2015: The 18 Games I Beat

Every year, NeoGAF has a 52 games challenge, in which you have to beat 52 new games before the start of the next year. There is also a movie and book equivalent, in which you have to read 50 new books and watch 50 new movies. These challenges provide that extra motivation to do/finish the things you already wanted to anyway and can lead you to checking out stuff you otherwise may not have (this is especially true with books).

I didn't even come close to completing the challenge, beating only 18 games during the entirety of 2015.

My ratings are done on a 5-star scale (no halfsies). I didn't rate all the games I beat for 2015.

★ - Hated it
★★ - Disliked it
★★★ - Liked/enjoyed/didn't actively dislike it
★★★★ - Really liked it
★★★★★ - Loved it

For games, I sometimes wrote a sentence or two about my thoughts and experiences, which are included here. I also include about how many hours it took me to complete some games.

Here are the 18 games I beat in 2015:

Game 1: Knack - ~10 hours - ★★★
Longer and more challenging than I expected, Knack was an enjoyable action-platformer that felt very much like something from the creator of Crash Bandicoot.

Game 2: Depression Quest - ~3 hours - ★★★★★
A very accurate portrayal of depression that hit a bit closer than I expected, Depression Quest is an important experience that those who wish to know more about the illness should play.

Game 3: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist - ~21 hours - ★★★★★
Much better and truer to Splinter Cell than what I was initially led to believe, Blacklist is a great addition to the franchise that allows a lot customization and freedom in how to handle situations. The co-op, as always, was the best part of the experience for me. I completed all the 4E missions including the DLC with random partners.

Game 4: Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae - ~5 hours - ★★★★★

Game 5: Borderlands 2 - ~83 hours - ★★★★
I played the entirety of this game and all of its story DLC on co-op with my friend Sean. We begun on August 23rd, 2014 and just finished up everything on March 27th, 2015. An overall enjoyable game that can get tedious at times, we ended up ignoring most of the enemies near the end as we were so over-leveled by that point it didn't matter. Tiny Tina is the best.

Game 6: Ryse: Son of Rome - ~10 hours - ★★★★

Game 7: Mortal Kombat X (iOS) - ★★★

Game 8: Batman: Arkham Knight (PC) - ★★★★★
A fantastic game all around, and probably the most technically impressive I have played to date (July 25th, 2015). Really liked the story, and the writing for one character in particular was top notch. Game of the Year contender for sure. Oh, and I liked the Batmobile!

Game 9: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater HD (PS3) - ★★★★★

Game 10: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD (PS3) - ★★★★★

Game 11: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (PC) - ★★★★★

Game 12: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PC)

Game 13: Metal Gear HD (PS3) - ★★★

Game 14: Resident Evil 5 (PC) - ★★★★★

Game 15: Until Dawn (PS4)

Game 16: Star Wars Battlefront (PS4)

Game 17: Adventure Time: Magic Man's Head Games (Gear VR)

Game 18: Nidhogg (PC)

The Art of Video Games: The Guestbook

I went to The Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. yesterday with my brother. I'll upload more of the video we took when I get back from the two-week road trip I'm leaving for tomorrow, but I wanted to show off one of my favorite things at the exhibit: the guestbook. This guestbook was laid out for visitors to sign just a few days before on August 30th, and it already had quite a few people write in it. There are a lot of nice messages in there, along with people mentioning their favorite games or drawing their most beloved characters. It's a little lengthy, but I recommend checking it out to see what fellow enthusiasts had to say about the exhibit and video games in general. You can see my brother and I put our own messages in at the end.

I didn't see any mentions of Giant Bomb in there (I'll do that when I return to the exhibit later this month), but someone did draw the NeoGAF logo!

Go to the 15:00 mark for my hilarious suggestions for what my brother should write.

Japan: Arrival (Episode 01)

I hadn't slept much. The little time I had left that wasn't used preparing for the trip was spent preparing for our return. The few things I kept, such as my game consoles and computer, were strewn about the bedroom floor; the rest of my stuff was on its way to a storage facility in Oklahoma. See, we were to be moved out of our house in Texas and on the road to Fort Sill the day we got back to the States. I wanted more time to get ready, but it was my fault for spending so much time messing with my new Xbox 360 S and watching Lost. (I had set up my own mini home theater in my room after the movers took our projector and spent more time on Netflix than I should have.) I wasn't completely unprepared, though - after spending eight hours trying to find our hotel in France, I made sure of that. This time, I bought two binders, one for me and one for my brother, and made note of some key bits of info to avoid issues later, such as directions to our hotel and a small glossary. I figured the covers of the binders should represent things we like from Japan, so I put some art of Metal Gear Solid 3 by Yoji Shinkawa on mine and a badass drawing of Toshiro Mifune on my brother's.

Our binders.

The stuff I kept in our binders, including our itinerary info, basic phrases, and the aforementioned directions and glossary.

