The PvP is weak in this one...

• Jumped on Guild Wars for the first time in a week or so and got trounced in an AB.
• Jumped on Counter Strike: Source for the first time in a week or so and ended up with a negative KDR.
• Declined to have an argument even though I knew I was empirically correct.
• Had a staring contest with an 8 year old and lost cause he kicked me in the shin.

Needless to say, things aren't going well for me right now.

My work schedule is doing me in. I don't dislike my job, and what I do, so much as how often I do it. I've been working 65 hour weeks lately, and it's wearing on me. Now, I don't mind a long work day. I worked 13 hours yesterday without complaint, other than the extra 3 hours shouldn't have been sprung on me the day of, I should have had prior notice. This week, even with all the extra hours that got tacked on (at least of them 10 of them) I only worked 58 hours, and next week is looking like a liesurely 45.

I need a full nights sleep, which isn't liable to happen anytime soon. I was planning on getting it tonight, but Leyna and I are getting up (relatively) early in order to meet someone about a litter of rat pups (I'm building a cage at the moment, and she wants to raise some rats from infancy, rather than buy an adult from a store).

Anyway, due to my inability to compete with the living, I've been playing a lot of of console games in place of my PvP fix. Metroid Prime 3, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, Shining Force Neo, all pretty good games. Shining Force Neo is pretty much 3d Diablo, with how gameplay, loot, and avatar are handled. Voice acting is pure shit. I mean really, I thought that Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders (also a good game) had the worst voice acting of any console game, but I was dead wrong. Even worse than the fact that the voice acting is bad, it's pervasive and they won't shut up. Every time dialouge starts, you have to slog through at least 5 minutes of it. Even worse, every character you've recruited thus far, even ones not currently in your party, contributes. I fear building my party, and shudder to see what 11 characters worth of dialougee will be like.

But Disgaea, still one of my favorite games. It's a tactical RPG. Rather than facing off with randomly spawned monsters, taking turns whacking each other as both you and the enemy simply stand there waiting for the other to act, a tactical RPG is played out on a grid of sorts. While still turn based, you have the ability to move units around the battle field, as you try to out manuver your opponent and gain the edge on them. Think chess with Final Fantasy characters. Because of it's free moving nature, team size isn't limited to 3 characters in Disgaea. You can field up to 10 units per battle, and can have as many as you want in reserve, as part of your "army". This allows you to custom pick your team for each battle, after seeing what you are facing, and how they are deployed.

What really makes Disgaea cool is how it handles character classes and leveling. With a level cap of 9,999, and damage capped at- well, I don't know if there is a damage cap. Anyway, as you level different classes up, you unlock stronger versions of the same class. This in itself is nifty, but then you have the option of transmigration. This allows you to take a character and revert it back to level one, while retaining a percentage of it's original stats and skills. Even more, you can make it a level one of any class. So, your lvl 93 Ninja can become a lvl 1 Shinobi (Shinobi>Ninja), with anywhere from 30-95% of his original power. That, and if you transmigrate your Priest into a Warrior, he'll keep most if not all of his healing spells, same if you transmigrate your Mage/Skull into a Warrior (0MFGT4NKM4G3!!!1!).

Quite obviously, I'm having fun playing around with my units (that sounds dirty), creating quirky, powerful soldiers.

My wife, the Semi-Gamer

Looking at our PS2 game saves expresses a stark contrast in my wife and I, as far as gaming goes. Take for instance, Disgaea:

Save Slot 1: Chapter 5, 40+ hours, level 19
Save Slot 2: Chapter 7, 29 hours, level 44

Or Resident Evil 4:

Save Slot 1: Chapter 2-3, 15 hours
Save Slot 2: Chapter 4-1, 9 hours

To be honest, the rate at which she completes a game is mostly immaterial. Everyone plays at their own rate, and you can't quantify "fun levels" from person to person. However, the conflict isn't' so much from me poking fun at her once and a while; it comes from her ranting about how broken everything I do is in any game I play.

For instance, in Disgaea, I named a character after my wife, a warrior named Claire. Leveled her up into the 30s, then transmigrated her into a Ronin. Last night, while my wife watched, I leveled her up from 18 to 46 in the span of two battles. She immediately has a spaz attack and demands to know why it's necessary powerlevel someone like that. Honestly, seeing as the max level is 9999, I don't see how going up 38 levels in two battles is a big deal. Then again, I've barely scratched the surface of the game so far.

Another "conflict" that arises is our policy our strategy guides. I try not to use them. If I end up stuck in the same place for more than an hour or so (trust me, I'm stubborn enough to try the same failing tactic or method a dozen times in a row before adapting), I'll look it up. Or, I'll check to see how powerful a current item I possess is in comparison to end game ones, to see if investing money to upgrade it is worth it, stuff like that. Meanwhile, Leyna is playing the game with the strategy guide in her lap. If she misses a treasure chest, she'll re-load her game so she can get it on the second try. That being said, it's no surprise that when I backtracking down a path for the 3rd time, trying to find a passage or switch that I missed, Leyna starts griping at me, telling me to load up the GameFAQs page on the game, to read up on what I missed.

I guess opposites do attract.