Grab Bag of Gaming Thoughts

Today has just been one of those days.  I sort of floated between four different games today without playing too much of any of them in any real sense, and I'm not exactly sure why.  It's possible that it's a focus issue as that has been something of a problem lately, but it seems more than that.  I may hilariously suggest that I'm restless, having had really nothing to do today which should have been relaxing, yet I fear it had the opposite effect if this is any indication.  Still, I could also blame it on the slight remnants of the foul mood I experienced the other night since it has not completely gone away yet.  Just, y'know...mostly.  Thankfully.  Still, I'm not quite sure -what- it is, other than annoying.

As you can tell above, I played a little more Disgaea 3 on my Vita, perhaps the most time I spent with any game today, and got Dinah up to Level 9999 for the second time in her overall lifespan.  Each and every single one of her stats saw an appreciable upgrade from the last time she was 9999, due not only to the stacking effect of the whole thing, but that I jumped into her Class World the six times that were available to me and raised her base aptitudes through that.  The nice thing of that, of course, is that those Aptitude points are permanent, so the next Level 9999 will see another appreciable boost from not only this round, but the round from the next six times that I'll be able to jump into her Class World after this upcoming reincarnation.  But there is a bit of work to do yet before reincarnating her again.  Perhaps a little too much.

Disgaea 3, or at least the Vita version of it, has an option that allows a character to absorb another one once per incarnation cycle.  (So, between reincarnations, basically).  The limitation is basically that the character absorbed cannot be higher than the Sum Level of the character doing the absorbing.  So no making a level 9999 character and having a Level 1 absorb it.  Nor reincarnating a level 9999 to 1 to have a Level 1 absorb it (since the Sum Level is what matters - that reincarnated Level 1 is not, in fact, Level 1).  Beyond providing a stat boost, whatever active skills and Evilties equipped by the character stand a chance of being transferred to the character that is doing the absorbing.  So if you have a character that doesn't have a Fist forte, but you really want them to be able to use Big Bang, then just have them absorb a Martial Artist that has the skill equipped.  Bing-bang-boom.  Of course, it sounds a little better than it is.

Really, the only reason to have a character absorb another is for the skills and evilties.  The stats that are gained are a mere 3% (HP/SP excluded) which is both a weird-ass number and totally not worth the effort whatsoever.  Take Dinah, for example.  If I were going to have someone absorb her (which I would never do), the biggest boost they would receive would be 12,487 to ATK, and really, not even that because that's her adjusted stat with equipment.  So let's be lazy and just round it down to 400K because I'm not going to bother removing her equipment just for this kind of thing.  12,000 to a stat might seem like a lot but it's...well, obviously not, considering that came from a stat that was 400,000.  From a character whose Sum level is in five digits.  A character with an unholy amount of time invested into her.  When you consider that one of the post-game bosses has 1.7 Million in a single stat, it's absolutely chump change, and should only be bothered with for the little extra that it will boost your stats for the -next- incarnation.

However, as stated, the Skills and Evilties are the -real- prizes here and when we're talking in terms of this, then the ultimate goal is clear.  You want a Majin.  You want a Majin who makes it to the highest level of the Majin Class and gets high-enough level that it can learn its "Violence" Evilty and you're going to want to equip that and (possibly grind it up to 9999 before you) have your good character absorb it.  Not only do Majin's have the best base stats overall (technically; their aptitudes suck out loud and I imagine they get outclassed in specific stats by other classes, such as Defense by Heavy Knights), but that Evilty in particular is something that you want.  You want it bad.  "Violence", when equipped, cuts down all earned XP by that character by 50%, but raises -all- stats by 50%.  So, say you have your character grinded up to level 9999 already - you don't need XP, so slap that on and BAM, 50% stat boost right fucking there on top of the bump you'll have gotten from the Majin's stats.  Which, again will only be a slight bump, but it'll be amplified by Violence.

