Huzzah, Relaxation

Today is the day that I've been looking forward to since....well, Tuesday.  Rather, tonight is because tonight is the first time in two weeks where I was and am able to feel the freedom of nothingness.  No obligations to go to bed at a certain time, to schedule this or that, to wake up at a specific time.  No need to keep this and that in mind for tomorrow for work since I don't -have- work tomorrow.  I got to lay down after work today and just let all that seep out and it felt good.  It felt so good that it basically rocked me to sleep as, two hours later, I awoke in a better mood than I even anticipated being in.  It's honestly something that I didn't even know I missed last weekend when I was sick and it's all the sweeter for having been so long, even if I'm not much of a fan of it taking this long to actually have this feeling.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the weekend per se, but I know that I'm going to be doing a lot of leaving the house (unfortunately), so it's looking like my Vita is getting time regardless.  To be fair, I probably would be playing around with it anyway for reasons that I will get into in a moment, but it sort of takes the questioning out of the equation which spoils it just a tad.  I like to at least pretend I have plans to play my poor, neglected PS3 again so I can jump back into Deus Ex:  Human Revolution, REVENGEANCE, Tomb Raider and/or Nier, or play one of the games that I haven't even started that I've been saying for about two months that I need to start.  But there's always next weekend for that, I suppose, and next weekend, well, I can always say there's the following.  Procrastination is magical like that.

It does have at least a little bit of merit this time around, however, as I do have an over-arching meta-goal in Disgaea 3 Vita that I am going to accomplish.  I have stated several times that Dinah is going to be my Avatar of Extreme and Unyielding Murder JUSTICE and for a little bit, I thought I had seated her on that very position.  Post-game, however, has a bit of arguing on that point to do, and it is convincing to be sure, coming in the form of the ever-difficult Tyrant Overlord Baal.  Not even the super-secret final form, but just the regular reskinned mushroom enemy form.  But as you can see above, my training of Dinah has barely even begun, so it's not especially surprising that I haven't taken him down quite yet.

Oh, I'm sorry, you think I'm kidding?  You look at the above image and see that Dinah is level 9999 and go "But Mogs, just where can you go from here"?  You, my friend, must not know the depths of insanity that Disgaea travels to, and you must not have been paying attention to my previous posts on the subject.  Getting Dinah to level 9999 the first time is a mere accomplishment and notice that I said "The first time" - after I clear out the main story once more, I'm going to reincarnate her back to 1 so I can do the whole thing over again.  And this time, I'll be able to add even more insanity to the proceedings - I'll be visiting Dinah's Class World to pump her up so that her gains over this span of 9998 levels will be that much more inflated....and then I'll reincarnate her again and do it over again.  And again and again.  And again.

I have a -lot- of ground to cover, you see, as Mushroom Baal, at base, has 1.7 million ATK, which you can see easily trumps Dinah's measily 242K ATK, with his Defense roughly in the same lines.  With successive training, reincarnating and Class World visiting, however, Dinah's stats will only get better and better with every iteration of her form, and that's even before I finally step properly into the insanity of the Item World, which is not something I'm relishing even in the slightest.  Yet the benefits will be great for what I'm promised is minimal, but tedious, endeavoring.  Basically when I have conquered Mushroom Baal, I will call my relationship with Disgaea 3 severed, but not a moment before.  Because Baal has issued me a challenge, you see.

And Dinah is going to answer that shit.

seriously, she is going to wipe the fucking floor with Baal when I'm done.  Maybe

Finally, That's Over With

Can you spot Ryu?

I find it odd that I have a sense of relief, at least greater relief than normal, now that I am more or less completely done with Game of the Year stuff.  Yeah, I'll probably still do a "Games That Weren't My Games" post since there are plenty of worthy titles that could bear that, but I don't have to do that right away by any means.  What makes it odd, I should say is that, rather than just being glad that I had so much to talk about this time around, I find that I'm just happy that I don't have to do the GotY posts any longer.  At least, not until next year, and I can honestly wait for that with no real issues.  For the last couple of days, I dreamed to be at this point where I didn't have to put down three games on a post and go on and on about why I loved them this much which was, by some measure, less and more than the games above and under it in some form.

