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Spoiler Alert. I don’t have the answer to this question but, I can’t get away from thinking about it. For a while now I’ve played plenty of games that don’t require a ton of time to get a great experience. Life is Strange, Meat Boy, Sonic, HunieCam Studio (don’t judge), Kamiko. I have also played games that I’ve put Hours on hours into, Persona 5, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age and Monster Hunter (300+ Hours). Which did I have more fun playing though?

Of all the games in the list the most fun I have had would have to be Persona 5, with 80+ hours in, but does that make Monster Hunter a better game because I put MORE time into it? Does it make Life is Strange and HunieCam worse games because I put less time? No, of course not.

What I feel is happening with SOME games, because there is a difference, the gameplay is drawn out by an expansive open world with so much and so little to do all at the same time. A good example would be the infamous Skyrim, Tons to do? Yup! Is it all working towards a goal, Not... really? And inversely, Super Mario Odyssey, encourages map exploration to find treasures that lead up to the second ending of the game at 500 moons, which does take some time your first time around and blind. 

I genuinely hope the future of gaming really takes into consideration the content of the game, instead of just stringing together countless sidequests to be able to put on the box “100s of Hours of Content available.” I’d rather have “Worth every minute.” On the box.

I will try to keep this really simple to avoid any sort of spoilers for this game. This game takes an edgy tone where as the previous game took a more mystical vibe. The events in this game were a lot more relatable, but still kept that sense of looming doom / panic. I personally loved it.

Controls are similar to the previous game with a new arguement mechanic centered around Chloe’s nature of course. Which fit the game really well, it’s just sometimes really unclear what will do what, so you will probably end up redoing segments over and over just to get the outcome you wanted, there are plenty of times while I was playing the game that I was just kinda defeated when there was long unskippable cutscenes to go through to redo an arguement sequence over and over again. I eventually just looked up the correct ways to get the outcome I wanted in all honesty, ( don’t judge me).

I really did enjoy myself with this game, I’m glad I played the game all the way through because honestly ,if I had played this game when it first game out and having to wait a long time between each episode, I would not have been okay, there are heavy cliffhangers at the end of every episode that just makes you want to play more immediately.

Before I even get into the review, I believe that there needs to be communication on me as an individual first, before just saying what I liked and don’t like about the iPad.

- I haven’t owned an iPad since the iPad Air back in college.

- I am very interested in using tablets as drawing tools primarily. I have owned the Surface Pro 4 w/ Keyboard (Primary Machine) and Samsung Tab A w/ S-Pen (Drawing tablet only)

-I’m deep within the Apple Ecosystem (Apple Watch, Mac, iPhone, etc.)

Now that you know these things, we can continue. First off, there is a ton of complaints about the screen, because it’s a “Non-Laminated Display” meaning the Display is not sitting directly to the glass, which makes it so there is a slight gap between the glass and the screen. Long story short, this isn’t a big deal. Maybe if you are coming from an iPad Pro or something equivalent you “might” notice, but if you are coming from an iPad Pro... you probably don’t need this device anyway.

I purchased this because I needed an upgrade from my Samsung Tab A w/ S-Pen, and there just aren’t any decent options on the market. This won’t be a review on bashing the Tab A but this tablet, wasn’t created for creativity purposes in mind, which is understandable. I would get 10 layers into a simple sketch or drawing and it would sometimes freeze and crash. Also the drawing app “Procreate” is only for Apple at the time of writing this. I also use Sketchbook Pro.

This device is amazing, honestly. For $329 + $99 for the Apple Pencil accessory (which I do agree is too expensive) this is a great piece of technology. There are plenty of situations where I would be heading out and potentially want to work on something, and instead of me putting my MacBook Pro in my bag, I just grab my iPad instead. Typing is easily fixed, I do use a keyboard with it and a case that doubles as a stand also. (I am actually typing this right now on the tablet / keyboard) The multi-tasking is limited to one full screen, and one hovering app or two split-screen applications whereas on the iPad Pro you can have two split-screen apps and a hovering app as well. I am assuming this is because of RAM limitations, this iPad has 2GB instead of 4GB.

This device actually solves another problem I had as well, a second monitor. I wish Apple would natively support this, but I doubt that will ever happen, using Duet Display in conjunction with my MacBook is pretty amazing. I was at one point willing to purchase the ASUS USB-C Monitor for like 270 or so, but this is a little better in a pinch, If I really do want to use it when I’m at my office.

Super Meat Boy is an incredible game with tight controls. You’ve probably already played it and if you haven’t you should. There’s a flash game called “Meat Boy” that I played years upon years ago. This game is available on some many platforms, my particular method of playing the game was on Xbox One via Xbox 360 Backwards compatibility. I also have the game on Steam as well.

As far as the game itself goes, it’s a treat, the game is broken up into levels and worlds like OG Super Mario Bros 3 with an “over world”. I honestly had way too much fun with this game. There is so much to do It distracted me from finishing the game for my challenge. I am naturally really good at platformers (see my Cup Head Post) so the game wasn’t as hard as it probably could have been if I was not so naturally proficient with them. The game does definitely challenge you with the fan physics towards the end of the game which was a little more annoying than fun in my opinion. But for sure the game is fair in most cases. The controls are insanely tight. Not to mention that there is an incredible selection of music to behold, which last time I checked is on Spotify also.

