Confessions of a Backlogged Gamer, Weeks 8-10: Poppycock!

I know, I know…. lazy Leah, right?  Sorry for the gap between updates, folks, but to make up for it, I *do* have a significant amount of progress to report!  As of this writing, since last time, I have finished one game, blasted through most of a second, and put a cool twenty or so more hours into a third.  I’ve purchased a few more as well, of course, but let’s just overlook that for the time being….

First things first: it’s true, ladies and gents…. I have, in fact, finished Puzzle Quest: Galactrix.  Not even just finished, actually, but rather stomped.  Massacred.  One might even say trounced.  I hunted down those little punctuation marks scattered all over my beautiful galaxy and I wiped them out for good.  I really don’t want to know how much time I spent doing so, but at the end, it felt good.  Kind of.  You know, in a “wow, I really have absolutely no life” kind of way.  Hey, whatever I can get.

Upon completion of Puzzle Quest, I picked up a different variety of puzzler on my DS (the system really seems to be good for that these days, and as long as they continue to be of this quality, I am certainly not complaining about that).  I’m speaking, of course, of Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, which Elaine started before me and has been talking up so much that I could hardly wait to get started.  I was rewarded when I did, because the game is fantastic.  I love that although you do have to keep track of both screens, you don’t have to manage both together; the platforming gets put on hold when you need to go fool with your puzzle screen.  I’ve reached a point where the game is getting really hard…. like, I-may-want-to-tether-my-DS-to-my-wrist-so-I-don’t-chuck-it-through-a-window hard.  Here’s the major difference between this and the last platformer I tried to trudge through (Prinny….. remember Prinny?  God, I do.).  I want to keep playing Henry Hatsworth.  I enjoy it, because it’s not punishing, it’s just challenging.  It’s not impossible, it just takes a few tries (or in some cases…. many tries).  I didn’t enjoy Prinny.  I wanted to stuff Prinny down a garbage disposal.  That’s why Prinny got traded in post-haste, while Henry Hatsworth is still in my DS (waiting for the blasted thing to charge back up, because I’ve run the battery down yet again).  So yeah, I yell at the little British dude, and the phrase “Are you FUCKING kidding me?!?” leaves my mouth a lot (and it’s always that specific phrase…. I dunno why, but it always seems appropriate), but the important thing is that I’m still playing.  I’m in what I believe is the second to last world, and if the goddamn Puzzle Realm is this tricksy, I shudder to think what the world after it is going to be like.  I intend to find out, though.

Up until I finished Questing, I’d kind of been neglecting my other main game of the moment, which is, of course, Star Ocean.  No more, my friends!  Now that the galaxy is safe from glowing punctuation, I have returned to saving a different galaxy from what ails it.  I’ve actually put a considerable amount of time into doing so…. I’m in hour 45 right now, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.  I’m not even off of disc 2 yet….

I understand that I have, apparently, inspired a few folks to play Star Ocean themselves after hearing me ramble on about it, so if you are one of those people, or if you simply don’t want to have the plot spoiled, you may want to skip the rest of this paragraph.  I won’t be too offended.  For anyone still reading, though, I have to rant just a bit about something that happened circa hour 42 that really made me angry.  It’s what I like to call the “Final Fantasy VII syndrome”.  I didn’t get particularly attached to Aeris (in fact, I only used her when forced to do so) but I know people who did- who, in fact, spent a great deal of time leveling her up as far as possible, only to have her cut in half at the end of the first disc.  (Yup, Aeris dies.  Sorry kids, statute of limitations is up on that one.)  I had Faize in my main party ever since he first showed up; when I started messing around with different combinations of characters as you gain more recruits, my two constants were always Edge and Faize.  I even took Reimi out eventually, but never Faize.  So OF COURSE, in hour forty-fucking-two of the game, they took him away from me!  I was PISSED!  Now, granted, they do give you Arumat as a sort-of replacement, and he’s far more badass than Faize was (and less girly to boot, if considerably more emo), but it’s the principle of the thing that matters.  I was completely comfortable having him in my party, and then I had to rearrange everything this far in.  Not cool, Squenix.  Not cool.  I think I’ve pretty much settled on a core party for now unless they take someone else away from me: my frontline fighters are Edge and Arumat, my caster is Myuria (who is a raging badass if set up correctly) and my healer is Sarah (who is annoying as hell, but extremely useful as long as you turn her voice off in the options menu).

Okay, spoilery ranting over.  You can come back now.  It’s the end for this week, though, so just check out the stats.

Recap:

Current backlog total: 117

Now playing: Star Ocean: The Last Hope (360); Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure (DS)

New games added: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (Wii); Peggle Dual Shot (DS); Pokemon Platinum (DS); Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (PS3); Gardening Mama (DS); Rhythm Heaven (DS)  ….remember though, that’s three weeks’ worth!  That’s not so bad, right?   …….right?

Games completed: Puzzle Quest: Galactrix (DS)