Little Breaks and New Addictions

[jdotmi]

Currently taking a little sanity break from World of Warcraft and City of Heroes/Villains. The CoX sanity break will end when I8 hits live. The WoW sanity break will probably last a couple weeks. I'll probably log in every few days to use my salt shaker, but that's about it. I need to not be up until midnight during the week for a while. At least until I'm not stressing out over work.

This past weekend (actually, until tomorrow) was Employee Appreciation for Borders folks. Unfortunately, one book I was going to pick up is actually not in stock at any location near me (the new World of Darkness core book), so didn't manage to get it.

I did, however, get the first and third collection of Superman/Batman, which includes the single funniest panel with Power Girl EVAR when she can't figure out how they expect her to distract... oh.... The first book also has the only comics I've ever read with Cir-El in them, as I wasn't actually following comics when she existed. Of course, now she never existed, so it's (not quite) all moot anyway and I'm wondering exactly how they reconciled that with everything else that happened in that time frame since, ya know, it's not like she was in some minor side event or something. They were raiding the freakin' White House!

I also got the collection of Infinite Crisis, which actually has some changes from the original printing. Not just corrections, mind you, but actual page changes. Like, there's this big spread at the end of the last issue that I don't remember from the original (which I may just have to go dig out and look at to make sure I'm not delusional) that includes basically every character who has been in 52, including those who didn't yet exist. And I'm still mad that they killed off my favorite character, but we'll see what happens by the end of 52 as far as that goes.

I also picked up issue 10 of Supergirl, which is getting REALLY good. I need to see if I can find copies of #6, 7, and 8 so that I'll be all caught up with it since I already bought the collection of 0 through 5. I think 11 should be out by now or very soon. I missed the entire Kandor arc, and coming into it with only seeing the end of it with PG pissed and apparently not talking to SG after their blow-up on Liberty Isle makes me wonder what else I missed. I do like how Boomer and Cassie are being used. And I love love love Cassie's reaction to Kara's attempt at a secret identity, and Kara's babbling about it while Cassie fights the bad guy and clearly not having an easy time of it and finally just saying "Did high-school make you retarded?" Cracked me up! Plus we got to see more of Kara's life on Krypton. Ya know what? I'm not sure how Kara or Zor-El managed to not wind up tossed in the Phantom Zone, but still. I continually get the impression that life on Krypton was totally out of Kara's control and her father was just psychotic, but there's still the possibility that those memories are just residue from Darkseid's brainwashing. I doubt it, though, because her costume distinctly changed at the end of Supergirl #5 to a combination of Evil Kara's and Good Kara's costumes, which makes me think that she does indeed have her full memories, she has just chosen to be the Good Kara (but, thankfully, not the hopelessly naive Kara). Granted the artists since then can't decide from one panel to the next which skirt she is actually wearing, but still. I went through the entirety of 0 through 5 and she NEVER had the yellow trim on her skirt until after she had Diana lasso the two of them together (evil Kara had silver trim on her skirt), and then it was on every panel of her in the rest of that comic. Seems deliberate to me. My only complaint with the new SG book is she looks way to freakin' old to be 16 years old.

This past weekend also saw a quick trip to Best Buy, which nearly resulted in $300 worth of purchases, but we talked ourselves down to a more sane number. So, now, I have me some Final Fantasy XII to stare at slack-jawed for months on end as I try to unlock absolutely everything for everyone. So far (less than 10 hours in), it is a LOT of fun. It's also significantly challenging. Boss fights can be tough in a way they haven't been in a FF game for a good long time. I'm sure that by the end of the game they'll be much much easier simply due to the escalation of the player's power level, but still. I'm actually stuck on a side-quest target who has kicked my ass three times because I haven't figured out how to use Quickenings effectively yet. I'm going to try to unlock a quickening panel for everyone in the party before I try him again, especially now that I know what I'll need to actually do to beat it.

Anyrate, I've been writing this in lulls in work for like two hours now. Stopping and focusing now. :-p

Comments

[jdotmi.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the hunt in the mines in the flying city after doing the entire RUN AWAY thing from the bounty hunters. Basically, I blew my quickening too early and that didn't work out so well for me.

I've thought of doing a Foe HP = 100%/steal gambit, but then the character would hop around like mad stealing. So, I have Vaan steal continuously to start fights and let the backup guys do the damage until he gets something. Sometimes, I start a fight with everyone stealing just in case, then have everyone go all out on attack after. And I've got Balthier set with a FOE HP = Critical/Poach gambit in his top slot right now. ^_^

[aular.livejournal.com]

The Nidhogg was a pain. I cycled through every party member (6 total), and all but two died before he did.

Hm. Is Poach worth it?

[jdotmi.livejournal.com]

Yes. Your kill chain goes up, you're guaranteed Loot from it, and you can still wind up with a bag/coin drop anyway. Of course, keeping the thing from dying while trying to poach can be a pain unless you set everyone to that Gambit.