Gaming 10/15-10/21

4 Hours: Dead Island: I tried playing with my buddies on Monday but one of them never came on and the game kicked out the other 2 about 40 minutes in.. I finished a few more quests on my own that night. Played a few more times without them, I think I am caught up in the main quest now and am up to Level 13. This game just keep getting better, and I'm sure once I get farther along in the main quest it should keep getting better.
2 Hours: Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues: Keeping it going with the Lego games, after Lego Star Wars the Complete Saga I was not very happy to do this one, but it is really fun, they mixed a few things up which is cool but otherwise just a fun Lego time.
1 Hour: New Super Mario Bros Wii: My girlfriend couldn't decide what she wanted to play next after Lego Star Wars, so we played this one night but then we decided to do Lego Indy instead. It was good times (what mario game isn't?) but it...

Gaming 10/8-10/14

3 Hours: Dead Island: Picked this game up to play with my friends, and that's what I did for one night, but I was not getting credit for their missions since they were so much farther along in the main story. I have been playing on my own since then in hopes of catching up so that we can do all the missions together. I'm up to level 7 and I think I had completed maybe 14 quests? The game is awesome. I'm glad I broke down and bought it.
3 Hours: Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga: Me and the girlfriend finished off Empire and Jedi to call it a day. I had fun some of the time but overall it was sort of meh. I beat Lego Star Wars II by myself and had fun, but I have come to notice that some Lego games are fun multiplayer and some are fun solo. (Batman was fun multi, but not solo).
1 Hour Braid: I bought this last year on sale, but never got around to trying it till Monday. I don't get it.... I thought I remember this game being...

Gaming 10/7-10/7

2 Hours: Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga: I'm not really enjoying this game honestly. I just don't know what it is. I'm probably over Lego games which sucks because my girlfriend wants to play Lego Indiana Jones 2 after this. We will probably be done in a few more hours, have 2 levels left in Empire and then Jedi.
2 Hours: Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: Beat this guy last night. The game started to drag on towards the end and then the final boss fight was a joke. I liked it, but almost all of the game was harder then the last level. Some of the last few levels were very aggravating too but not in a good way. If you like Bionic Commando I would recommend getting this but not for full price like I did.

So another game in the books for the year which bring my total to 11. It was nice to take a little break from the backlog, but I think I'm doing another one. Like I keep reiterating, most of my backlog is gone next year so whatever...

Gaming 9/24-9/30

3 Hours: Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: I'm going to reiterate how easy this game is. It baffles my mind. I don't know if it's because you can jump or what the deal is, but man. It is still a very good game, I am having a lot of fun. Or maybe it's just so fun because I expected some crushing difficulty and there is not any, either way. I think I'm on mission 23.. (out of 28) so I should be done soon.
1 Hour: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars: I had played this for an hour last year and did not really get into it, but with this second hour I started noticing how the Paper Mario series got started here (I had read about it, just did not notice) and then I got excited because I love those games. Luckily since I played it, it will stay in the backlog next year and hopefully I can finally play it.

It was nice to find time to save another game in the backlog, but it only happened because my girlfriend was just not in the...

Gaming 9/17-9/23

3 Hours: Lego Star Wars: The Complete Trilogy: We are almost done with A New Hope. I have played these levels in Lego Star Wars II before so I know most of them were fun, the levels for the first 3 movies were not very fun though. It's weird to me how much fun I had playing Lego Star Wars II by myself and how much fun I am not having with this game.
2 Hours: Bionic Commando Rearmed 2: Bionic Commando on NES was one of my favorite NES games. Rearmed was one of the hardest games I think I have beaten (and I just beat it on normal). This game in comparison, not really that hard. I'm sure it's got some kind of crazy difficulty scale or something since it's Capcom, but so far smooth sailing. (On Mission 9 btw)

That's it for the week, nothing else going on besides what I said above. Since I'm pretty much over keeping most of the games in my backlog, I might take another break from it after Bionic Commando. I'm not decided yet. I hope...

