Well, the world ends this Saturday.

So I guess I will have to put the reviewing of games on hold while I try and recover from the amount of laughing I will be doing. I think I might have pulled something last hour and need to take a small break while I heal. Nope, could not keep a straight face.

If anything I am waiting for the war of the gods to kick off first. Seems like it would be neat to see if Loki is accepted among the rest of the Norse Gods like he belongs. He has spent so much time trying to point out all the little flaws they have so that they can prepare, it would be a shame to see the effort go to waste.

Ghost Trick

Wow, this was a fun game for the DS that I just could not put down. A very fun puzzle game with interesting plot to it. Hats off to the creators of this game.

There are a lot of puzzles in this game that require you to work on them a few time fore you can really get them later in the game, but it all feels very solid and once you get the logic behind a part it dons on you in a "Ohh!" moment that left me addicted. The levels really make you earn that feeling of working out the timing of your plan to create a path to cause a certain action. I breezed through most of the levels though, some of the puzzles where very easy to complete that might have given other people a lot more trouble than me. I guess I just have the kind of head for these kinds of puzzles.

I am not going to say much about the plot, only that you can expect a good ending when you get there. I highly recommend for anyone to go out and pick this one up. Wow I did not have a lot to say about this game, guess that is why people mostly review bad games. It is easier to put into words what you did not like about a game than one you did like.

Game Review: Sands Of Destruction

My first game review for the Month of May, I am excited about this guys. Reviewing stuff that is, not so much this game.

Sands Of Destruction is a title by Sega and released by Nintendo for the DS. My first impression of the game and box cover was favorable. It looked like it would be an interesting RPG to spend some time on. Now quick, with a title like Sands of Destruction what is your first thought about what you will be doing. If you guessed causing the end of the world as you know it, you would be completely right and this is totally contrary to the save the world plot that is standard of, well, every game out there. The blurb on the back of the box says this, "Change your future, change the world! Join Kyrie(Our villain everybody) as he ventures through oceans of sand with Morte(Female Joker Ripoff), a mysterious girl crusading for the "World Annihilation Front," on a rebellious mission with her troop of recruits(Her Sword). Fight colossal monsters, battle tyrannical beastmen, and ultimately... discover that Kyrie holds the key to world destruction. The future of the world now lies in your hands."

Now you might be thinking that this game has a bit of promise, you get to play as a villain before he gains the power to destroy the world. That is what I thought too, then I watched the opening. It looked very nice, and is about 5 minutes long and shows you just how much of a lier the box is. Well aside from the sand sea(srs wtf). This is just the demo mode cinematic and I have not gotten far enough into the game to see if it came from somewhere, but I get the feeling it was made just for the opening. After that you have a ten minute start to save time with ok to mediocre voice work as we get some back story from a beastmen nation of wolves. After that we switch over to our villain and learn he lives a sheltered life in a small town in the island of summer(not kidding) where chores are going into caves and fighting scorpions and toads looking for a special item requested by his uncle that is guarded by a sandwhale. You might want to get used to that formula, cause you will be doing that kind of thing for the first quarter of the game.

I could not bring myself to get past it as time ran on, due in part that I could not get into the setting and the voices of your leads(aside from the gravely voice of the bear Taupy). Part of the battle system, that I quite like overall actually, is a system called quips. You give a little one liner and you get an increase in defense or attack or even double exp if they go off. The problem is that some of the more annoying ones always go off, and you need it too because if you don't get that boost to defense you will die very quickly as your lead's defense is horrible on its own. With everyone pulling combos on you get to hear the same line get said over and over, often enough that he starts talking over himself to get the line off when you get hit 8 times in one attack. I would want to end the world too if I had such a whinny voice too.

The combat system itself was very fun, with most battles feeling very fast paced even for a turn based system as you string together combo attacks. You have flurry attacks that are controlled by the Y button and strong attacks handled by the X button. A brings up your magic and items menus. Starting out you just have one flurry and one heavy that you can put together for a three hit combo by hitting X and then Y or Y and then X. It does not matter until you gain customization points from fighting and level up your starting attack. Leveling up your flurry attack give you a second attack in the flurry line, so combos can become Y+Y and then X, and so on. You get two action points a turn(Until you get better gear/gain levels) and a critical hit will earn you an additional hit as will getting 10 hits in a combo. The crit bonus only works once, but if you string ten more hits you get to bring out your special. Very fun times to be had with this battle system.