The other Majin Evilties are nothing to scoff at either.  One Man Army buffs the character's stats by 100% if it's the only unit that is available on the map and cannot be reinforced.  (So either nine other characters have been dispatched and killed, or the Base Panel has been disabled)  Revival states that, if the character's HP is under 25% at the end of a turn, it'll be raised back to full before the next turn.  And finally, Vortex sets all Aptitudes to 10%, but gives another 100% Stat Boost, which I'm not quite sure how that evens out on the positive side, but apparently it does.  The issue with Majins, beyond their abysmal Aptitudes (first-tier class has straight 65%s and the Top-Tier only has 85%s, minus Class World buffs) is that they have no Weapon Fortes so they can't learn any weapon-specific skills normally, they have shitty movement range, and I swear that they only earn 50% of XP normally.  Perhaps it's because my Majin has to kill everything single-handed that it feels like it's taking forever, but I'm almost certain that he's not gaining levels at the same gait as everything else.

Still, this can be remedied by the absorbtion method as well, really.  Make a character that can learn the attacks you want (basically a female Martial Artist.  Precision means you'll always be able to heal unless you don't keep up on it (Precision is a unique skill and can't be transferred, I am a dumb) and Big Bang is the attack you need) and get those things that you want.  Then have the Majin absorb her and slap a fist weapon on him.  Now he can grow a little easier.  Sure, it seems a little silly or perhaps a little meta to have a character that you're raising purely to get absorbed to, in turn, absorb another character, but it's Disgaea.  That is literally the name of the game here.  Well, not literally, because the name of the game is Disgaea, but you know what I mean.

The other game that I did spend a not-so-small amount of time with today was Thomas Was Alone, a game that I not only finally completed, but mopped up the last few trophies it had to offer for the full 100% completion.  Unlike Guacamelee! and Zombie Tycoon 2, Thomas Was Alone does not offer a Platinum trophy which makes sense given the comparatively small amount of game there is to offer, but the point is, if it had one, I would have it right now.  Which is really all that matters, of course.  In terms of trophies, that is, since the point that really matters, I suppose, is that I actually cleared the game, given I wasn't too sure of my chances of toughing out the last section of the game.

Thomas Was Alone is....an experience, I'll say that much.  Mostly because I'm not sure what else to say about it.  The story seems easy enough to follow and I do believe I know where it went for the most part, but there's really no...feedback or anything - you either know it or you don't and if you're like me, and you -think- you know, then you are probably overlooking something.  That's not to say it in a negative fashion, really, though I suppose something like that cannot be wholly positive either.  If anything, I imagine the last chapter is where confusion is going to set in, since the game changes in fundamental, tonal ways with as much build as you can offer in just a short little narration in the levels leading up to it and the levels involved as well.  Which is...not a lot, clearly.

Despite clearing the game, there is actually something left to it that provides a strong case for a full-game replay, which is surprising to me, but at the same time, it's not.  On top of the narration each level receives, there is also Commentary to each level.  As in, developer commentary, I would assume.  I turned the slider up for it on one level, but didn't have my headphones in, so I didn't hear much and it is unfortunately not subtitled, but it was still enough to make me interested.  If nothing else, it made me consider another playthrough with the commentary on just so I could get a little insight into the game and how it was considered and created, and if only because what other game has done this recently?  Seriously, commentary is -brilliant- as the film industry figured out oh so many years ago.  More things should do this.  I'm honestly confused as to why this isn't the norm already.

Regardless of anything, I would have to say that Thomas Was Alone is a game that I appreciate more than I enjoy.  I like the style of it, I like the way it's structured for most of it, I like the characters of it.  There's so much about the game that I like that -isn't- actually playing it, because actually playing it is....secondary.  Or at least it feels that way eventually after the story has become prevalent and enjoyable, because you're less playing to play, and more playing to get to the next level, to be fed the next bit of narration and know what's happening now.  You want to see just how Chris and Laura are getting on.  How Sarah is up to silly antics again.  How Claire still dreams of being a super hero while John seemingly already fancies himself. one.  You want to see what Paul and Grey are doing in the last chapter.  You want to actually have all of this without the need of going through the motions of jumping here and there to get to the next white outline.  So even though the game missed in that aspect, it knocked it out of the park in the others for sure.  We'll just have to see if I do make that second playthrough, really.

wow, I kind of typed a lot for a lazy day today

Yessssssss, Yessssssssssssss

I'm just doing a quick post tonight since I -was- going to do Dragon Fantasy impressions tonight, but the store isn't going to update and, to pass the time, I've been playing Disgaea 3.  Again.  Even though it is bad for my free time, productivity and sanity.

