I was Kidnapped by Ninjas?

It's been awhile since I've updated my blog, long enough so that people who know me have asked why I've "given up" on it. I didn't intend to have such a long hiatus, the time just sort of snuck by too quickly. I write nearly all of my blog entries during my morning commute. The 45-60 minutes of undisturbed time on the train is well-suited for it, and it's pretty much my only "free" time. I think of it as "me-time". (When you commute 3 hours a day for over 10 years, you come up with all sorts of ways to rationalize it into being a good thing.) The trip home, when I often have to stand for the first 20 minutes of the ride, I've pretty much reserved for hand-held gaming.

My current game is Izuna: The Legend of the Unemployed Ninja on the DS, and I have found myself compelled to grab my DS most mornings after getting settled on the train, rather than opening up my laptop to write blog entries for Kiki. Or if I do pull out my laptop, it has been to compose cranky tirades or proposals to post on the Sackholders-Only forum for TheUltimates over one issue or another ("I hate Salvage", "our limbus rules let people take advantage of us and need to be tougher"). And there have been mornings where I'd just sit with my eyes closed, listening to my MP3 player, thinking I'm really too old to be staying up late on work nights. The latter usually occurs on Thursday mornings, after particularly late-running city Dynamis runs. It hurts to get up at 5:45 when you don't go to bed until 1. For that matter, it hurts to get up at 5:45 when you don't get to bed until 11 too! It also doesn't help when work and life and game stress keep you from sleeping properly.

Anyway, Izuna's really a fun "rogue-like" dungeon crawler that takes me back to the days of nethack, and it really has been a perfect commuter train companion. My trips to and from work never seemed so quick before. I finally "finished" the game this week, and just have the 100 level bonus dungeon that I may end up giving up on before moving on to my next game. For the bonus dungeon, you have to enter with no items at all, and are dropped back down to Level 1 (only within the bonus dungeon, so I still have Izuna capped at Level 99 if I want to go back through some of the normal dungeons). The levels are all randomly generated, so it's really a matter of luck whether you can find the items you need to survive as you go along. When you die, you get sent back to the surface empty-handed, ready to rush back in and try again. In dozens of attempts, I've only managed to get past the 6th floor once, only to be slaughtered on the 20th floor. Just when I think I've got a reasonable weapon and a handful of healing orbs, I step on a demon trap and get surrounded by 5 monsters that quickly turns Izuna into mincemeat and sends her back to the village.

I am still playing FFXI as much as ever, and there have been quite a few things that I've wanted to write about, so look for some new entries over the days to come. My game-life is still fairly repetitive with Assualt/Dynamis/Limbus/Salvage occupying most of my time, but there's always some new things that come along. I've scarcely done anything with the expansion, but did make it to old Windurst and did the first missions, and also made it to old Bastok. I'll probably try to get to Sandy this weekend, and see if I can do some quests and Campaign activities.

Here's a recent happy screenshot - congratulations Lumikumi on completing your Valor set! It's nice to finally see you in a Surcoat - we're the Taru Tank Twins again!