Now for the setting, this world is based of an anime and it shows. You have a world that is covered in a sand sea with four islands. That is it, no other land masses to be found and they all have their own season associated with it. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter with each island ruled over by one of the 12 the great Beastlords and the other two acting as support and rivals to their leaders. Now I watch quite a bit of anime, but this setting just seems like it was lazily put together. Pandering to an audience of adolescent forum RPers form sites like Gaiaonline or something. I am not say it is so horrible and that no-one should play in just that it is not something that would keep my attention. If you like these kinds of settings and can deal with sound-bites that endlessly repeat go ahead and buy it. However if this is not your cup of tea story wise, I say rent it just to check you the battle system.

The End Of April

We come to the end of a month, and it is a wet end for me. Flooding waters all over the place. It makes me sorta glad I live on the third floor of my building. For next month I plan on doing more game related stuff on my blog. Reviews and thoughts on some games that I found interesting, from first looks at new releases to plot reviews of old games. May shall be the month of games, and that is final.

Dreams are vague.

This is a dream I get every time I move to a new place. I am not kidding, it happens every time I move home and I keep dreaming about it for a month until I get used to the new location. The first time I remember having this dream would be when I was about Eight years old and my family first moved houses.

I start out sitting on a train as we move across the tracks, passing nondescript buildings and fields. There are other people sitting down, reading or just staring into space as we pass by stuff. We get to a crossing where the road goes across the tracks and the cart i am in disconnects. I can feel that it is no longer part of the train, so I stand up and run to the next cart before this one slows down and gets left behind. Not soon after the new cart disconnects and I keep running to get closer to the engine cart. No one else in my dream seem to notice or care that they have become disconnected, as they just keep standing or sitting doing whatever.

So I keep going forward onto the next cart on this really long train as each cart disconnects and slows down a little quicker. There are several endings to this dream, three of them to be exact. The most common one is the cart I currently am on flips over onto its side, crashing but leaving me unharmed as I stand up in the rubble. Later in the month I start to get the ending where I reach the engine and ride off into the distance before waking up. The ending that shows I won't be getting the dream anymore has me pulling up to a station and getting off.

Now I don't need to have any sort of degree in psychologically to know that this dream represents a fear, then acceptance of change. Especially considering the trigger that is required to have this dream in the first place. I plan on moving a lot, at least while I am single that is, and I still get this dream when I first move into a place. I have already come to accept it as it is and willing don't change the dream as I have learned to. I look forward to this dream as part of the ritual of moving in.

This travelers is the end of my recurring dreams, any more posts about the inside of my head while I am asleep will be dreams that left an impact or tips on how to become the master of your own dreams. Until next time.

Sigh, I want my old tv station back.

Brimestone, Sliders(First Season), Stargate even.

Why must all the good things on TV die. I was reminded today of my favorite of all stations on TV has completed a ritual suicide of itself by changing its lineup and name. SyFy, I know change is something we all go through and you think you are being "hip" and "cool" but your greatest strength was being somewhat of an anachronism. You showed things how they could be in the far future with science, go back to doing that.

I weep for you, may who ever takes your place last for at least until after I have children and made them grow up with it.

Ok, first chew at the Hero System(Grups)

From my first impression it is a more combat version of GRUPS. If you know anything about tabletop rpgs, then you might have heard of the system. You use three six sided dice to determine skill checks and all that jazz, so once you get the mechanics down you can create your very own fluffed out hero depending on the character point limit set by the DM. I have a few concepts in my head for a few powers and such that I need to work out some of the cost of so it does not make my character pass out to cast. Overall, i have seen this all before in GRUPS, it is a solid system and I am happy to have a few more rule books lying around.

Me Oh My, what a large book.

So I just got my books I ordered in, and the main one is huge! I did not expect the size when I bought it, expecting it to only be like 250 pages or so if that. What I got was a monster of a book of around near 500 pages. This is just the first volume, the Hero System Sixth Edition set of books. I picked it up to add to my collection of RPG systems I play and I am in the process of learning the rules. When the books came in it perked me right up. I have been feeling very drained mentally from work recently, wanting nothing more than to sleep for a week. But with the new system to learn(have learned? This looks like Grups...) I have just gotten quite the mental boost. Warm fuzzes to everyone.

edit: This first book is Character Creation(500 pages for that, really?)

