Watch this.  The Guild – Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? Season 3 starts next week on August 25th. You can catch up  on Seasons 1 and 2 in less than two hours. Do it, you won’t regret it.

But if you’re too lazy….

• Angela Dark by Chii, colors by me.
• White Mage Yoruichii , colors by me.
• The Bard, sketch and colors by me.
• Blue Mage Yoruichii, colors by me.
• Black Mage Shyen, colors by me.

I’m also working on a project for Limit Break Radio, but that’s under embargo, so to say Time’s ticking though!

Special art shoutouts:

-Alvin Lee (AlvinLeeArt.com): Alvin, thanks for the inspiration and revitalizing my artsy spirit. You’re amazing and I’ll do my best on the contest!

-Lilly (website): Glad to see you’re updating again. You’re awesome

-Mayshing (website): Thank you for the oppertunity to work for your animation project!

-Chihiro: One of the people to keep me sane and creative at work. Thanks for your badgering XD (and giving me something to do, too :p!)

Also. Twitter accounts: Personal, He Says She Says Production Twitter, FFXI Twitter

In light of charity marathons, Speedgamers are currently going through their Final Fantasy Week. They’ve so far raised an impressive $33,000+ ! I just stopped by and noticed they were streaming Final Fantasy IX. That was a fun one!

Good luck on your marathon, guys!

http://www.thespeedgamers.com/

It’s almost been a year already? Time to prep for this! Nikki and I are rallying up people to join us in this 24-hour marathon charity event. Last year, we worked on our sub-jobs in FFXI, we’re still looking at what we want to do this year, depending on how many people are going to hang out with us.

More information at Limit Break Radio!

One of the games in my past as a child was Street Fighter II. I recall the days where I tried to to beat Balrog for the first time, only to run into the much more annoying Vega. Followed up by Sagat, finally and then to fail at M.Bison once more. The days when I would occasionally play against my father, who would always pick Dhalsim or E.Honda.

After Super Street Fighter II Turbo, I never really payed any of the rest. I was always interested in the background story, the characters and art, but until Udon Comics banded to create the Street Fighter comic series, my love for this title was re-ignited. But mostly from an artistic point of view. I love the Udon crew and the work they’ve done for the Capcom series!

Street Fighter 4 was then announced. I wasn’t too sure what to think of it, and when I saw screenshots of the gameplay, I was especially turned off by Chun Li’s massive pelvic muscle. Instead, I had a bigger interest in the HD Remix of Super II Turbo.

Too bad the latter was delayed like nuts for europe.

Steven then came with Street Fighter 4. We ended up playing a whole evening until our thumbs bled. I was especially interested in playing with C.Viper, but she was pretty hard to learn. He then gave it to me for my birthday! In time, I’ve grown accustomed to the 3d style of it all and gameplay. Viper is still very hard to pull off, but at least I’m giving Steven a hard time now.

• Sound: Catchy! The voice acting for most characters is solid. I had no idea Kyle Hebert was Ryu! The soundtrack is pretty good as well, and while Steven and I made fun of EXILE at first, the intro is still a catchy tune.
• Graphics: Took me a while to get used to, but now I really can’t imagine anything else for SF4, no matter how much I like the HD version of Super II Turbo.
• Gameplay: I had never played with the EX and Revenge Bar before (Something introduced in the Alpha series, I believe), so it was pretty new to me, aside from the basic moves I could pull off with almost every character. Other than that, it’s still the same ol’ Street Fighter I love.
• Story: Having played through everyone’s story, I can say that it’s not really impressive at all. But the animated cutscenes are fun, and the Bonus Movie that came with the Limited Edition are nice! I love animated Viper <3

All in all, I play it casually, and really don’t care about losing. But I just wish there weren’t so many Ken, Ryu and Akuma wannabes. Most of the time, they ALWAYS spam Shoryuken and Akuma’s Ultra. Cheap bastards.

C.Viper is hot, Chun-Li and Cammy are sexy as always.

Especially in the alternate outfits. Oh god.

Let’s start with the MMO update, because I have something really exciting to share!

FFXI – On the “He Says, She Says” website, I made the announcement of the Square Enix Podcast Tour. And I get to give away prizes in my show! HS/SS has been going strong for 11 episodes now and slowly generating some buzz. I’m just really happy that it’s gotten to the point where it was included in SE’s community team. I’ve levelled Warrior up to 34, Paladin to 26, Thief to 27, Black Mage to 34, and the recent April update has been *amazing* for White Mage. I am very, very, VERY happy with this update. Hyozan has been bustling with activity as well. It makes me a very proud linkshell leader~

More on Pangya, Gunbound and World of Warcraft after the jump.

