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!"

Heads Up!

     

     Hey everyone thought I'd write another one of these updates for the readers, the fans, the hardcore Orlando Figueroa blog fans! Anyways, I've been up to a lot more fun lately. A lot of gaming. Not so much in terms of music or guitar playing. Like I've said in previous posts I'm becoming disillusioned with music and guitar playing and becoming more enamored of gaming. In the last post I talked about how I was going to start streaming and stuff. My twitch channel is twitch.tv/megaman1597 if you want to check it out but there's really not much interesting content on there at the moment. Its a bit iffy streaming because the quality is not so good unless I'm playing something like my Super Nintendo emulators. On a game like Heroes of the Storm the quality is terrible and blurry because of my network connection speeds. Unless you have a fast internet connection you can't really stream that well. So I looked more and more into what it takes to be able to stream and all these programs and options to make a stream great and I've kind of run into a wall because I think all my streaming problems stem from not having a super fast internet connection speed. So I've been kind of studying and looking up all this stuff just to be able to stream. Has it been worth it? Yes! But like I said I think I've run into a wall because I think my internet connection speed is just not good enough for it.
     On the other end of things there's actual gaming I've been doing as well. I've been playing a lot of Super Nintendo games on my emulator on my PC. Games like Super Metroid and Super Mario World mostly. I'm actually pretty far in Super Metroid. I've finally got most of the items in the game and now I'm just trying to power my way through it, fighting these big ass bosses that take a while to take out. Some of them are actually really difficult to fight because on some bosses they don't have a set HP that you have to deplete, instead you just have to survive the whole fight until something happens, like you pushing them across the entire map until they fall off. There was one boss fight where it was like that and it was pretty tough.
     In addition, I've been playing the first Bioshock. I'm playing the game on the PC, on my steam account. If any of you want to add me on steam my name on there is Spacemarine, I should be like the first hit in the search, with the sexy girl space marine picture. I'm actually really getting into Bioshock. I'm really feeling it! The story of the game kind of gives me the creeps because I get scared easily and the whole idea of quasi-zombies/cannibals/whatever they are running around underwater with guns trying to kill you just freaks me out. Also the idea that you have to kill Bigdaddy's and then absorb Littlesisters (basically just little girls but I think they're much more, not far enough in the game to say) is pretty interesting. The picture is a Big Daddy Little Sister cosplay. Its so good! You can choose to save the Littlesisters but then you won't get a lot of the superpowers needed to power up your character, making it easier to make it through the game. Right now I'm enjoying the game but I find it really difficult. A friend of mine told me he thought the game was super easy. I guess for some people these modern originally on Xbox360 first person games are really easy but for me they are the epitome of difficulty. Because of playing this game its gotten me interested in playing more of the first-person xbox games in my brother's collections. The main game that comes to mind that I want to play that he has is Fallout 3. But that's for another time.
     In other news, today was really fun because I brought over Diablo 3 for the Xbox360 over to a friends house and they really enjoyed the game. I was getting so into the game and playing on a console, that later on we went to Gamestop and I bought the expansion, Reaper of Souls because I knew that they would want to play it with me on other days we hang out. I already have both D3 and RoS on PC but having it on console just makes it more of a chill game to play when your just relaxing with your friends. The PC version is a bit more hardcore and has players that have played since launch still putting in incredible amounts of time. It's a really great game. Reaper of Souls turned Diablo 3 into a much more open world RPG experience, where you can kind of go anywhere you want at any time to complete quests, kill demons, and get epic loot. All in all its a fun time. 10/10 would buy again.
     Also, I've been getting a bit more into anime because the new Dragon Ball Super episodes have aired in Japan, and people have put English subtitles to it already. It's pretty cool. I'm actually going to start watching Dragon Ball Z GT again because I'm kind of into a DBZ phase again now that I'm into Dragon Ball Super, but I don't want to watch the same old DBZ stuff that I've seen before, so I'm going to give GT another shot. I once watched it but after a while I became bored and just stopped. Maybe now I'll be more into it? It's worth a shot although pretty much all of the friends I've ever had have said that GT was garbage. Maybe after I watch a bit of the series I'll do a little anime mini-review for it, I haven't done one of those for a long time. The last anime I watched was this great one about time travel called Stein's Gate. I would recommend that one to any modern anime fan.
     Lastly, as you can tell I have a lot of time on my hands! If I was using my time wisely I would be working more on music but I'm a lazy musician. I have chops but I don't want to put the practice in to truly become great. To learn a 1000 songs and find the right people to play in a band with. I feel like part of my problem is that I have no direction musically, and that I should spend the money to hire a guitar teacher but then comes the problems of paying for said teacher. If I'm going to pay for a guitar teacher, then I might as well just pay to go to music college, learn the whole thing about harmony and counterpoint, as well as be a hotshot guitar player. I think musicians do get kind of stuck or in a rut or a musical depression and they just take a break for a while. I feel like that's what I need to do. Just take a break and come back later. Its funny that I used to listen to music all the time but lately I haven't listened to any music other than some death metal here and there. It actually doesn't bother me at all when I'm not listening. Before it used to. So I've changed in that respect. If I had to say what is the greatest thing in the world to me I would say music but gaming and work would be additional followups to that. Figueroa out.

