Oh, hey, I’m back and you can now all cheer

Hi.

::hooray yippee woohoo:::

Okay, settle down. It’s not like I’m–

::wahoooooo::

Aw, so you did miss me, dear readers? That’s swell. I missed–

::so much frakkin’ confetti everywhere::

–you, too. But not too much–I was on my honeymoon in Walt Disney World after all. Hard to miss nearly anything when you’re in the happiest place on Earth.

Now…since this is a videogame blog and not a wedding blog, let’s see what I got to play over the last numerous days: Dragon Quest IX and Picross 3D.

THAT’S IT. I had my entire DS collection with me, and I only ever switched out the cartridges twice. Unless you want to count me not going crazy over missing out on Fallout: New Vegas fun as a game. Cause I played that a lot. A LOT. But I did a good job about not pestering Tara over it. And we’re still married! Hooray!

But yeah…I grinded in DQIX like never before thanks to airplane rides. I was able to raise my party of four by four whole levels from roughly 41 to 45, taking down both nasty forms of  King Godwyn, and have now made my way to the Realm of the Almighty for what I suspect is the final boss battle. I say that like it means something, but with DQIX, it really  doesn’t. Beating the final boss does not mean completing the game, but it will open up a slew of more sidequests, as well as give me more breathing room for grinding new characters and completing all those lists (alchemy, item, clothing, so on). Speaking of sidequests, I finished a couple of ’em, the most frustrating being Prat’s the Way to Do It, wherein I needed to get my Minstrel character to land two critical hits with the Pratfall ability. No easy task. Grinding helped though, and when I nailed the second one I was genuinely surprised and happy; I hate giving up a sidequest to make room for another one that seems impossible to do (uh, like that metal slime one). I also ended up completing two treasure maps, killing some legendary bosses like Shogum and Nemean–I think those are references to previous DQ games, but I don’t recognize ’em.

Oh, and the tally of completed puzzles in Picross 3D is now 279. Impressed? Well…you should be!

So, yeah. Not an amazing amout of gaming got done during the wedding/honeymoon time, as was to be expected. But that’s all about to change. Here I come, Fallout: New Vegas!

The arduous task of deciding what Nintendo DS games to pack for the honeymoon

Five days to go until the wedding, and I’m still not even packed yet for the honeymoon. Hmm, might want to get going on that. Will have to make a note. Or, um, just look at this blog post again later. And I’m not even talking about packing clothes…just trying to narrow down what Nintendo DS games I can fit–and should fit–in my travel bag.

First, let me stop you and your finger-waggin’ assuming. Yes, this is Tara and I’s honeymoon, and yes, we’ll be doing lots of honeymoon-like things. Wink, wink. As well as going all over the place in Disney World and the Wizardy World of Harry Potter, dining fine and laughing and loving it up. I promise you, we will. But remember, there’s the airport waiting and flight itself to contend with, and if there’s one thing I’m really not a huge fan of…it’s flying. Anxiety and giant hunks of metal and wires magically floating in the air do not mix well. So I will need some distraction like woah, and thus enters my Nintendo DS. My travel bag can hold around 12 game catridges (I’m actually a little fuzzy on that; it might even be more), as well as another cartridge in the DS game slot.

Here’s the ones that fall under must definitely bring:

• Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars
• Chrono Trigger DS
• Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
• Mario Kart DS
• Picross 3D
• Scribblenauts

DQIX will be perfect for killing time, as there are a bunch of sidequests and grinding to do. I also picked up Chrono Trigger DS last week and am enjoying that a lot too (more on that game later). Scribblenauts, while not perfect, is fun just to fool around with, and I think the others listed are self-explanatory.

And then here’s some filler:

• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• MySims Agents
• Pokemon HeartGold

 

I think Tara is just bringing one game with her, and that’s Animal Crossing: Wild World. I have good memories of that game helping to soothe my sanity during a much longer flight from New Jersey to Arizona when I went to see my sister, meaning she’ll be just fine.

Either way, still lots to get done this week. Please pray for me.