After an inhumanly terrible slog through Hall of Ordeals 3 (seriously, the map took me 76 turns of absolute fucking tedium involving throwing blocks up a tower and then throwing people so that I could, in turn, have them throw more blocks.  It was immeasurably stupid.), I unlocked Hall of Ordeals 4.  Now, the Hall of Ordeals levels have, at least for Disgaea 2 and, apparently 3, been prime grinding spots and Disgaea 3 puts a damn exclamation point on that shit.  You probably have no idea so allow me to elucidate the facts here as only someone who is obsessed with numbers can.

So, as you can sort of tell from the above screenshot, the map has nine enemies arranged in a 3x3 grid.  This grid just so happens to be on a 3x3 grid of Geotiles that just so happen to give +100% EXP.  And you'll notice that Dinah just so happens to be badass enough to clear that shit in a single attack.  (Specifically a Level 4 Big Bang attack)  The Base level of the enemies here is 400, so this is definitely advanced training grounds but once you get to the stage where you can make use of it....oh man.  It is the best spot you could ask for.

Dinah is currently Level 2400 and she was assuredly around 200 and change levels lower than that when I took the above screenshot.  Because not only does this map give fantastic XP, but it gives it fast.  As I am wont to do, I had it timed from the time I start the map to the time I start it again and, because I have animations turned off, it took ~20 seconds.  Given that I have about 4 or 5 Stronger Enemy Bills passed to raise the level from 400 to 810 currently (and I have 20 ranks of enemy levels to work with), this is something that you can grow -with- your character and it's just....it's amazing.  Three entire clears in a single minute.  I'm averaging around 20 levels a go (which means I need to up the enemy ranks), but even if that were -all- you could hope for, that's 60 levels a minute which means 3600 levels an hour.  Obviously the numbers dip the higher your character gets which means you have to compensate by making them stronger which causes a peak and then another slow descent, but I'm sure you see what this is like.

It's like I'm experiencing another of the true insanities of Disgaea as a series for the first time.

I love it.

seriously this is amazing, she is level 2500 already from the few breaks that I took while writing this

Gaming by the Numbers - Plants Vs. Zombies Vita

This seems like a strange game to do a gaming by the numbers post about and, indeed, if it weren't for an oddity that I encountered earlier today, I probably wouldn't have written this at all.  Certainly, there are other things I could be writing about tonight which is pretty typical - I figure out something early on and then blam, big news, but I can cover that tomorrow.  This has been in my brain all day and I'm going to get it out here because, well, I want to.  And it gave me an excuse to do a little number running again because I just like doing that every now and then because I am weird.  A weird person.  Who is weird.  Clearly.

Let's get this trick out of the way first and allow me to preface this with a statement which I will then leverage against numbers and show you why, in the long run, running this is not only easy, but the sane move.  This -is- an exploit since, presumably, this is a bug that has stayed in the game for this long for reasons we just don't know about.  If you'll take a look at my picture above, you will see that Crazy Dave is giving me Tree Food for the Tree of Wisdom to 'start me out' even though my tree is 175 Feet Tall.  This was done mostly for curiosity's sake as I only really needed to get the tree to a still-staggering 100 Feet Tall for a trophy.  This is, of course, no simple task to do because why would it be.

The Tree of Wisdom requires an initial investment of $10,000 which is, by all means, no small sum.  After you get a Zen Garden via the story, you can purchase another one, specifically for mushrooms, for the bigger amount of $30,000, though after you have that, you can happen upon Mushrooms in games that you can then raise over the course of three days (probably less if you check in often) that will sell for $10,000 each once fully matured.  Less the cost of Fertilizer, a Gramophone and Bug Spray (all of which I won't bother looking up the prices for) that you will likely need for the stages of their growth, it's fairly lucrative, if slow.  Regardless, once you're in the position where you can throw down $30,000 on the Mushroom Garden, you have much easier avenues with which to get some coinage going on and selling plants will just be supplemental to that.

