about this game is the fact that its not just a great multiplayer game that you can play online on the 3ds. It also has a great single player campaign as well. There's actually stories and stuff and its such an old school style rpg that you actually have to read everything! I'm so used to just hearing the characters say stuff than reading. It is refreshing to actually read stuff in games again. Reminds me of when I was a kid, playing games like Final Fantasy and Xenogears, my two personal favorites from when I was young. I can see myself putting in a lot of time into Monster Hunter, especially once I start playing it online.
     During the same day I picked up those two games we also stopped at the local record shop. They have this deal where you buy 10 CD's you get a free CD that's $7.99 or less. My friend got Slayer's Reign in Blood so I was able to use that as credit for my 10th CD, thus earning myself a free CD. So I got this album by jazz guitarist Pat Metheny called Question and Answer, which I believe is an old Ornette Coleman song. The album features Dave Holland on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. Haven't listened to it yet but judging from the song titles like All The Things You Are and Question and Answer, this is more of a traditional jazz album.
     And lastly, if that wasn't enough we also went to Goodwill. We looked around and my friend got this Pokemon book that has information on tons of different Pokemon for 50 cents. I myself got a shirt with a cartoon looking guy playing bass, and it says jazz bass New Orleans on it. In addition, I got an Angry Birds shirt. Both of these shirts were purple, the colour of swag. It was a fun day. As I walked into my house, my friends were blasting Slayer-Angel of Death. Good times man.