E3 News

     E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo happened recently here in LA! Too bad I didn't go, it would've been badass if I went and got to meet some gaming celebrities and gaming YouTube personalities. I'm a big fan of BlackNerdRants, Melonie Mac, Angry Joe, and TotalBiscuit. They really do some great videos on games and gaming in general, it would just be cool to meet someone like that. But the whole E3 experience is learning about all the new content and games that will be coming out this holiday season and next year. There is literally tons of games, too many to mention so I'll talk about some of my personal favorite new things that I've seen in the press conferences from E3 from YouTube videos. 

     First, I'm really hyped for StarWars the Old Republic. I used to play the game when it first came out but since then the game has now gone free to play (with reduced xp unfortunately if you play free) and has a couple of interesting expansions like Rise of the Hutt Cartel and something involving the Jedi Revan from StarWars Knights Of the Old Republic. Anyways check out this new expansion trailer here. I thought this trailer was badass. It shows that there's going to be a new faction in the game that doesn't seem really Sith nor Jedi, even using the neutral yellow colored lightsabers to confirm this. I really liked in the trailer how it shows how this two kids, royalty it looks like, were trained as youth to become warriors and later when they've grown up it shows them conquering planets, killing both Jedi and Sith alike, and then bringing home lightsabers from a Jedi and a Sith to their father who is most likely the Emperor of this new faction. Then one of the sons attacks his father in an attempt to kill him but the other son stops him using a force push and ends up getting sliced in the side by the attacking brother. Then the father is all like 'come with me my son.' It just breathes epicness and tugs on the emotional heartstrings as well. How could a father let his son kill his other son? So there's that game. I'm most likely going to subscribe to Swtor when this expansion comes out. It'll be out in October 2015. 

     I'm a big Star Wars guy when it comes to the games. The movies are ok but I prefer the stories in the game, although they aren't official canon. Star Wars Battlefront 3 is going to be great from the looks of the game play they showed at E3. Check it out here. This game-play footage really shows off what the game will be like on release. From the looks of it, it seems they've kept the same playing style as Battlefront 2 but made the game better with today's enhanced graphics. Every little detail in the video looks pristine and crisp. Imagine playing this game on PC on the best graphics settings possible, it will look beautiful. Parts that really stood out in this game-play footage was the part where he's just running and all of a sudden he sees a trooper get force choked, and Darth Vader walks out into the battlefield! And then Luke Skywalker walks out and starts to attack Vader! So that kind of shows that you will be able to play as heroes like Jedi and Sith Lords. The game seems to me to be an updated version of Battlefront 2, which is all a great Star Wars video-gaming fan can dream for. 

     Then, there's the Final Fantasy VII remake. Check out the trailer here. I don't feel like Final Fantasy VII needs a remake but it will be interesting seeing how the game will look with today's enhanced graphics. I wonder if they will change anything about the game that is really different. They could make it like a modern Final Fantasy game, which are actually pretty terrible in my opinion. It's something to be excited about because the original was pretty much the game of my childhood. Final Fantasy was my Ocarina of Time, even though I played Zelda as well. Playstation one was my life as a kid. I enjoyed playing all those rpgs like Final Fantasy Tactics, FF8-9-10-. Legends of Dragoon, and Xenogears. Great times! 

     Lastly, the announcement of Fallout 4. I personally haven't played any of the Fallouts but my brother has and I often watch streams on twitch.tv of people streaming Fallout 3. I just find it to be a really entertaining game to watch. Plus, its one of the best kind of dystopian game series out there!

     Lastly, there's tons of stuff but too much to write about in one sitting. My friend from work made a list of all the games from E3 that he's planning to get. They include so many games but most of them are shooters or action oriented shooters based on tactical game play and decision making. Unfortunately I haven't heard anything really good coming from Nintendo at E3. All I've heard about is a Super Mario Maker game where you can make your own Mario levels and play them online with people and a really bad looking game that looks inspired by Metroid Prime. I wish they could have announced that they were making an American version of Xenoblade Chronicles X, that would have been sick! But we didn't get any news about Xenoblade at all. One of my good friends seemed dissapointed with Nintendo this year, reasonably so. There's way more games but I just haven't gotten to watching the footage or trailers yet. But this is definitely a great time to be a gamer. All the technology and the graphics are all just top notch. What a time to be alive!