Gunbound & Pangya – By starting a thread about other MMOs on the Hyozan forums, I started to feel nostalgic. Especially since Nikki had mentioned she’d been playing both with people in Iparty recently. Now, the problem I have with these two now, is that I can’t play with her for stupid reasons. You see, while Pangya moved to a different company and has some Account Recovery thing going on, I can’t play with my old account until the next maintenance. I refuse to play with a low-level Scout with default gear. As for Gunbound, Nikki says she’s able to use her old account on Gunbound Revolution (since apparently, Gunbound World Champion is no longer updated or something). Ijji.com took over Gunbound or something? Regardless, I have to start over since I can’t access my space-marine-helmet, chinese-lantern-carrying guy.

Enter World of Warcraft. I’m trying this from a reviewer point of view, and all my bitching about what I’ve seen what it does to people AND prejudices towards its commercialism, I think it’s only fair to tackle it properly. I’m an open-minded person. And I enjoyed the Warcraft lore a lot from the preceding three titles. I’ve given it a shot last year, with a Human Paladin, but got tired of it really fast because I didn’t bother with quests; just grinding. Which was mistake #1. Since XP is gained through quests, it would’ve gone faster that way! Not to mention, I had to deal with a huge download AND a patch afterwards. Nowadays, Blizzard offers the trial via stream. Which means that you only need to download a 6mb client and play it via their servers. I’m down with that. No prob.

I was joking on Ventrilo about how I was going to create a female Human Warrior named Sooraya, just to tease Nikki. But I went for the non-couch-resulting option of doing what I do when trying out MMO(RPG’s): Create a character that uses ranged attacks and call her Najelith.

….Which actually sends me to the couch too. Damnit.

Anyway, 11 levels on Najelith the human Rogue, I think I can give somewhat of an impression.

• Challenge – Compared to FFXI, this game is easy. I can see that it’s more accessible for casual players (like your mom). I joined an RP server, where to my surprise, only 50% of the people I’ve encountered were actually roleplaying. I suppose joining an RP guild is the thing to do for more intense roleplaying, but I don’t think you can do that on a trial account. I’ve not done raids or tackled the higher levelled quests (which is really more of the same. Fetching stuff.), so I can’t really judge that.
• Levelling up – At some point, grinding gets tedious (especially since I’m playing this solo). But at least I’m busy the whole time, since as a Rogue, you’re more dependant on your additional skills to pack extra damage with your daggers (much like Thief, in FFXI). I think once I get another talent point, I’ll put it in Dual Wield.
• Enemies – Aggro does not work the same way as in FFXI. It’s stupid. How am I going to Backstab monsters if they aggro by *range*?
• Graphics – WoW is a different kind of pretty. The zones are very intricate and the effects are high-end. The characters themselves, not so much. While the selection of armor is very varied, they look more like cheap painted low-res textures on the bodies. Unless it’s spiky, they armor pieces don’t really seem to have any body to them. I like the visible capes, though. Entering Stormwind for the first time really felt like entering a big stronghold/castle/city. The soundtrack that played as you entered was really effective. Kind of like those well-placed movie soundtracks.
• Battle - The (battle) animations are really stiff. But it’s the same as it was in the RTS variant of Warcraft. When I logged into FFXI after a WoW session, it felt that Tamtu was really executing the actions with effort, compared to Najelith’s *stab.stab.stab.stab.stab.*
• Death – I’m still unsure on how I feel about dying in WoW. In FFXI, you incur a EXP penalty that covers 10% of your required total experience points to the next level. Here, you don’t lose EXP, but your armor incurs a 25% durability penalty. An additional 10% penalty happens when you choose to resurrect via the spirit right away. Chances are, you’ve died in a group of mobs, making it pretty useless to run to your corpse as a spirit and resurrect yourself. I mean…You don’t lose XP. But I’ve found myself having to run to my corpse 5 times in a row because of stupid aggro. Again, not really sure how I feel about dying in this game.
• Likes? – Something I did enjoy in WoW are the smaller areas to do things on the way from one big stronghold area to the next. It makes questing more fun, since you can do little quests for rewards and exp from and to another village/farm. Granted, it also means a lot of footwork to be done, but it also makes questing more elaborate. FFXI quests are really pretty limited to the few cities/villages available, making travelling for these quests in comparison more tedious than WoW.

Overall, the game reminded me of Fable (one I need to play again and finish!). The gameplay, the quests, the vibrant colors of the world, the overall feel to it, that’s what brought me to that reference. World of Warcraft was entertaining, but not worth it for me to pay a monthly fee. After I’ve milked out this trial for what it’s worth, I think I’ll go and pick up Fable again for my PC questing needs.

Also. I like my battles to have music. Battle themes for the win~

Final conclusion to follow when the trial ends!

