I've alluded before to the fact that it's a little difficult to hold a 9 - 5 job -- well, in my case, an 8 to 7 job -- and still review games. The obvious results of this are that reviews for long RPGs take longer to post, and perhaps more importantly for the sake of the world, I get less sleep and thus start to go insane at random points during the day.

Ok -- that very last part's not true; I don't go insane due to lack of sleep. Would be cool if I did, though, right? Some dumpy Asian dude rampaging around the city of Pittsburgh, causing death and destruction en masse and leaving smoldering rubble in my wake. All imaginary, of course. Kind of like The Incredible Hulk, but I'm not green, and I'm certainly not incredible.

One side effect that it does have is that I find myself unable to shake the games from my head while at my day job. I just caught myself mentally humming the Guild tune from Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for DS, a game I reviewed over a month ago. While I was washing my hands in the office kitchen, I randomly started thinking about alternative weapons to use in Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer, a game that I reviewed in April. On and off, while I'm typing out an email, I'll be thinking about how the hell I'm supposed to beat an FOE in Etrian Odyssey II. None of my daydreaming, by the way, has ever included a game that I'm not reviewing or haven't reviewed while I'm reviewing a game -- only ones that have and will get reviews posted online.

The good thing is that, well, when people say they get worn out on marathoning through a game, I don't feel it as much. It's there, certainly -- playing one game until the end that could potentially frustrate you (if it's a poor title) will wear you the hell out. But given that my day job is certainly not as entertaining as playing even a terrible videogame, playing a sack of crap is actually like a little vacation when I get back from the office. At the very least, I'm not putting up with said game for 17 hours straight.

I said a while back -- I can't remember if it was here, or in a podcast -- that playing games for review might start making me a little more weary of game-playing in general as a fan of games. It's one of the first things that's likely to hit you when you go from just enjoying your games to having to marathon through one for a review. Thankfully the Growing Weary part has happened only a very tiny, tiny bit -- and oddly it's thanks to my day job, which I otherwise don't necessarily have the kindest words for. I shouldn't even be complaining about my damned job -- I'm lucky to have it, especially in this economy, and especially when many of my friends are struggling and working hard for their paper while I sit in some air-conditioned office and accumulating mileage and hotel points. So, thank you, day job, for helping to keep games as a "job" as fun as they used to be.

Oh, and I saw Wanted. Kind of a dumb film, but I somehow enjoyed it quite a bit. It was between that or Hancock this past weekend. You can tell me whether or not I made the right choice.

- I'm finishing up Etrian Odyssey 2 for review. Damn, if that isn't a torturous game to play through when you hold down a separate day job -- and an intense one no less. If you've played the original Etrian Odyssey, you know what to expect in terms of the kind of dedication it demands of you. But holy hell is it a great time for tinkerers. There are so many little things you can (and will need to) tweak inside of this little DS card. Each character c|ass has upwards of ten unique skills that can be learned and leveled up through extensive and exhaustive use of a skill tree, in other words demanding that you open up said skills by first distributing skill points to base skills and character traits.

To the story-hungry role-playing gamer, yeah, this sounds nauseating -- but anyone who likes customizing their characters will love taking their own personal paths through each of their five party members' skill trees. The other thing is that there are upwards of ten c|asses to mess around with too, and you can recruit them all into your guild -- so you can spend one save file just swapping characters in and out, leveling them up, and seeing where the wind takes you. Only problem is that you only get one skill point per level-up, and you're capped at level 70 (normally) -- so not only do you gain your skills reeeaalllly sllooowwwlly but you also really have to think about what you're going to sacrifice since there's no possible way to level up every skill. Personally, I don't see it as a "problem" but some people might.

It can be incredibly difficult too, with enemies that take can one of your guys down in one or two blows and the extremely slow pace at which you can accumulate wealth. It's shaping up to be one of those "you'll know you'll love it if you don't throw your DS out the window when you get killed after your fourth battle and lost the work you put in over the past hour" type of game. Obviously I don't have a choice but to hold on to my DS, but even so, I've enjoyed a great deal of the punishing hours I've put into this

- 100th episode. Yeah. We're trying to come up with ideas. Among them were: (a) have people send in questions en masse with the motivation of the 100th question yielding a special prize, then read and answer every question on the air in a rapid-fire manner; (b) list our most memorable games on an individual basis, combine them to form a definitive list of 100, and then spend 60 seconds trying to comment and talk about each game in rapid-fire manner; (c) film us at another game night being foolish and silly (and hunting down Slunks on XBL), having that as a bonus to a normally-recorded and themed podcast. So far we haven't settled on one, and as silly as I wanted to be with it, maybe answering 100 questions isn't really practical. If you've suggestions, let us know -- but quick, since I need us to be ready with planning well before we record next week. Oh, and as I noted earlier this week, we're taking this weekend off. 100th episode records on the 12th, not the 5th.