Let's just focus for a moment here, though.  Let's say that you wait until you have everything but the upgraded plants unlocked/purchased and the Tree of Wisdom itself since those are the things that are a factor here.  By this point, you have put quite a lot of time into the game already and while I could try and quantify that in some numbers, let's just go with "a lot" and I'll kind of make a little "roll with it" hand motion and we'll be square.  You are, at this point, ready to get all up in the Tree of Wisdom business and grow this thing to the massive 100 Feet required.  You throw down your $10,000, it adds a new thing in your Zen Garden, you go to it and Crazy Dave goes "Here are five free food bags" and you give them to your tree and go "Okay...how many more?"  Forty-five, or rather forty-six bags of food later, you will realize that you have...forty-nine bags left to go as the last bag raised the tree from 50 feet (the first time it actually displays a height) to 51 feet. 

So, let's break this down for a moment.  The Tree of Wisdom requires 100 bags of Food to reach the 100 Feet requirement.  This is a nice, simple number.  Where it gets less nice is when you realize that Tree Food costs $2,500 for one bag.  So yes, of course, first grade math, this means a 100 Foot Tall tree requires a $250,000 investment, though you get five bags for free, so it's actually 95 bags at $2,500 for $237,500.  Which isn't much better.  While I'm not -sure- of this, I am -fairly certain- that you have a limit of how many bags you can buy per day, and that limit is five bags.  Somebody feel free to correct me on this, but let's just suggest that it is true and cut out the money for a moment.  Five a day for 100 bags means 20 days of buying food and giving it to a tree, provided you have that much money and can do it, bare minimum.  That....is fairly ridiculous.

If you want to do this legitimately, it means farming the -hell- out of some maps, though what I've discovered as the 'popular' method is going on "Last Stand" (a map that's not initially available and requires a few other things beaten beforehand) and plopping down a -ton- of Marigolds (flowers that intermittently drop coins) as well as Garlic to force zombies into specific chokepoints that are lined with Gloom-Shrooms, an upgraded plant that costs $7,500 for the initial purchase, like so.  It's an ingenious method, actually and only requires a minimum of attention as it's more or less self-sustainable aside from the moments where you'll need to replace pumpkin shells (which you can replicate if you want, but the replicator card is a hefty $30,000 investment) and garlic cloves as they become degraded.  In fact, I wrote this paragraph while letting it just go and do that since I don't have to touch anything aside from the two shells that I -just- had to replace.

The problem with this is that it's a lengthy process.  This entire Last Stand thing will probably take upwards of 10-15 minutes all told, and the return I'm expecting is about $10,000 and that's being generous.  So, if I were trying to legitimately get the $237,500, that's 24 runs at ten to fifteen minutes minutes a run for 240 to 360 minutes or 4 to 6 hours.  Of doing nothing but babysitting Last Stand.  And that's if everything works right - on the last round of this run, my garlic cloves got decimated and I had no sun to help with that, so I just had to wait out the last ones as they sort of stumbled against the Gloom-Shrooms, taking one of them out as they died.  And this is, apparently, the 'best' method of farming coins out there which is something that doesn't really instill me with great confidence, because this is all for -one- trophy about growing a tree that offers you precisely nil in return.

It's for that reason that I have no issue with exploiting the little bug that is present with the whole tree of wisdom thing.  It's a simple thing - I stumbled across it, but it's documented other places as well.  When you're on the Tree of Wisdom screen, try dragging a bag of food from the spot on the bar to the tree and one of two things will happen, provided you have zero bags of food.  Either you will get a phantom bag that you can feed the tree or Crazy Dave will pop in and go "Hey, here's five bags of food" which is actually six because there is a phantom bag at the end of it.  If you get a Phantom bag, feed it that and then click to another garden and back.  Touch the icon and it should bring up the Crazy Dave thing, feed it those six bags, click to another garden and back and you should be able to repeat the Crazy Dave step over and over again until the tree is however tall you want it to be.  What proves to be a convoluted and expensive process becomes about ten to twenty minutes of equal tedium which is a pretty okay exchange in my book.