I also brought the menu I had been using for our local Japanese restaurant, Shogun. I've always had an aversion to seafood and was able to count on my fingers the number of times I ate it throughout my life. Figuring this was something I should get over, I started going to Shogun a few months before the trip to try foods I never had before. I circled the things I liked and placed an asterisk by things I didn't like. Having now been to Japan and various Japanese restaurants across the U.S., I can say Shogun has had the best food I have ever had - we once drove six hours just to eat there! Also, I ate more than what the menu shows; I just stopped circling stuff at a certain point.

When it comes to being authentic, Shogun is the Kid Rock of Japanese restaurants. Mmmm, old Giant Bomb memes...

With an 8:20 AM departure, there wasn't a lot of time to mess around. After gathering up our luggage, unplugging all the electronics in the house and taking a stupid picture, we took a cab to the Killeen-Fort Hood Regional Airport.

After checking our bags and getting our boarding passes, we headed upstairs to wait in the food court. Luckily for me, there was an arcade right across from where I sat.

My boarding passes and the book we took on the trip.

A couple of shots of the arcade. On the left is the Global Arcade Classics machine I played Rastan on. On the right is the only full shot of the arcade I had. I was waiting for the announcer lady who interrupted my video to shut up so I could finish talking.

I didn't spend much time actually playing games. The arcade had Global Arcade Classics, T-Mek, Giga Wing (which wasn't working), Tekken 3, Off Road Challenge, Demolish Fist, Ranger Mission, and San Francisco Rush: The Rock (Alcatraz Edition). I played Rastan on the Global Arcade Classics machine, but it was time to go through security so I rushed through the game until I died, hence my terrible playing in the video. A short while later we were on the tiny plane en route to Houston. We arrived about an hour later and took a bus to the actual airport, which is the first time I've ever had to do that. We took a train cart to Terminal E and waited to depart for Tokyo.

We were a little concerned about our flight. Every international flight I've been on had seats in rows of three. On Travelocity, they had an overhead map of the plane and let you click on the seats you wanted, which I thought was pretty cool. There were rows of just two seats in the back of the plane, and I chose to go with those. My brother had recounted a story in which he sat in the back on an international flight before, and the seats didn't lean back at all, which would be pretty bad for a 12-hour flight. It ended up not being a problem, and we had the benefit of not sitting next to someone else.

I was surprised by the variety of people on the plane. I'm sure I would have heard a lot of interesting stories if I asked them why they were going to Japan (though I know there were a few on their way to China), but I decided to indulge in the massive entertainment selection available, instead. Far more robust than when I went to France, there were 192 movies, various TV shows like The Office and The Simpsons, music, and a video game selection that included basic titles like Asteroids. I tried to watch Up in the Air, a movie I have still yet to see, but my headphones couldn't go loud enough for me to hear all the words. I decided to watch movies I liked and already saw before, such as Get Smart and Ratatouille. I went with the beef and rice meal for dinner, which included bread, salad, and a cookie. It was actually pretty good, like most food I've had on planes, contrary to what comedians of the '90s led me to believe. Maybe something about being 34,001 feet in the air makes food taste better. That, or it's improved over the past fifteen years or so.

They brought around fruit and eggs for breakfast. I skipped the eggs, since any eggs that aren't made by me usually aren't very good (the trick is lots of margarine and salt). They soon brought around the customs declarations forms, and we landed at Narita International Airport shortly afterward.

What the customs declarations forms look like. Riveting!

After taking the escalator down past the "Welcome to Japan" sign, we stood in line for about twenty minutes with the rest of the people entering the country. We scanned both our index fingers and had our pictures taken, got our luggage and handed customs our forms and continued on through the airport. They didn't bother looking in our bags or anything, and it was the first of many instances that revealed just how much better dealing with Japanese airport employees was compared to the TSA.

We went to go purchase our Suica & N'EX package from a lady who didn't speak English. Thanks to those handy Arabic numerals, however, we were able to eventually figure everything out and went toward the train heading for Shinagawa Station. We got on the Narita Express and sat in our reserved seats, 7A and 7B, placing our luggage at the front of the cart in a convenient storage area.

Some of the pamphlets we picked up, along with our Suica & N'EX receipt.

Attached to the ceilings were TVs that displayed trip progress, news stories, advertisements, an overhead map of the next station, updates on other train lines, and the time; they would even cycle the information through various languages.

Super useful!

When we weren't looking at the TVs, we were admiring the view out the window. One of things that surprised both my brother and I, even on the flight in, was just how green everything was. There were seemingly miles of perfectly cut grass without a dead patch of brown in sight, not to mention all the lush trees. Passing by dozens of homes with clothes hanging out to dry only reinforced the quaintness of it all. Another unusual sight, though I'm sure it's no different in America (not that I would know since public transportation here is terrible), was seeing everyone playing with their phones at the various stations we stopped at. You would have been hard-pressed to find someone not staring at a tiny screen of some sort as they waited for their ride.

