Level Grinding

Yesterday, I beat Final Fantasy III (NDS). My time stamp reads 80:16:16. That's 80 hours, 16 minutes, and 16 seconds. I'd bet money that 30 of those hours were spent grinding.  All four of my Heroes of Light are at a character level of 99 and possess a Onion Knight job level of 99. This was accomplished by going into the Crystal Tower at the end of the game and fighting Bluks and Kum Kums for the character level and guarding against weak enemies outside of Ur.

Critical View

I wrote this for and posted this on my personal blog, which you can find a link to on the left. After having written it, I decided that it also had a place here, as well.

I read reviews. I read reviews written by critics. I read reviews written by friends. For a while, I even considered writing my own reviews. I decided against this for a few reasons but only one really sticks out. I don't want to experience everything in life with a critical eye or ear.

Sometime while I was in college I began to lose something. That something was the ability to just enjoy a work. My audio class taught me not to just listen to music but to break it down piece by piece and analyze it. My video classes taught me to pay attention to things like framing and art direction. The skills I had learned from those classes began to spill into other aspects of my life, mainly the way I experience a video game.

Gamers and posers.

There are a lot of us who describe ourselves as a hardcore gamer. We use this term to set ourselves apart from everyone else, who I can only assume are labeled by us as softcore gamers. Maybe not, but many of us look down on people who are not self proclaimed hardcore gamers or that we think of as posers. But many of those who claim to be hardcore are, in fact, not.

I actually hate this term "hardcore gamer".