New Years Stats Time!

Do you like numbers?  Well, if you do (Like I do) you're going to love this post!  This year, much like last year, I'm going to share some specific numbers about Kupowered, if just because I -can-.  I certainly don't know if anyone's interested, but I think it's fun to do and it's my blog after all, so I'll do it if I like.  And I do.  So I do it.  It's been a trying year to say the least, so actually sitting down and looking at these numbers will be something that I'm doing for the first time as I write this, which I think makes it partly more fun for me since this is all new to me.  I get to look at the numbers and then figure out a way with which to express them in a way that isn't just A, B, C.  Or at least a little -more- entertaining a version of A, B, C like the last years post was.

The first glaring number that stands out is 2012's post count total - 307.  A full year's posts would have been 365 and my post count last year was 349, a whole 42 posts more.  Still going by the "Every other day" rule of 183 posts (which I fell on a lot this year), I'm still up by 124 posts which, hey, I think is pretty respectable.  It's not 165 like last yeah, but the fact that I actually have two years to compare to one another is a miracle unto itself, I should say.  This is the part where I start wishing I could break down views by year but that's simply not offered in Blogger's overview (or if it is, I'm struggling to find it), so I'll just have to update the All-Time views which will account for, you know....All-Time.  Last year and the year before.  (I'm just realizing that it is technically 2013 so Whoops)  Still, that'll be neat because it'll still give me numbers to compare it to since I guess I just filter out the differences and that'll be the year not accounted for.  You know, with math.

Coming in at the top of the All Time posts is once again "Really Tired", which if you missed me explaining it last year, was simply me being silly and doing a silly post about dragons.  Silly posts are fun, but I don't intend to do them all the time even though that one ended up being rather popular because of a particular picture used in it.  Its post count currently sits at 5,071, up from 4,069 from last year's review meaning it's only been viewed 1,002 times last year.  Only.  "Guilty Pleasures - Yakuza 4's Hostess Maker" is still second with 739 views, up from 290 last year, meaning it's been viewed 449 times in 2012 - not bad at all.  Third place is where 2012 shone, though, with "Zone of the Enders 3 is a Thing in Development" coming in at 590 views for 2012 alone, simply because it was -in- 2012 only.  I believe I can safely say that means it was the highest viewed post of 2012.  Second to receive that honor was "Kupowered's 501st Post" which came in at 248 views for some reason!  Overall, that post came in 7th, however, behind "inFamous 2 - My Thoughts on the Story and Endings (Spoilers)" at 547 views, "What Went Wrong - Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon" at 414 views and "The Regular Show is Pretty Great" at 399 views.  Because 400 views would just be too easy.

Trying to use the Page View Graph this year is just as unfeasible as last year, perhaps even more so, so unfortunately, I won't be doing a month-by-month thing since, well, I have no idea when those are properly updated.  Trying to navigate the graph takes me from January 2011 to February 2012 which....isn't correct, so, yeah, it's a bit silly.  Raw numbers will suffice.  My "Pageviews Last Month" figure comes up as 2,457 views, which I suppose might be for the full month of December, or like half of November and half of December or something.  I bring that up solely because that figure is higher than any single month presented in last years figures (the highest being 2,297 views) which means it's about in line with things so I'm keeping steady.  Or, rather, perhaps 'last month' was a low month because my All-Time Pageview History number now sits at 46,580, a full 29,751 views more than last year and, in fact 12,922 views more than last years All Time History of 16,829.  This is where I wish I knew how to do percents so I could figure what percentage growth that is, but looking at the numbers just says "a lot" which is pretty cool nonetheless.