Gaming 9/10-9/16

5 Hours: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: Another game in the books for this year. I really enjoyed this game except for a few parts towards the end (making my way through the cemetery and then the weird alien looking things, although they made sense in the end and then I was ok with them). I don't really know what to else to say about it.
3 Hours: Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga: My girlfriend wanted another Lego game but I had already beaten Lego Star Wars II so she bought the complete Saga. More Lego fun (except the pod race) and we have done the first 2 movies already.

Pickups for the week: Bionic Commando Rearmed 2

I need a break from my backlog so I bought Bionic Commando to do just that. I don't know if it's going to count as a break because of how frustrating the first Rearmed was, so we will see. I started my internship which I thought would make gaming hours non-existent but since it's like school with...

Gaming 9/3-9/9

3 Hours: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune: I pretty much started this one and made it all the way to the part where I am trying to get into a tower that has a zip line at the top. I am enjoying the game for the most part so far. Started to get sort of monotonous until the part where I was on the turret in the back of the jeep, and the jet ski. Breaking up the action a bit was a good move. I think I am almost half way done though.
30 minutes: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift: Couldn't sleep one night so tried this out. Failed miserably and then had more trouble sleeping because I was angry.

My friend has been dying for me to play Uncharted because it is one of his favorite games. Don't get me wrong it's a good game but maybe I'm just not feeling. I think I need a break from my backlog. I'll probably do that after Uncharted. School started a few weeks ago so it has been hard to find as much time but things have been working...

Gaming 8/27-9/2

2 Hours Mass Effect: Finished the Bring Down the Sky DLC. I actually only needed an hour and fifteen minutes but I didn't realize I was almost done after the first hour. Decided to continue on the main quest for 45 minutes killing everyone with just a Pistol to see if I could get the achievement for 150 pistol kills, but I did not.
1 Hour: Gears of War 2: Beat the Deleted Scene by going guns blazing. Usually in shooters I kill every single enemy (unless I'm on the hardest difficulty) so of course I wanted to kill them all. It actually took me a bit longer then an hour, but that's because I died so many freaking times on the first wave, and was good after that.

Pickups for the week: Toy Story 3 (in the mail, but ordered before the free 3DS games.), Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong Jr, Ice Climber, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, NES Open Tournament Golf, Super Mario Bros (Not adding to my...

Gaming 8/20-8/26

2 Hours Batman: Arkham Asylum: I was actually really close to the end of the game. Just had to make it out of Killer Croc's lair and then defeat Poison Ivy before facing the Joker. I have to say that I feel like the boss fight was a let down compared to the rest of the game, but still such a fantastic game. My only regrets now are that I don't have time to get all the riddler trophies and that I probably won't play Arkham City till 2013.
1 Hour: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift: Had some random time with this this week, I actually beat more quests. But failed at the quest I have been stuck on for years again so that doesn't really count as progress.
1 Hour: Mass Effect: Went back to this guy to play the Bring Down the Sky DLC. So, back in February I tried just going to it via my Galaxy Map but it wasn't showing up so I spent an hour starting a new game (till I could get back to the galaxy map.) It still was not there.......

Gaming 8/13-8/19

5 Hours: Batman Arkham Asylum: Let's just start off by saying I think this might be one of the greatest games ever made. I wish that i had more time to spend with it, but should be done with it soon I believe. It seems like each section of the game is longer then the previous so it was lopsided when I thought I was half-way done last week. I just got to Killer Croc's lair and have to collect all the spore samples, I think I'm around 50% of the Riddler trophies. (Would have more, but didn't realize until a few days ago to hold down L2 to scan his clues, and to line up those questions marks I found). In any event, as much as I liked Final Fantasy XII's story, this is probably going to be my game of the year. Except that I play Uncharted in a few games :P

I pretty much summed up my whole week above. I was sick again this week so had plenty of time to just sit and play. Not enough time to play anything afterwards though because I kept going...