Really, I think the thing that started to bug me is that I started feeling like it was coming off as a little self-centered.  I mean, I know it wasn't, or at least no more than any other post on this, an opinion blog about my personal feelings on things, but it was just a different feel.  I'm being silly, I realize, and perhaps I was just manifesting feelings of creative closure by projecting something else.  Since I knew every night for six days in a row exactly what I was going to write about which, in a way, was exactly like what I wrote the previous night and would be what I wrote the next night, it left little to the imagination.  It should've been perfect in that respect - I didn't have to worry about finding some news piece or picking out something that was significant enough during the day to speak on.  Yet, writing the same thing for, basically, a week straight got a little old fast I admit.

There's also a good chance that I've just written too much in the previous week and change.  Beyond my posts here, I spent the bulk of a night writing the rough draft of the prologue of the short story I've mentioned that I'm working on (nine pages typed much like these posts, but in OpenOffice Writer) and I've had a few other things that required a lot of writing here and there.  My nights have been more writing than not which is different and obviously a little taxing on me.  Not that I mind it in so many ways, of course, but strain is strain no matter what and it gets to be a little much.  Which is a sentiment that is defeated entirely by my spending three paragraphs talking about it.

My goal was to relax a bit tonight.  Of course, my definition of 'relax' seems a bit off, as it included writing this, doing another rather intensive writing thing elsewhere and playing the newly-downloaded Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus on my Vita.  It was provided free to Playstation Plus members and I've been itching to play it again, having not touched it since its initial incarnation on the Original XBox where I eventually conquered it with much struggling.  The game took me ten hours to download - ten, t-e-n, one-zero, TEN - and that was without the rather strange download pause-limbo that my games generally encounter during the overnight download when it's going to take a while.  Ten straight hours of downloading for 2.3 gigs of game and ten minutes into playing it, I had already considered deleting it.  Of course, I was playing the Ninja Challenges like a dummy and not the base game, which was a dumb thing to do.

Fifteen minutes into the story, the game re-introduced me to a move that I forgot completely about and that would have made my attempts at the challenges much much easier.  Which reinforces why it was a very dumb idea to go after them first.  So, in other words, playing the story is the right move and I've been enjoying it a lot even though I'm just in the second chapter.  I'm honestly surprised at how damn smoothly it plays, but by that same token, it -is- a rather old game.  When Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus 2 drops, if it's just as smooth, then that'll be something to truly admire and wow at, and for some reason, I actually have faith in Tecmo-KOEI's ability to do just that.  As for when I'll pick it up, well....that remains to be seen.  We'll see just how much I like this first one after playing it some more and getting in to the 'hard' parts.

And Now, I Rest

Game of the Year posts were hard this year for some reason.  I mean, I know it was a rough (read: great) year in general for games which made it naturally hard to pick out just which was your more favorite out of this this and that, but damn.  Making me pick between a Yakuza game and an inFamous game?  Over an Uncharted game?  What the hell, 2011?  So now that it's officially done and over with, I'm just sitting back and taking a breather, getting ready for the storm that'll come tomorrow.  Not...literal storm, hopefully, just a metaphorical one that may or may not be really really bad.  Unfortunately this is another one of those "I'm warning you about something I'm not telling you about" things but in the end, does it really matter?  It's just a personal matter that likely won't affect things here too bad, so it might not be worth bringing it up.

I've taken this down-time to finally indulge in the inFamous 2 soundtrack that I've long neglected as I literally have a download queue in my Playstation Store list for one of the soundtracks, but never downloaded.  Since that would require downloading it, getting it onto my computer, getting it then onto my iPod which has a battery life of approximately shit and I just don't want to be assed with it.  Still, I've wanted to listen to it and, as usual, youtube is more than willing to let me do that.  The above is one of the nicer pieces I've heard so far, but I haven't heard the full run of the soundtracks just yet, so I'm not able to call it one of my, gasp, favorites from the game or really offer much more judgment than "It sounds pretty nice", so that'll have to do for now.  I'm sure you can draw your own opinions from it anyway.

I kinda feel bad that I just don't have more in me tonight, but I really don't.  It's a bit rough churning out posts one after another like I did the last few nights, and to top that off, I haven't been feeling too great lately.  Nothing that won't pass in time, but still, shit kinda stays with you regardless if just to try and slow you down a bit.  Hopefully after tonight's breather of just sitting back with some good music, I'll be right back to snuff.  And hopefully there'll be something friggin' news-worthy finally, as I've found it fairly rough to think of something to write about were I not doing the GotY posts.  So it's a bit thankful that I had those at least.  Though maybe I can do something about Harvest Moon DS since it's been taking up quite a bit of my time lately.  Hrmm.....we'll see I guess!  Until then, enjoy the music, seek out the rest of it to give a listen to if you haven't already, and keep on keepin' on.