Clicking on the Audience tab brings up something rather surprising in the sense that things have sort of shifted via countries that view Kupowered.  Like, dramatically.  America is still at the top with a whopping 19,799 views (up from 7,987 last year or an increase of 11,812 views), but Russia came out of friggin' nowhere at second place with 5,589 views (up from 485 last year for a 5,104 view increase) which...should I be worried about that?  I don't know.  The United Kingdom pulls up third with 2,210 views (up from 892 last year for a 1,318 view increase) and it's not until we get to fourth place that Canada finally shows up at 2,155 views (up from 1,123 views for a 1,032 increase).  If you're interested in the rest, the full list is as follows:  (Country - Pageviews - Increase):  America - 19,799 - 11,812, Russia - 5,589 - 5,104, United Kingdom - 2,210 - 1,318, Canada - 2,155 - 1,032, Austalia - 1,576 - 695, Germany - 875 - 411, Indonesia - 775 - 636, Brazil - 606 - 470, Ukraine - 436 - 302, and France - 430 - N/A.  All this only adds up to 34,451 Views, so the rest of the  12,129 views is smattered across other nations in smaller numbers.  Firefox again is the most used browser at 19,171 (or 42%) of views, with Chrome and Internet explorer switching places this year at 11,398 (25%) and 9,162 (20%) respectively.  Windows is still the most widespread OS to be used to view at 34,413 (75%) where Linux has bumped up a little, coming in at 6,296 (13%).  Mac at 2,133 (4%) is the only other number to brag about with Android and iPhone representing 1% each with 872 and 634 respectively and the remaining five of iPad, iPod, PSP, PS3 and BlackBerry are all <1% with 350, 260, 179, 178 and 168 in order.

I haven't really made many new 'types' of posts since last year with the notable exception being, appropriately, "Gaming By The Numbers" of which I only have two posts for - Dynasty Warriors Next and Trails in the Sky.  These posts are basically just ones in which I take a game and turn it into full-on Number Porn somehow, either talking about the hours of time needed to do something specific, or just how easy it is to do something, taking into account the most 'profitable' means with which to do it.  Or you know, whatever.  It's number porn so it's about numbers in whatever form I can take them in.  Somewhat like -this- post and the last year's review, I should say.  Most everything else has been either a stand-alone thing, or part of a 'type' I established the first year, which is just fine, I think.  I don't need to make a whole bunch of different things for my posts to fit into and I probably established the most that I'll need in the first year, though there's always the future to tell.

Compared to 2011's three reviews, I did a surprising nine in 2012, which is still a really small number, but considering the amount of work that goes into every review, it's not something that I can do all the time unfortunately.  Those reviews are, in order of post date:  Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Alpha Protocol, Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Resistance: Burning Skies, Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble, Sound Shapes, Gravity Rush, Assassin's Creed: Revelations and  Final Fantasy XIII.  Obviously, I linked them in case you wanted to check them out again (or for the first time, if you've missed them) and if not then at least it's nice to keep these things together for something in the future.  That number would have been ten, but alas, I still haven't finished the likely vitriolic review for Final Fantasy XIII-2 which is unfortunate, but that's just how these things go sometimes.  Still rather impressive for me, I think.

I imagined if I tried, I could pick up a few of some posts that I really liked this year (since I can't play Favorites), but really, I'm pretty happy with them all.  If anything, I remember the Gaming by the Numbers posts more than the rest for the simple fact that they were number porn posts and those are ultimately really fun to write.  While it's still recent, I do also still remember the two posts I made for a concept I dubbed a 'MoveShock' which is a theoretical controller that would combine a DualShock with two Move wands, offering a 'best of both worlds' scenario where one could expect to use both methods of input simultaneously instead of giving up one for the other.  I've rarely been as excited at a prospect as I was with that, and while I doubt it's going to happen, it's still nice to dream.  Because honestly, it's a pretty cool concept if it would work in the scenarios I put forth.

And that's about it for 2012.  It was apparently a year of highs and lows, but while I didn't like the year, it was still a rather productive one, all-told.  Hopefully 2013 will be a better year, both in me keeping up with posts and just....you know, being a better year.  It's got a chance as it is now, but it's only two days old so, well, a little early to be wondering, I suppose.  If you've read this and enjoyed it, then I thank you and I hope you'll stick around for the posts as they come this year.  I mean, again, number porn so your mileage may vary, but I certainly had fun with it!  Here's to 2013 kicking 2012's ass in all the relevant facets!

