I haven’t really had the time for writing due to a change in my employment.  It is a good change in many ways, but it does leave me with a lot less time.  I hope that soon things even out and I am able to get back to writing at least somewhat regularly

Another big thing that is the death of Nintendo President Satoru Iwata.  I don’t have much to add to the outpouring upon news of his loss.  It is a terrible loss.  His personality is a big part of what made NIntendo seem so friendly during this last decade.  Between the Nintendo Directs and Iwata Asks, he made it clear that Nintendo cared about both the games they made and their audience.  Iwata will be missed.

Beaten

Etrian Mystery Dungeon – wrote about it here.

Shinobi 3DS – This is a well made game, but it is also a very difficult one.  I was as frustrated by it as I was entertained.  Shinobi really captures the classic action game appeal of the Genesis entries in this series, but it also captures some of those game’s warts.  I am hesitant to call this game’s difficulty a wart, though. It is a clearly intentional choice; this is supposed to be a hard game.  But that didn’t stop it from hampering my enjoyment of Shinobi.  Still, for the price it was definitely worth a try.

Jade Empire – wrote about it here.

Ongoing

Knights of the Old Republic – I’ve played through about a quarter of this before and after I played Jade Empire.  There is a clearly visible evolution of Bioware’s output from Baldur’s Gate to Kotor to Jade Empire to Mass Effect.  They all work along some of the same lines, but there are clear changes to the gameplay. I am really enjoying this one.

Pokemon Alpha Sapphire – It just started playing this.  I didn’t quite feel like a new Pokemon game when this came out last year, but I picked it up when I saw it on sale and the mood struck me for some Pokemon so I started it up.  I’ve actually never gotten through this generation of Pokemon at all.  I played about halfway through Emerald back in the day, but I lost interest.  I don’t think I’ll have a problem finishing this one, even if I am not a huge fan of the Pokemon available early on.

Splatoon – I was greatly enjoying this game for a few weeks.  It is the most fun I’ve ever had with any sort of multiplayer shooter.  It is a decidedly Nintendo take on the genre, but it is also a thoughtfully designed game.  It avoids a lot of the pitfalls that make most shooters very “adult” like taking away the bullets and giving the player’s squirt guns.  The lack of voice chat is not an oversight by Nintendo, but a determined attempt to make the game playable by everyone.  I stopped enjoying it when I destroyed my save data.  As in the flash drive that held my save data was physically destroyed.  I was up around rank 12 and had unlocked several interesting weapons and I just don’t have it in my right now to start over. Hopefully I will soon.

Olli Olli – I got this out of the Nintendo Humble Bundle.  It is kind of fun to mess around with, though it didn’t really do anything to stick with me for long.  I’ll probably keep fiddling with this for a little while.

Moon Chronicles – Another Humble Bundle game.  This is just the first chapter and I’m not a huge fan of FPSes, but this has been fairly enjoyable.  I’m not in a hurry to keep playing it, but I’ll finish it up sooner or later.

Paper Mario – I kind of got distracted and didn’t make a lot of progress on this.  I really like it, but some work troubles haven’t really left me with a lot of video game time and this game just sort of got lost in the shuffle.

Persona 2 Eternal Punishment – Very slow progress, but progress is happening.  Sooner or later I am going to get really sucked into this and burn through the rest of it.

Smash Bros 4 – I got the new characters (Roy, Ryu and Lucas) but at the same time there was an accident that destroyed the flashdrive that I had my digital copy of this game saved on.  It takes a long time for me to download a 13 gb game, so by the time it was done I was   not really in the mood to play anymore.

Upcoming

Mario and Luigi Partners in Time – I’ve never played this one, but it recently became available on VC, so I’ll pick it up.

Dragon Age Origins – This is what is up next after I finish with Kotor.