I've been playing this game since shortly after I beat Twilight Princess over the summer and man am I having a slow and thorough adventure. I know you can look my "Now Playing" list and you'll see quite a few including Dawn of Souls which has been pushed off the end of the visible list (which is unusual for me, ESPECIALLY since i'll soon add two more, LOL), but all those games except for Dead or Alive 4 and, of course, NCAA Football 08 are sitting in the back seat of car in terms of my gaming priority.

I feel like I wanna attribute this to the fact that I feel the difficulty is unbalanced. I've found it to be very easy to run into an area or reach a boss that, by normal progression and regular "level-up" intervals, is too powerful for your party to defeat. Sometimes these boss encounters are quite close to each other so its effectively a difficulty spike. I've been giving substance to my level grinding in the form of battle-heavy sidequests (in the form of hunting quests) which has worked out nicely. Still, in the process, i'm approaching hour 60 and I think I still have a ways to go. I can't think of any other Final Fantasy i've played that has taken me this long to get through a story-focused play-through. I don't even think it took me this long to play through Final Fantasy X-2, including my 100% completion run.

As a result, my backlog ever grows. As a matter of fact, I took advantage of Toys R Us's "Buy 2, Get the 3rd Free" deal and picked up skate. and Gears of War and got Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for free. Then I picked up Sonic Rush Adventure and Metal Gear Solid Portables Ops (i'm getting a PSP 2000 when the Piano Black version launches soon), and got the original Lego Star Wars for free. Seeing as I just found out a Lego Star wars compilation is coming out soon, i'm gonna try to take it back to tomorrow and exchange it for Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Let me just say skate. is worth it, IMO. I hadn't been excited for a skateboarding game since Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. After playing the skate. demo, I was a sold. I've even played the Tony Hawk's Proving Ground demo and came away unimpressed compared to skate. I think the main thing to hooked me was the innovative control scheme which makes the tricks and the skateboarding in general feel much more intimate and realistic. It also, IMO, requires more skill pull off and chain tricks. Seriously, after playing Proving Ground, i'll take skate's control any day. The recording feature is mega cool as well. And from what i've read of the online features, i'll enjoy taking advantage of Xbox Live with this game.

So skate. is one of those two games that i'm just gonna start playing regardless of my slow progress with Final Fantasy XII. The other, as you may guess...will be Halo 3. I won't be able to help it. I'll be playing this game the day I get my hands on it. And boy do I almost fear the day I finish the campaign mode, because I remember how much I was sucked into Halo 2's multiplayer. It was one thing when I played freelance, its was an ENTIRELY NEW LEVEL (i'm talking NCAA Football-esque obsession) when I joined a highly skilled clan and we very competently competed in clan matches. I don't really like to brag, but we were a tough group to beat. We won way more than we lost. I'm looking forward to that with Halo 3, and with online 4-player co-op to boot....oh boy...This game will likely be on my Now Playing list for quite a darn while. I won't be surprised if i'll be playing this game online through console's lifespan.

And oh yeah, regarding my portable gaming. Some of you may remember, that i'm on a quest to complete every mainstream Final Fantasy. I beat the original quite a while ago, and retroactively, i've been stuck on II for quite a while. The fact is, my whole gaming life suffered while I was trudging through that tornado of a semester last year. I was actually playing my DS more than anything (in between classes, etc), but that time was mostly dominated by Tetris DS. That game has so much substance that i'm still not tired of it and probably never will be. I've recently gotten myself out of that slumped. My long hiatus resulted in me being disoriented with where I was and what I was supposed to be doing in both Final Fantasy II and Metroid Prime: Hunters so I had to consult GameFAQs on what to do. I estimate i'm about halfway through Final Fantasy II but i'm surprisingly pretty close to the end of Hunters (I only have one more thorough task to do and its all downhill from there). My Final Fantasy quest hiatus has actually been a good thing as it has assured me now that i'll be playing remakes of III-VI whearas before I may have bought the GBA ports.

Well I guess this blog is big enough. I guess this is what happens when you wait too long to update, so i'll try to be more frequent in the future. If you look at my profile you'll see Halo 3 on my already rediculous Now Playing list by the end of the month. It would be great if I could legitimately take Final Fantasy XII off by then. If not...well...lets just say its stay on the list will likely be prolonged. I'm not too concerned about many others like Fight Night, Rumble Roses XX (don't laugh, I honestly have a blast with the game and got it for cheap), NCAA Football 08, Dead or Alive 4, and now skate. They're what I consider to be "idle" games. By that context, I mean they're not really games that involve some kind of deep "quest". Moreso, they're games I just pick up and play whenever I feel like it. I still play them all (obviously), but Halo 3, again, will likely reduce that frequency.

You know what, in hopeful preparation/anticipation for that day, I think i'll go play Final Fantasy XII now!

EDIT: Haha! The Gamespot server programming sympathizes we me. The "Final Fantasy XII" entry on my Now Playing list has been specifically glitched out!

EDIT Again: Bah! Its back!