Look at all that green! Also, the first McDonald's we saw.

There were a couple of people reading manga on the train, one of which was a Weekly Shonen Jump. At one of the stops, a white guy with an N7 Mass Effect shirt got on. As we arrived at Shinagawa Station (the entire trip was about 70 minutes) I was sure to say "Awesome shirt." He looked up from his DS (I think he was playing a Pokémon game) and said, "I appreciate it." in an accent that wasn't American, and I gave a thumbs up and simply said "Mass Effect", which I think should totally be a thing.

Shinagawa Station is a large place with various shops for whatever one might need, including a Super Market (That's the name of the store!) that's always crowded. Outside of Shinagawa Station is a large crosswalk that takes you to the Shinagawa Prince complex, which is composed of a few different towers. We stayed in the North Tower, which was a little tricky to find at first as the complex is so big. During my stay, I saw several different stores (including a drug store), a movie theater, a bowling alley, a bunch of restaurants, and that wasn't even close to everything the complex contained. I could have seen Gary Whitta's The Book of Eli with Japanese subtitles!

I accidentally read about the revelation at the end on NeoGAF before seeing the movie. :(

After checking in, we took an elevator to the sixth floor. There was a vending machine as soon as we exited that contained various drinks, such as orange juice, tea, and ... beer. Asahi, specifically. My brother was thrilled.

Our room was right by the elevator, and my brother practically passed out after we got settled. I hadn't slept properly for about 39 hours at this point, but I wanted to get some writing done for the trip. I decided to go to sleep as to not disturb my brother and later awoke a bit earlier than him at 4 AM. I knew trying to rest at this point would be a pointless endeavor. I was too excited, because today was the day we were going to Akihabara.

Making the Video
List of Episodes
Introduction to the Series
SmugMug Version

Pets Named After Game Characters: Part III

EVA

"It's only when I'm on the bike that I'm free to be the real me. I only get off my bike when I fall in love or fall dead..."

EVA was born under my brother's car. He went outside one day to discover our local cat, "Kitty", underneath his car with a fresh litter of kittens. I woke up to the sounds of mewing, only to discover a cardboard box full of adorable kitties in our laundry room. In another case of mistaken gender (much like Nozomi), EVA turned out to actually be male. S/he was easy to name at the time, however, as every Big Boss needs his EVA.

Sadly, the picture at the very top is the only one I have of EVA the kitty, so let's move on to trivia!

Trivia:

Likes to sleep right on top of you, no matter how hot it may be
Will jump onto your leg using all claws, ensuring attention is given
Enjoys trying to eat your people food, potentially ruining your meal
Very playful and energetic
A great brother. Likes to sleep with his siblings, keeping them warm and comfortable

Part II
Part I

Pets Named After Game Characters: Part I

I have a Notepad document which contains a list of posts to eventually write; "Pets Named After Game Characters" is one of them. I know I'm not the only one out there who has named a pet after a video game character, either. So, what made me decide to write about this topic today? Well, it's because of a little guinea pig that showed up at my front door a few days ago, but we'll get to him in Part IV of "Pets Named After Game Characters".

Let's do this alphabetically, which just so happens to be chronologically as well!:

Big Boss

Big Boss was an easy cat to name due to his time of arrival and the color of his eyes. Belonging to my mom's former boss's stepdaughter (that was tough to write!) who was originally going to abandon him, my mom's boss took him in only to discover that he didn't get along with their other cat. So, she asked my mom if she wanted to take him in. Already having four cats in the house, taking care of Big Boss wasn't an issue, and we soon added a fifth kitty to our loving home. This all took place shortly after E3 2003, where Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater made its 10-minute debut.

A lot of speculation was abound, as is usual with a new Metal Gear reveal, and some of the crazier (and obviously wrong even then) theories were suggesting that Hideo Kojima was introducing time travel to the series and that you would continue to play as Solid Snake. People like myself knew better. We knew that the only real explanation for the game taking place in the 1960's and having a character look nearly identical to Solid Snake is that the game was going to tell the story of Big Boss himself. Being a massive Metal Gear fan, and seeing the cat's eyes matching the exact color of the man himself, I knew what to call him instantly.

Trivia:

Has the softest fur out of any kitty I've ever petted (which is a lot!).
Is a super-good cuddler! You'd be hard-pressed to have a more relaxing, furry sleep.
Is very good at telling you what he wants by meowing loudly until you follow him.
Enjoys viewing the outdoors.

I always enjoy people's reactions to his name at animal clinics and such. My mom always likes to point out that I'm the one who named him. He still has one of the coolest names for a cat ever.

I should really see if they make eye patches for cats...

Just kidding. I don't think he would like that very much.