Gaming 8/6-8/12

2 Hours: Batman: Arkham Asylum: I had played this for an hour back in February only making it a bit of the way in, but now I'm afraid because I have 3 hours of play time total and the FAQ I have been glancing at makes it sound like I'm almost half way done. I mean I haven't really been seeking out the Riddler Trophies or anything which might add more time on the clock, but I don't care. I'm a no frills kind of guy now because of this backlog, so I just want the main story and then move on.
30 Minutes: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift: Failed a quest, passed a quest. You know, the norm. I actually had planned on planning this more, but never got the chance to.

I felt like in week 31 I spent a lot of time playing video games and not taking care of normal responsibilities. I paid the price for that not having any time to play really this week. At my current...

Gaming 7/30-8/5

5 Hours: Bioshock: Completed this bad boy. It took awhile to grow on me but I wound up really enjoying this game. The low point's had to be the beginning buildup and then having to keep an eye on the little sister at the end. Also the boss fight had to have been one of the easiest fights I have ever had. Sort of a joke after all that buildup. In any event I finally understand why everyone liked this game so much.
1 Hour: Assassin's Creed: I think I was on the second memory block, I don't know if I completed it but I did have to do some investigation to unlock a Assassination and after that had to sneak back into the Bureau. All that after the 10-15 minutes remembering how to play the game.
1 Hour: Crackdown: Killed off a few more bosses in the first gang area... I found it weird that all I had to do was run around and kill gang members to unlock the boss locations, or maybe I just stumbled upon them by running around. Either way...?...

For Week 29 I didn't care to post because I was at the Comic-Con. Also too lazy to write a review of it this year, but if you interested you can check out a video I made for Saturday, or some of my pictures I took. For the week though I did play Bioshock for 4 hours and earned 4 Bronze Trophies.

Gaming 7/23-7/29

3 Hours: Bioshock: When I first picked this back up I was still in the "I don't understand why everyone loves this game so much" mindset, but now after playing for a few weeks the story just keeps sucking me in more and more. I'm excited that I kept this in my backlog for so long. I think I'm about 2/3 of the way through the game, so hopefully it just keeps getting better.
30 Minutes: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift: Needed to kill some time in a line at the con. Just completed a few more quests like usual.

So I'm probably going...

So last year I had a couple half year reviews and yearly round up of all my gaming exploits. I figured I would keep that tradition and compile all the information from my weekly blogs. So here we go, 6 months worth of gaming. This includes all console and handheld gaming. I do not count games on my computer (facebook/chrome/etc) or games on my iPod/Android phone.

For the first 6 months of the year I spent ~ 125 hours playing video games. (It's technically less then 6 months because there were 4 weeks during the school year that I didn't have time to play anything but you now what I mean). I played 22 different games during this time frame. The game I played the most was Final Fantasy XII. I played more games then anything else and also spent the most time on my . (All games were played on my ). During this time frame I earned 270 Achievement Points and 31 Playstation Trophies (All Bronze)

Top games played by hour: (# of hours and %...

Gaming 7/9-7/15

3 Hours: Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: We just had one level left to finish off At World's End, then it was on to the final movie. Weird playing it without seeing the movie but it was still fun. I enjoyed the game overall, except it froze when we had 1 heart to go for BlackBeard and had to play the whole last level over. Same thing happened when we fought Davy Jones.
2 Hours: Angry Birds: I'm glad I finished this. I was so tired of how crappy it was on . It was fun to go through it again technically, but there are more levels and less crap on the iPod version.
1 Hour: Halo: Reach: My friend's cousin was playing so he decided we should too. That's cool. I am terrible with the DMR after not playing it for... 8 months. We were going to play another night too but his son wouldn't goto bed so that killed that.
30 minutes: Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift: Completed a quest and failed another. Sounds about...