New Year's Eve - A Year In Review

On Wednesday, January 5th, I posted my first post of this blog which more or less presented the mission statement to any who decided to read this as well as to myself to have something that I really wanted to accomplish.  I also sort of have one on the sidebar to the right, but the first post basically says "I want to write, and I want to write consistently, so I'm going to make it a 'thing'" and I would say that Kupowered is officially 'a thing'.  Though not without its hiccups in activity thanks to poor weather and computer issues, I have pretty much stuck to that goal of consistency to the best of my ability and for that I'm pretty proud of myself.  I really wrestled with whether or not I'd be able to do it, more because I worried it would become a 'chore' over time, but (mostly to my surprise) every day has been as exciting as the last, if not more, when I sit down here and actually really get into hammering out one of these posts.

I love doing this blog, doing this writing, and that's why it's going to be so easy to continue doing it into the new year.  While I don't always know what I'm going to write about until I actually start doing it (sometimes halfway through a post, I'll notice it's dramatically shifted gears and make a few changes to the title or the earlier body of it to reflect that) I always -want- to write which is likely the most important point.  That want, the desire, is more or less why this has kept going and why it's improved over time (at least, I like to think it has) as I've more or less fallen into a way about things or a style even.  With any luck, my ability will eventually match my ambition for it and I'll be able to make this a lot better than it is currently; if just by delivering on  few promises I've made throughout the year.  (Like actually explaining the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period in my own way and getting an actual logo going.)  But even if I don't, I bet if I keep at what I've been doing, it'll work out all the same.

Since this is a year in review and I really like statistics, let's have a go at the blog by the numbers.  Not including this post, I made 348 posts this year - 17 posts fewer than a full year's worth (365).  Since the stated goal was 'every other day', which would have been 183 posts (rounded up), I beat my goal by 165 posts which is quite a wide margin.  My most viewed post (according to my stats page) was my "Really Tired" post in which I was silly and decided to talk about Dragons in a fairly casual way (even by my standards) as an attempt to make myself (and hopefully others) laugh with the way it went.  At 4,069 pageviews, I'd almost wager it did....if I weren't convinced that 89% or so of those pageviews are actually links to one of the dragon pictures used in the post.  My search keyword section constantly has about four or five different entries for 'dragons' or 'cool black dragons' which more or less leads me to believe this which is a little disappointing, but hey, views are views.  This is all reinforced by the second most viewed post, "Guilty Pleasures - Yakuza 4's Hostess Maker", which came in at only 290 views All Time.

I'm almost loathe to actually use Blogger's All Time graph for pageviews per month since it's not actually by month (seems to skip every other month and some months have two entires when hovered over), but it's kind of all I can think of to use right now.  January 2011 is listed as 538 pageviews between that point (wherever it was in January, perhaps at the end?) and December of 2009 (which, of course, the blog did not exist then).  After a little dip in March('s second entry) of 338 pageviews, there was steady growth from that point on to December('s first entry) of 2,297 pageviews which is my all-time high.  The second entry for December, which I imagine isn't the solid end-point of it, is currently at 2,217.  I honestly don't know how I'm getting all these pageviews, but hell, I'll take 'em.  As long as people are reading it's all good, I guess.  The part next to the graph that says "Pageviews all time history" has a total of 16,829 currently, which is a number that I can't even figure on.  (This is all with the 'Don't track own pageviews' unticked, however I doubt my own views are skewing things that dramatically and considering I've typed all this up, I'm not going to chance turning it off and making myself look silly.)