There are people in two kinds of camps for Ninja: 1. Happy that he has grown to these heights in such a small amount of time 2. Salty, because they don’t have his success or his growth.

Regardless of what you think of Ninja, Ninja is one of the greatest things to happen to twitch since the Dr. Disrespect or Shroud in my opinion. Ninja brings a positivity and energy that I have never really seen in a game. He consistantly brings in 90,000+ viewers to his streams and streams for long periods at a time, 180+ Subscribers on Twitch, 5 Million on Youtube, and 1 Million on Instagram is nothing short of phenomenal. He was on the news recently and projected to earn 500k per month, he is now THE most successful streamer on the platform, and what a way to represent the community. I’m very okay with Ninja being the face of twitch.

He is bringing tons of people to twitch to stream, and to watch, i’m very interested to see where this goes.

Game: Cuphead Difficulty: Hard? Finished: January 8, 2018

The reason there is a question mark beside the difficulty is because it honesty didn’t feel so bad, as well as the next game on the list. Cuphead to me was one of the most enjoyable experiences with a platformer I’ve ever had.

If you haven’t played Cuphead before, then you really should give it a try. It’s not easy, but it’s very fair. It is very trial and error based, which seemed to bother me with the dark souls series but I’m slowly realizing it is basically the same thing. Play, die, learn, repeat, play, die, learn, repeat until completion. I personally played this game a little harder than some because I went for the pacifist (highest rank) in the “Run n’ Gun” levels. These are achieved by not shooting a single shot. And completing the level, luckily it doesn’t matter if you get hit or not, so you can damage boost past somethings to make it a little easier for you. The Run n’ Gun stages were harder than some of the boss stages in my opinion, when going for the pacifist rank. Keep in mind, if you shoot, once, at all you lose the rank, even if you don’t hit anything, you can’t get the rank, so just start over. Sometimes I would make it 75% of the way through the level just to shoot and have to start over because I fat fingered.

What I have been meaning to include in these posts are some of my most memorable moments of the game, things I will never forget or key highlights from playing the game so that not only I can share with anyone viewing this blog, but also for me in the future. Some of my favorite moments include:

The Train fight, it was my hardest challenge even harder than the devil and dice boss rush. I’m not really sure why but it really made me learn Cuphead inside and out. My first pacifist rank, and all the others, with the hardest being the level at the docks. The animation goes without saying is absolutely incredible and has so much heart and soul put into it. Streaming it, I streamed all of this game and had a blast, though it was mostly filled with “Whoa you can do that without shooting?” I had fun.

Game: Kingdom Hearts II (Final Mix) Difficulty: Normal Finished: January 3, 2018

I’ve played Kingdom Hearts II plenty of times, but this is the first time I’ve ever experienced the “Final Mix” version. This version includes extra cutscenes, battles among everything else to make this the definitive version of Kingdom Hearts II.

The experience quite enjoyable, I knew it wouldn’t be too much different from the base Kingdom Hearts II gameplay, but it was nice to see the little additions to the game that was not in the game that I get up playing. The music was incredible and the bosses were iconic and memorable. I really wish that this was the version of Kingdom Hearts II that released globally, but It is kind of nice to be able to choose between versions. Though I think it would also be kind of interesting to have the ability to choose between playing the Final Mix or the normal version of the game.

I know I’ve spoken a lot about gameplay but not so much about the story, eh…. Because it didn’t interest me very much. Yeah there were some interesting twists, but the bottom line Is that the story is really hard to follow and really confusing. So many different characters, two characters with the same name, characters who are different characters but just in another form? Characters that turned into other characters but consumed by darkness… the list goes on. I don’t really play Kingdom Hearts for the story because I know that is a roller coaster. I do care what happens to the main cast of characters but honestly most of the charm comes from interacting with the Disney kingdoms and the retelling of really memorable stories with a twist.

On sale for a limited time, also.

Link: https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/2424613-pokepirate?store_id=142791

I’m going on an adventure, and this is to document it. Yeah, I know “adventure and “document” sound way more exciting than what I am actually doing. 

I’ve always identified myself as a “gamer” and I never stick to new years resolutions just like everyone else. (I bet you haven’t even heard of that word since the first week of January) The list of games is still in the works, but you can find that here. It’s a current status update for the challenge throughout the year if you so choose to follow along, or just get curious.

 I’m doing this challenge to give myself a goal for the year, to chew through my backlog of games, and to relive some games from my childhood!

Now that the introduction is out of the way here are MY rules, to keep things simple.

Game is considered done when credits roll

All games must be played on Normal difficulty or higher (or as similar as normal as possible)

Games should at least be 3-4 hours long average. (I am going by Howlongtobeat.com statistics.

Official releases of the games, most recent patch update.

No Flash Games: Trying to stray away from flash games even though I know there are some kick-ass games, this may change if I get recommended some really good ones.

I started streaming on Twitch also. Name’s Dreadliest. I’ve become Twitch Affiliate (yay) and sometimes will stream some games I feel are interesting enough to stream. In a perfect world I would stream my progress through ALL of the games that I am playing through, but I have a full time job and need time to sleep also. I’m kind of fresh to Tumblr, as far as posting normally I just lurk and share, but I decided to actually contribute to the community for now. Also Follow me on Twitter as @thedreadliest​  for faster and more frequent updates.