Fun Creative Projects

I am unspeakably tired, and I plan to go to bed directly following this journal, so I'll try to keep it short this time. ;3

College is going very well so far. Today marks the end of week 2/6. As far as I can tell, everything is going down smoothly. I'm just happy to get my three-day weekend to catch up on sleep! X_X I've learned that even after two weeks of this, I guess I still get nervous. Sleeping pills to the rescue! Oh, and I need to switch out my blankets on my bed, because the one I had in winter is making me too hot in summer.

Creative projects; Well, I've been doing a lot lately. Yesterday I got up a new episode of Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal, which turned out beautifully. This game is hilarious, and it's really easy to play up everything it says for maximum entertainment value. I won't give spoilers, though. Go and watch it!: 

(Apparently dA allows us to embed YouTube videos now??)

I was also able to setup Twitch.tv recently. My internet isn't best for this sort of thing, but I managed to get it to stop dropping frames while maintaining mostly acceptable quality. I've done a few streams, the most notable ones being one where I played osu!, and the other, more recent one, where I showed off games that I made/am making. Tomorrow, I hope to do a live-programming stream while I work on finishing the next demo of Stick Adventure 3: Stick RPG. I've needed to get that done for a while, and I figure if I stream it, I can motivate myself to actually do something with it! You can find my channel here, and make sure to follow so you know when I go live!: www.twitch.tv/busterthefox/
You can also watch all of my past broadcasts from here: www.twitch.tv/busterthefox/pro…

The third thing I had in mind was that I planned to finish the next Stick RPG demo soon, which I suppose is a testament to how tired I am right now. Heh.

The only other news I can think of is that I got rid of Mario Kart 7, Tales of the Abyss, Fire Emblem: Awakening and PMD: Gates to Infinity. In exchange, I was able to get Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, Paper Mario Sticker Star and Star Fox 64 3D. A fair trade-off? Well, I have Mario Kart 8 now, and I hardly play 7 anymore since I basically 100%ed it already. I don't feel an addicted need to play MK8 when I'm out and about, so I just got rid of it. Tales of the Abyss I still have on PS2, and I never played it anyway since I got stuck on a boss (and in an area where level grinding was pretty tough, of course). Fire Emblem... I also never played it anymore. It got to the point where it had so much to do, there was TOO much to do. I would always get sidetracked, and go fight random Risen to level grind, and then I would wanna micromanage my characters' items, then I'll change my StreetPass settings... I'm happy just getting by that one really awesome chapter where you are fighting on a rainy field at night after you escape the enemy capital. I killed that mission. Super easy~. PMD... might be the one I regret most. I'll buy it back someday, maybe. Can't remember if that's one of the games that stores your save on-system instead of on the game card itself. If not, I can always re-download the demo and do some proper level grinding on it this time before I get the game again. But yeah, I never really could get really into the story. It became more interesting at the part where it turns out Munna and Hydreigon aren't what they seem, but even then I couldn't really... I dunno, it just wasn't as epic, you know? There's no beating time-travelling to a post-apocalyptic Pokemon future. :/

Luigi's Mansion is alright; they could've screwed up the controls a bit less, though! I don't like the way it deviates from the original, as nostalgia was the main factor in buying the game in the first place. BUT, when I look past that, it's alright so far. It's very fond of giving you tutorials, but I'm still on the first mansion, which is pretty clearly meant to teach you the basics. It's mission based, and with each mission I've been uncovering some new gadget or other sort of game mechanic, so it's forgivable. I'll let you know if I continue to get calls from E. Gadd every time I leave a room once I'm past the tutorials, though!
Star Fox 64 3D does a much better job of appealing to my nostalgia, although they screwed up big time on the title screen. As a kid, I used to spend hours just playing with the 64 sign, making the Star Fox Team look at it as it spun around in quick circles at my command. This new one, you can't do that, and it's just a 3D model of an arwing flying through space. Maybe they added some other secret thing you can do, I dunno, all I wanted to do was move the 64, so I didn't try anything but the circle pad and plus pad. xD But yeah, it's cool, because somehow they rallied together and got the new voice actors to sound EXACTLY like they did in the original! There are lots of times where you can tell it's ever-so-slightly off from the original, but that's a good thing, because it makes it obvious that there are new VAs on the job. And the fact they tried to recreate the original voice acting down to the inflection is just SO cool. I like it a lot.
Finally, Paper Mario. Another nostalgia appeal, I suppose. I'm doing my best not to compare it to Thousand Year Door. Because that game was much better. BUT, this is its own game, and it's very different. Although the turn-based strategy-style battles with action commands are back, it's actually NOT what most would consider an "RPG"; If you win a battle, you get... coins. There's no levels or character customization, and everything you do is completely dictated by what stickers you have, and they are all one-time uses. They are scattered about everywhere though, and they come back if you leave/re-enter an area, so you will probably never run out or anything. If you're like me and you would rather blast past the first few levels until the actual interesting part begins, you'll find yourself having to use those more rare stickers that you were saving on common enemies, but then, I tend to fight every enemy I see, and like I said, you can pretty much just stock up on stickers you find in the wild, so it's not such a big deal. Plus, you can buy stuff like Jump, Hammer and Mushroom stickers at the store for less than or equal to 10 coins, and I had literally hundreds of coins by the end of the second level. On that note, the areas ARE structured in a "level" format, kind of like Super Paper Mario. At the end of every stage is a shard of THE Sticker Star, and when you collect it, the level ends and you move on. But random cutscenes and other things happen when you get to certain points like they usually would. Basically, Sticker Star is a fusion between Super Paper Mario's action-adventure style with the older turn-based, action command battles of old. It's reasonably, fun. Like Luigi's Mansion though, I haven't gotten very far, so I can't really say whether or not it's bad at this point. So far, I'm enjoying it.

So, that ended up a bit longer than I wanted, but whatever. Hey, maybe I'll see some of y'all in the stream tomorrow. :3 I answer questions from chat.

Byeeeee