Moving on to the Audience tab, my top-most country of viewership is, possibly unsurprisingly, the United States with 7,987 pageviews.  I don't really link-whore my blog around (which, honestly, I probably should?), but if I do, the majority of the people I link to are in the US.  Up next is Canada (thank you Chance!) with 1,123 posts.  Australia brings up fourth with 881 views (that are likely not all made by Haplo, but I'm just guessing) and the country with the least pageviews is Denmark with 113.  Beats me how Denmark is even on the list, but hey whatevs.  (For those interested, the full list is such (Country - Pageviews):  United States - 7,987, Canada - 1,123, United Kingdom - 892, Australia - 881, Russia - 485, Germany - 464, Indonesia - 139, Brazil - 136, Ukraine - 134, and Denmark - 113.  Which only adds up to 12,354 so I guess the other views are a mish-mash of a smattering of views here and there.)  The bulk of these viewings was on Firefox apparently, as it accounts for 7,461 (or 45%) of my views.  Next is Internet Explorer with 4,081 (or 24%) and coming in third is Chrome with 3,461 (or 21%).  And of those total views, 84% (14,071 views) were done on computers running Windows OS, with the remaining 16% comprising of a mishmash of different OS's.  Linux and Mac get 5 and 4 percent respectively (901 and 826, again respectively) and Playstation 3 and PSP are both in the <1% category with 165 and 123 respectively.  Something completely surprising to me was that my site was apparently viewed on iPads 124 times, iPhones 111 times and iPods 61 times.

That all might not be interesting to you and I apologize if it's not, but it's absolutely fascinating to me even though with most cases it's just "Hey, these are big numbers that involve your blog".  I just think it's a neat little look into the back-end of things, into the mechanics of it rather, and that there might be a few people out there as interested in it as I am.  And what better time to cement these numbers than tonight, the end of the year?  Though I have to admit those are probably a little dry, so I do have a few more fun numbers to go over.

Since starting this blog, I've made about 26 different 'types' of posts, including "A Look Back", "Giant Robot On", "Weekly Wrap-up in Gaming", "Why Won't They Make These", "LittleBigThings", and "Misadventures in Bargain-Shopping".  I quantify these as 'types' in that they're...well, titles for very specialized types of posts.  While most of the time my posts have been bringing up something news-worthy and offering my opinion and thoughts on it, these posts are more or less based on my personal experiences and opinions on things, like presenting a specific game or type of game, describing it, and wondering aloud about how difficult it would be to make more of them, wherein the answer is usually 'Not very, but it won't sell well either'.  (Why Won't They Make These)  Or like talking about anything and everything involving LittleBigPlanet regarding news, my own personal excitement, or my adventures in the wonderful world of LittleBigPlanet.  (LittleBigThings)  There might be a few others I could include and likewise a few included that might not need to be in there, which is why I said 'about', since it's just a rough gauging.

One of those types of posts was the 'Review', which my first one was made on Monday, July 25th for Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective.  The game was so galvanizing that I couldn't help but be inspired to do with it what I hadn't done before and what I indeed told myself I wouldn't do in actually presenting something that was not just my opinions, but my overall judgment of the game (which are two very slightly different things).  Since then, I've only reviewed two other games (Yakuza 4 and Star Ocean: First Departure) because they've both struck similar chords as Ghost Trick, albeit in widely different ways.  It's probably a safe bet to make that I'll review more games in 2012, but that my focus will remain on relating my opinions on the games I play rather than rendering my judgments.  Again, they are different things, albeit barely, and I think they're both important enough to have a place here.

While I don't think I could ever pick 'favorite' posts of the year, I will point out a couple of my more memorable ones.  In recent memory, my series of two (spoiler warning!) Character Spotlight posts about Caim from the Drakengard series (again, spoilers up ins them) were probably a couple of the posts that I've got most excited about doing.  I've said it many times before, but Drakengard is a series close to my heart and Caim and his presentation are a couple of the bigger reasons as to why that is.  So getting to really elaborate on that is something that I really wanted to do and that I'm glad I got to do it.  Also memorable was (again, spoiler warning!) my two-part What Went Wrong - Chrono Trigger DS series in which I got to elaborate on how bothered I was that Squeenix took one of my favorite games (if not my absolute favorite) from my childhood and, well, really did all they could to try and screw it up.  Because they honestly did and thank god there likely won't be a third Chrono game (well, fourth) since all attempts aside from the first have been pretty abysmal.

That's about it, really.  It's been a great year and I wanted to be able to really express my achievements with this blog in both personal reasonings and raw numbers and I believe I've adequately done that.  I'm sure there's quite a few other things I could've elaborated on and pointed out here, but I covered the major points, I think.  I hope everyone who's read this far has enjoyed it and will continue to do so well into the new year while this just grows and grows.  Here's hoping for great things in 2012!