- Computer. I didn't talk about this much on the podcast, and I never mentioned it here -- but I jumped on a deal for an 8800 GTS 512MB for a grand total of $177 after shipping and rebates. This was back before June, and had I waited I probably could have gotten a 9800 GTX for about $30, but no matter. It's still a pretty sweet deal on a good card, and playing Crysis at a smooth framerate is just glorious. No, I don't have Vista, so I'm not rocking all the DX10 sweetness, but just seeing Crytek's tech running without a hitch makes me giddy. Oblivion also runs fantastically. I've yet to re-install Gears of War PC, but since that was already looking and running very nicely on medium with my old card, I can't wait to see what it's like with all the bells and whistles on. Do I hear 60 fps?

Problem is, I messed up on the reinstall. I tried to be lazy and take shortcuts, so I looked up articles on how to change motherboards without reinstalling Windows completely. (I had to buy a new motherboard to accomodate this PCI-E card, since I was running on AGP prior.) I found several articles that said different things: I just needed to do a Repair install; I just needed to uninstall my old mobo drivers and then delete "ghost drivers" that stuck in the system that referred back to the old install; yadda yadda. I'd done Sysprep reinstalls before, and these worked beautifully. But, I decided on Ars Technica's solution getting rid of my old mobo drivers. Boom. I got into Windows fine, but I would get intermittent stop errors because the drivers were still conflicting. Apparently there were some that I hadn't gotten rid of but I had no idea what or where they were. So I said "**** it" and did a normal reformat and re-install like a good boy.

In truth, I should have done that from the beginning. My computer was back to running much faster, just like one always should after a re-install, and it's free of all the gunk accumulated over the last 8 months. A full reinstall REALLY isn't that bad, especially if you keep your documents and downloaded install files on a hard drive that's separate from your OS. Literally it's just nuke your boot drive, put Windows back in, and make sure your handy dandy book of install CDs by you (you DO take responsible care of the property that you spent time and money to accumulate, right?). Reinstall takes two to three hours. Watch a movie. Do it, and then just load programs in as you need them. You have all your docs. No sweat. Don't try to be lazy like me. I'm just an idiot.

- The backlog just grew. In an attempt to reconcile with Diablo (an editorial on my personal gripes with Diablo is forthcoming) I downloaded Titan Quest from STEAM. I can't wait to not play this game for another 9 months! I also got Devil May Cry 4 for Xbox 360 on a GameFly deal ($20) and Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii on an Amazon deal ($40 and then they kick you a $10 gift card), so yeah, I can't wait to play THOSE until next year. Meanwhile, I owe a whole bunch of my contributors posts on Trigames.NET. It's been really tough during the week to sit down and proofread them. GabuEx, SophinaK and SonicBoom, I'll get you guys Saturday. Promise. I mean it this time.

S'all. I need to sleep. To my fellow Americans, hope you all had a happy Fourth. To my non-American friends, hope you had an otherwise kick-ass friday.

NOTICE: We are taking off for the Fourth of July and will be back THE WEEK AFTER. That gives you extra time to send in comments and/or questions. As it is our 100th Episode, feel free to go bananas with the subject matter. Not that the lot of you aren't already bananas!

With Mega Man 9 being announced for WiiWare, XBLA and PSN (note that we mistakenly thought it was announced only or WiiWare), and with 8-bit stylized graphics no less, there was only one thing we could do: talk about MEga mANz!!!!111 We talk about our standout memories, which boss is our fave, which GAME was our fave, and briefly run through the list of robot masters from games 1 through 7 (Junk Man!). Watch along with http://sydlexia.com/megaman.htm as your visual aid. Here's the funny thing: There was some other big announcement this week about some religious game about satanic worship from some frigid game developer. We never heard of it, and we're sure you haven't either, but apparently it's the third game in its series. We talk a little bit about this Diablo III thing and see what comes of it. ....oh come on, we're joking. Everyone knows Diablo.

Regardless, with the conversations dominated by Mega Man and Diablo, there is no real news bucket this episode. So, just go ahead and...

...download here.
File Size: 54 MB
Running Time: 1:52:26

Musical Interludes provided by:

Mega Man 2 (NES)
Mega Man (NES)
Mega Man 3 (NES)

Outro provided by Cablevision (ell oh ell)

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With the reveal of Mega Man 9 and its 8-bit core, there's a chance we'll wax nostalgic about Mega Man in this week's Trigames.NET Podcast instead of doing the regular rigamarole. Even if we do end up doing the regular structure, though, we encourage you to send in some Mega Man memories. Oh, and of course, your questions as well. Same place as always: mailbag AT trigames DOT net or you can fill out the form here.

Please remember that your question or comment won't be read unless it's sent to the mailbag!