And I don’t mean the pants kind. Because I don’t wear shorts. I’m too self conscious about the ridiculous hairline on my legs to wear them. But that’s not what this blog is about! A lot has been happening and I’ll do it in a series of short burst updates. Below, I’ll have recaps of life, the games that have been keeping me busy and what’s ahead~!

LIFE

• Remember around this time, last year? I had this rant about my co-workers during the skiing trip in Austria. We went again last month, which was fun. But there’s more ranting to be done in regards to the overall social level of this group, which I really don’t want to think about at all.
• On a much more happier note, June 13th is the day that Nikki and I will be having our engagement ceremony in the Netherlands (which is on the same scale as a wedding, I swear). I’m also going to have my medical exam tomorrow for my visa interview.

GAMES

• Crisis Core: FF7 - I beat Crisis Core. It was beautiful. A total fanservice, yes. But it was a good stepping stone for the upcoming FF13 PSP title! The cutscene at the end with the rain and Aerith, it was very bittersweet. And while her personality was nothing like in the original FF7, it was very refreshing to see how characters came to be the way they were. I really wish there was a theatre mode of some sorts, though. The story+cutscene nerd in me demands it!! Overall, I loved the game. I just hated fighting Sephiroth. He is a jackass.
• God of War: Chains of Olympus - Finished this one after beating CC. Enjoyed it a lot! They did a really good job porting the gameplay to the portable system. Story was a bit “eh”, but really. Does it really matter when it all comes down to Kratos being a very, very angry individual? God of War III, my PS3  and I are waiting for you!
• Prince of Persia - Did I ever say how pretty this game was? It’s nowhere near challenging as my attempts at the PS2 trilogy (Never beat them. Shame on me.), but in my personal opinion, Ubisoft did well to make it not only accessible to the more casual crowd, but give it a refreshing new art direction too. Haven’t beaten it yet, but I’ll get there eventually!
• Need for Speed: Undercover - Excitement for this was shortlived. I liked the overall color scheme and the bad, over-the-top live-action cutscenes, since it was Most Wanted + 1. But once I stopped playing it, I didn’t find myself going back to it. It probably has something to do with the other games I needed to play/beat. I’ll finish this game, though.
• Final Fantasy 1 – Got back into this after beating God of War. I upgraded my party to Knight, Ninja, White Wizard and Black Wizard. Still only two crystals unlocked, but I’ll get to the end at some point! I usually play a little bit before going to bed (Which is the same way I’d been playing GoW and Crisis Core). Nothing else to report; it’s old-school Final Fantasy. ‘Nuff said.
• Street Fighter 4 - Warrants an indestructable update on its own!
• Resident Evil 5 – Update to follow as well!
• An MMO update will follow shortly, covering Pangya, Gunbound, FFXI and World of Warcraft.

I really don’t know how to explain the last one there. I…really don’t.

I’m getting married. Did you know that? As it is, I’m moving to the USA by the end of this summer

Take it easy people. I’m gonna slowly turn this into a gaming and doodle blog. Been getting into Wordpress theming a bit, so who knows… I might be able to conjur up something nice.

This is kind of important, so if you have some time to spare, please read

Nikki is participating in Extra Life as part of Team Limit Break Radio, the FFXI Podcast Network we’re hosts at. Extra Life is a 24-hour gaming marathon set up by the Sarcastic Gamer community. It is a 24 hour game playing event, taking place on October 18th [This coming Saturday] in order to raise money, as well as awareness, for pediatric cancer. It’s similar to a walk-a-thon in that you find sponsors to donate money for each mile that you participate; however, in this instance, you’re donating money for hours of game play — Online or offline. Sponsorships can be as little as one dollar per hour and all money goes toward the Texas Children’s Hospital, and is completely tax deductible in the US.

This is her page: http://waystogive.texaschildrens.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=210&srcid=211&frsid=1149

She’s aiming for 5 sponsors. Please take this in consideration and sponsor her; I will be accompanying her in 24-hours of Final Fantasy XI (we may actually get our levels up, WOO!!) to make sure she doesn’t die too much (I kid. She’s a very capable Warrior ). You can go for a per/hour donation or just a set amount. Her gamer name is “Nikki Wright”.

In addition: For every dollar you raise this weekend (between now and Monday morning at 5am), Electronic Arts (www.ea.com) will match your donation amount in the form of free games for the kids at Texas Children’s Cancer Center… up to $2000 dollars!

My friend Nate Bender aka Aniero from the Limit Break Radio FFXI podcast, has even gone as far as to get the entire town of Mt. Pleasant to step up for the cause!

Thanks for your time, I hope you can help out, whether by helping out those kids through Nikki, or by becoming a participant yourself.

More information about Extra Life: http://extralife.sarcasticgamer.com/

Screw you, Mario Party.