I was finally able to track down a copy of Fire Emblem Awakening and I am completely, totally, hopelessly hooked on it.

I’ve really been dying for a good 3DS game to sink my teeth into, especially after getting my XL a few months ago and not really playing much on it. Kid Icarus was a disappointment, Kingdom Hearts didn’t stick and Paper Mario was an exceptionally hollow experience. I wanted something meaty, something that was going to have me gripping that handheld for dear life. I finally found it.

My past experiences with Fire Emblem games are not noteworthy. I bought Path of Radiance because it was hard to find and I wanted to try the series but only got a few hours in. I got Radiant Dawn as a gift and started it twice before putting it aside for other games. Sacred Stones gave me heart palpitations. Despite the series and I never hitting it off properly, I downloaded the Awakening demo the day it went up and knew I had found my game within five minutes of starting it up.

I was originally going to write something about the debacle surrounding the Ni No Kuni Wizard’s Edition, but that’s irrelevant at this juncture – Namco Bandai screwed up royally, we got our Wizard’s Edition despite the difficulties and, most important of all, the game is absolutely phenomenal. Christina and I spent a good part of the weekend playing it (we’re about 13 hours in as I write this) and we’re both hopelessly head-over-heels in love with it. Level 5 and Studio Ghibli have created something really special here, and despite my limited time with it I’m completely comfortable recommending it. I really feel like this is a once-in-a-lifetime game.

My sister-in-law really surprises me sometimes.

She’s 15 years old, born around three months after the Nintendo 64 launched in North America. She doesn’t remember the “good old days” of gaming because she was too busy spitting up and pooping in diapers.

So I’ve spent the past week and a half furiously making my way through Mass Effect 2, wondering why the hell it took me so long to get into it. I love the game; in fact, I’d be so bold as to claim it’s one of the finest I’ve ever played. So why am I desperately trying to finish it with less than two weeks until the sequel drops?

The same thing happened to me with the first Mass Effect, actually. I picked it up simply because of the BioWare name due to my profound love for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I worked for GameStop at the time and was enrolled in a SUPER SEKRIT program Microsoft had for retail employees where you could take online quizzes on their products to earn points which could be redeemed for free games. I had the points, I heard the game was good, so I ordered it.

I played it for a couple of hours before being bored and giving up. I think I just wanted it to be KotOR, which it wasn’t. So it sat on my shelf while I went and did other things. Fast forward a couple of years and Mass Effect 2 is on the horizion, hype train barreling forward full speed ahead. I decide to dust off the first game and give it another shot.

I immediately fall in love and kick myself for not playing through it earlier.

So Mass Effect 2 drops and I snatch it up. My original save clocked in at around 8 hours or so before I stopped. I don’t remember why; I think it was around the same time I was playing Final Fantasy XIII (another game I abandoned) so I think juggling two RPGs just got to be too much and I moved on to other things. I tried again a few months later, this time getting about 25 hours in before stopping for some unknown reason. I had loved the game since the start so I honestly have no clue why I keep dropping it.

So here I am again, twelve days out from Mass Effect 3, kicking myself for not playing Mass Effect 2 sooner. For a series that’s so fantastic I’m sure making it hard for myself to get the most out of it.

Don’t you hate it when one simple design choice ruins an entire game?

As a 3DS Ambassador, I got 10 free Game Boy Advance games via download, including Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. I haven’t played much Fire Emblem despite owning both Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, but James, editor at Nintendo Life, asked me if I’d review it as my first Nintendo Life assignment. I agreed.

I’m not super into strategy RPGs, but I do love me some Shining Force and Final Fantasy Tactics, and I’d always wanted to really get into Fire Emblem. I liked the look of it and the “rock-paper-scissors” weapon balance was super fun. The writing was good and I loved the character designs. Things were looking good!

(Note: I originally published this article on Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming on February 8, 2011.)

One of my weird gaming quirks is that I am inexplicably drawn to interesting title screens. Like a moth to a flame, if you show me a cool title screen, I’m more than likely to play your game. That’s part of how I pick which “unknown” games to play on Virtual Console, since all you really get to see are the title screens!

One of the first games I downloaded for the Virtual Console was Neutopia for the Turbografx-16, and I selected it solely based on how amazing the title screen was. Awesome 16-bit graphics, hero in a heroic pose, colorful landscape, it had all I was looking for. I bought it without even knowing what kind of game it was, I just knew I wanted in.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a rad game. You all know how much I was looking forward to it because of the fifty other articles I’ve written about it. It absolutely delivers in every way and is even better than I’d hoped. I’m not going to bore you with more talk about the game today, though. No, I’ve been taking screenshots since I started playing on December 13th (Early Access what whaaat) and I wanted to share them with you. My character is a Mirialan Jedi Knight named Zetharis.

There won’t be any plot spoilers or anything for the Jedi Knight class story, but there will be location spoilers (spoiler alert: You go to Tatooine like in every other Star Wars game!). These are all shrunk down, so click to see them full size. Enjoy!

There’s been three big games released recently, and I’m a lazy good-for-nothing so I haven’t written about them yet. Let me rectify that, as a Christmas gift to you, my handful of loyal readers.

I haven’t written much lately. Looking at this front page, I’ve hardly written anything of substance in the past month! Sorry about that. That’s just like me, saying I’m not going to stop writing and then doing exactly that. In my defense Christina and I have been very busy, she’s been sick and those Blogimations that no one watches are a LOT of work.

Rather than spend another day doing nothing and complaining that I don’t know what to write about, here’s a few quick thoughts on what I’ve been up to.

Okay guys, it is ALL ABOUT Skylanders now.

I’ve been following the development of Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure for a while now, because I thought the idea of collecting toys that would then work with a video game was an awesome idea. I’d been dying to play it, and the other night Christina and I picked up the Xbox 360 starter set along with a couple of extra figures.

Since then, we’ve been back to the store twice to buy more. I’d say it’s working.