So, this government of mine. What are they doing again?

Well I guess it is about time I went ahead and told you all that I am an American and in the Military. Seems that I might not get paid due to some 535 people unable to agree on who has the biggest dick and should be getting votes. Now I don't much care for anyone involved in politics. It is just a group of people directing how this nation should grow while trying to make their own lives as comfortable as possible, or at least this is how I see it. All I want is to be paid and live happy as a cog powering the engine of creativity and enjoyable pastimes, such as games and science. My opinion stated I will now never mention the topic of government again until something more relevant happens, like a law that stops games from being sold because of deviant themes present in them or some such nonsense.

To all that play Fantasy Football

NNNEEEEERRRRRRDDDDD!!!


Ahem. Anyway, I was reminded of this subject when I was talking to some friends about making a D&D game and got the response from someone, "I would like to play, but D&D just seems to nerdy to me." I know this guy, he follows sports enough to know very minute details about most of the players. He also participates in a fantasy football league. Now correct me if I am wrong, but is not learning an obscene amount of minutia about something and having a game built around such information the very definition of nerdy?

With Sleep Derivation Comes...

Small moments of clarity that let me advance further into the games I play. It is surprising to me that I can find just the right path or tactic to circumvent my latest gaming block. I could spend about a full hour puzzling over something and not make any progress, but if I was just a wee bit more tired the pieces seem to fall into place and I overcome the thing blocking me. It works on stuff that I have not spent hours on, as new parts come up that would normally stump me for a bit become a breeze. If I come back to it later, I often wonder how I cam up with the exact right solution on my first try no less.

Water Room

My second nightmare, the one where I learned the most control over my dreams, was one that felt like my dreams were trying to teach me something. It all ways started out with me sliding down a water slide into an enclosed pool. the thing was covered with a roof and had holes in the side where other kids would fall into the water, trapped as I was. We would mill about, treading water until I woke up. This did not frighten me at first, but as it started repeating, I came to dread it.

This was still around the same time I was having the Wyld Hunt dream so it was a welcome change to the pure terror of that nightmare. And as I learned how to drive my dreams, it was in this dream that I found that I had the most control. I started by just looking around instead of staring in one direction so that I could now see other children ducking under the water, swimming to somewhere I could not see yet. As I grew more brave in my dreams I started diving down to see where the other children left. Turns out there are several holes or tunnels in the walls just below the water.

These ways out frightened me as I thought about them, what if I run out of air, what if it is a dead end, what if they lead to sharks? But these where the concerns of my waking self as I thought about how to control my dreams. Once I was in the dream, all I felt in terms of emotion was a feeling of content. I did not like that more of the others where diving down into the water and to the holes. The dream would also start where I was in the water already and not in the slide. Soon there would be only about 15 around me in the pool when there used to be a whole lot more.

I finally worked up the courage to dive down and swim into one of the tunnels, and anyone who knows about lucid dreaming, found I did not have much to worry about breathing underwater. That kind of thing makes you even more aware that you are dreaming and gives you more control over the dream. So I gave myself an ending of coming up near the shore of the beach just before waking up.

This Dream Travelers is not as twisted and terrifying as the first, but still had a profound effect on how I dream. I hope you enjoyed the trip into my head.

Loose Change

So I have scoured my room high and low, checking pockets of pants and jackets for all my loose change in my room. Guess how much I found? $62.44, sixty two dollars and forty four cents. Wow, just wow. Mind you this is not all in change, I have found a four large bills here and there, but still most of it is. I am not even sure I have found all of it yet. I am sure to look somewhere and find still more change under a book, or even in it as a bookmark. I swear, I multiply loose change faster than bunny rabbits in my room.

What kind of pile of money have you found fellow travelers, what amount lies between couch cushions and in drawers?

Thoughts On Stuff

Now I am not one that puts to much stock in religion. I would like to think of myself as a man of science and logic, thinking things through in the most rational way possible. However, I also find some level of comfort in supernatural things like magic and the like as long as it follows rules. That out of the way, I think some people can dream of the future. Not in the like some sort of magic see the future, just your brain using its pattern recognizer to guess at the events of the next day. I often will drive my dream into that state and will often make a good guess at the next days events.

I don't have much more to say on anything right now, to busy playing three games at once for the DS.