Gaming 7/2-7/8

4 Hours: Lego Pirates of the Caribbean: Made it through the first and second movies, started the 3rd but I had to make my girlfriend watch the third movie before we played the 3rd movie so we didn't quite finish it off. We were going to see the new movie before playing the levels but probably won't which is no big deal. I figure we will have this beat in a few more hours.
4 Hours: Angry Birds: I decided I would take a "fun" break after Final Fantasy XII before I hit the backlog again. This is not really fun. I don't know if it's trying to play it on such a large screen or if it's a crappy port but it sucks on the ps3. Not to mention it freezes almost every time I get a golden egg...

I think the freezing thing might be a bad sign though, as Lego Pirates has frozen too. I'm hoping that my ps3 is not dying but it's had a good run so we will see what happens. When I switched out my hard drive a few months back I backed up...

Gaming 6/25-7/1

4 Hours: Final Fantasy XII: Long story short, I beat the game finally. Just in case you ever plan on beating it So I had to try and defeat the boss at the top of the tower a second time. With the shortcut and full health it was a joke. First time through the Bahamut I made it to the final boss and believe I had almost beaten him since he used his crazy attack Teraflare. He used it a second time and that wiped me out. I went back a second time with an actual game plan and although very nerve racking it was no where near as bad as I thought it would be. After he used Teraflare this time I used a quickening and that didn't do it, used a megaelixir then another quickening and that didn't do it, so with no magic points left I figured I was done for, but he died shortly thereafter. Ending was so so... the biggest thing is that I have been playing this game for around 6 months, my counter was at 70 hours, although my actual play time is probably around 85 hours. ...

Gaming 6/18-6/24

4 Hours: Final Fantasy XII: I plowed my way to the top of the tower and then got destroyed by the boss at the top, mainly because you can not heal yourself. I tried to go back a second time but had a lot of trouble with the way points teleporting me to the wrong places. Finally made it back but tried to use the waypoint to go back to the save point and it took me back to the first floor. Decided just to walk back to the top to gain more experience and I think I have a shortcut to that boss now.
4 Hours: Lego Batman: Me and my girlfriends spent our time doing almost all of the villian levels. We did all the Riddler and Penguin levels and I say in another hour we can be done with the Joker levels and the entire game.

FF really tricked me after how easy it was to make it to the top of the tower. I think that the boss might use disease a lot and I don't have very many remedies/vaccine's on me so if I can't beat him I might just...

Gaming 6/11-6/17

4 Hours: Final Fantasy XII: I have been just plowing through this game as of late, took care of the Giruvegan, walked back to the Balfoheim Port, flew to Ridorana Cataract. I am still on the first floor, but unlocked the boss and defeated the boss, just didn't use the waypoint to leave the floor yet. The last 2 bosses I fought (outside first floor, and then the first floor) I both beat without having to bring anyone back to life, and no attack magic. Hopefully the rest of the game is pretty easy.
4 Hours: Lego Batman: My girlfriend continued her Lego kick so we started this game after Lego Indiana Jones. I had already beaten half of the Riddlers and Penguins levels. We finished off all of the hero levels and started the villian levels.
2 Hours: Lego Indiana Jones: We finished this one off last weekend. I enjoyed the game overall. Glad to get a game out of my backlog too.

I was thinking if Sony had not given away those...

Gaming 6/4-6/10

4 Hours: Final Fantasy XII: After spending a few hours just trying to make it to the save point at the bottom of the ramps my dreams of the boss being easy in the Giruvegan did not come true. He actually doesn't feel hard but I haven't been able to beat him all week, so he probably is hard? I feel like this is a good place to level up though and after doing so for awhile, warped back to some other places to buy newer weapons/armor/spells/etc. I realized that Balthier (I never really use him, he is my lowest level party member) couldn't cast any magic because of his accessory. I changed that so when I walk back down to the boss it should hopefully not be a problem.
4 Hours: Lego Indiana Jones: My girlfriend decided she wanted this to be our next game, I had already beaten 4/6 levels in Raiders, and at the end of the week all we have left is 5 levels in Last Crusade. I have been having a good time, but some of the levels seem too hard for even...