Official Favorite Games Profile Sheet

So yesterday, I get a facebook message from my friend Brian. A simple, three line message.

Yo.
<link>
Let's do this.


So I take a look at the link and here's what I see:

 

YES SIR. Let's do this we shall. Now, a half an hour later, he sent me another link. Obviously, his own favorite picks. I don't actually have his permission, but I don't care and I'm going to link to it anyway (sorry Brian). Since I'm at work here, I don't think I'm going to go through the motions and scour the web for pics to edit this sheet and make mine look anywhere near as official as his looks. I give him mad props and kudos for that. But another reason is that I had to zoom in quite a bit to get an idea of what some of these games were, because the pics are so damned small. So instead, I'm just going to make a full-functioning list for my own picks.

In doing this activity, I realize I can practically write complete blog posts in pretty much each of these categories. HAH. So many games. To pick one for each is just going to not be easy. Also, I'm making it my goal NOT to duplicate any cross-category, since I really don't think I'll need to. Let's face it the "pool of existing video games I've played" out there is pretty damned deep. Here goes, after the jump.

Talking About Tactics Games

A little bit of a departure, though very much deserving of a post on this blog. I'll come back to more Windows 8 review in a while; I figure I'd do more of a "1 month later" review and cover a few more topics I think are important as far as navigating around and playing with an operating system. Today, I wanted to get a little bit of an idea out there on the topic of tactics games. I'm sure you've all played them, or at the very least have heard of them. For reference, some of my favorite tactics games out there (though the list of which I've gone through is far longer than this): Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Battle, Vandal Hearts, Suikoden, and Shining Force.

Just a few broad ideas to be thrown out here, and I'm curious to hear your ideas too. So shout out in the comments if you feel like talking about this. I was just recently asked to name one thing I love about tactics games they all have in common, one thing I really dislike about them, and one thing I wish they could implement or improve on when it came to tactics games. So here that goes. After the jump.

Pretty damned ashamed I didn't include a picture of Shining Force II before this edit.
My bad, favorite tactics game of my childhood. My bad completely.

Windows 8 First Look Review - Part 1

Yes yes. In a land of the internet where everyone has opinions and reviews, mine is coming sort of late. But that's ok, because I know that only a small portion of my friends have Windows 8 and the larger majority of them probably haven't even bothered to think about upgrading their OS yet. I sort of did it at a whim and I wanted to give myself a full 10 days or so before I gave my full-out opinion on it.

Now, before I begin, let me explain how I generally use my computer. When I'm at home, I generally am not so much a "power-user". That is to say, I don't do any hardcore benchmark testing, I don't do graphic design work, I'm not programming anything, there are no models rendering in the background while I'm doing other things. No. I very much do "normal" stuff. I'll watch some movies. I tool around on youtube. I watch streams on twitch.tv. I jot down some mental notes on notepad or Word. I keep track of deck ideas for MtG in excel. I game. I game on Cockatrice, MtGO, and any other game I feel like playing at the time whether it's some MMO, FPS, RPG, or what have you. And then I surf through facebook and check emails and listen to music on Spotify. I feel like I'm a fairly average geek-type normal computer user. More of the review to follow after the jump.