So this DS thing... It can do what now?

As I look over my brand new DS I XL I think to myself, "Where is the port for the Gameboy Advance Cartridges?"

Way back when(by that I mean 6 years ago(Holy Crap, 6 years is a long time for electronics)) I received a first generation DS for a birthday gift and set aside my GBA. I was content to play both types of games on this one nifty device, until my brother broke his DS and stole mine. After that, life got in the way of video games for me and I went on to boot camp. Life moved on for me and now I have grabbed myself a handheld system to help kill time while I wait for books to be released.

I picked up the DS I XL without doing any sort of research into what has been done for the handheld market and just assumed it was a bigger DS, now with camera. I had only heard hearsay of a camera feature for the DS and that some people had figured out how to get the little buggers online. Shows how much I had paid attention. Apparently these guys are all able to connect online as a default feature and they no longer play GBA games. Overall I feel very sad that I will no longer be able to pick up and play a GBA game anymore I like the improved capabilities of the new DS. I picked up two games for it as well, Pokemon Black and an RPG by ATLUS. I know Atlus does good things with RPGs and have been enjoying it so far and Pokemon is well, Pokemon.

As you can see Traveler, I live under a rock concerning things I am passionate about too, not just world news.

A Time For Nightmares

When I was younger I often had recurring nightmares that I could not seem to overcome. They came almost every night filling me with feelings of terror and helplessness. So I decided that I would learn to try and fight back and learn how to overcome the dreams. I did that by reading books, and not books about dreams but about heroes. I was about five years old back then, how could I have gotten books about dreams back then?

At any rate I picked up every book I could get my hands on; fantasy, mystery, science fiction, just about all types and devoured them. I spent every night thinking about how I could try and do something different in my dreams to stop them from becoming nightmares. Through sheer willpower alone I was able to become more than just an observer to the terrors that haunted me. It was only later in life after I learned to control my dreams on my own, and read more books, that I became a fully lucid dreamer at age seven. But I am getting ahead of myself, what I am here today is to tell you about my nightmares as I remember them.

The first nightmare is one that filled me with nothing but stark naked terror. I would always jolt up out of my bed when I had this dream covered in sweat and adrenalin running through my veins. It would start out simple enough, I would be sitting in the passenger side of a jeep or something like it as we wound down a pleasant path. The path would then start to go into hairpin turns with a cliff side view of a canyon. The jeep would speed up and soon I would be thrown from the jeep and into the canyon unharmed. I would feel rumbling behind me and I would turn to see a hoard of animals of all shapes and sizes barreling down at me. I was being hunted, I was their prey, I need to run, escape escape escape! The dream would always end as I trip and become over run by the white colored hoard behind me.

What I did to try and over come this nightmare was try and change things about it. I started to gain control over my dreams slowly at first. I went from being a passenger to the driver of the jeep, no longer was it gliding out of control with me along for the ride. I kept falling at the turns and into the canyon at the end, but it was a start. Things started becoming easier to influence in my dream and soon I would either keep running to the end of the canyon where it opened up so I escaped or hid in a nook until the hoard passed. The Jeep was easier to drive, and I no longer speed out of control as soon as i reached the cliff face road. The last time I ever had the nightmare, I stopped the jeep and sat at the top of the canyon and watch the hunt pass under me, snapping and chasing a different prey.

That is it for the first of three of my nightmares, Travelers. Come back next time and learn about the pool of no clear exit.

The First of Many(Hopefully...)

Welcome Travelers,

I am happy you decided to drop by and take a look at this one voice among many, as I talk about little to nothing about the world outside my head. I am weird, and work hard to stand out among my peers in an effort to shape the opinions of the people, and I do not expect that I might be able to do the same here. The internet is a vast place with many just like me, running meta-plot after meta-plot just trying to stay afloat of everyone else.

Well time to join the Legion.

Traiden

On this Blog

The many topics I will cover.

• Dreams
• Past and Current.
• How I came to learn how to control my dreams.
• Games
• What I am playing.
• What I plan on getting.
• What I plan on making.
• Things I Consider to be News
• Evidence that I live under a rock.

So if anything on this list interests you, please feel free to follow and tell your friends. I will try to post at a minimum of once a Week and post at least one dream of mine a Month. I might also do a drawing or two if I feel I am up to drawing what I have seen in my Dreams so look forward to that too.