The Professional Gamer - January 1, 2018

Hello, Happy Holidays, and welcome to the first post of the new year! I've had a week off of work, and, outside of time spent with family, spent a lot of time enjoying geeky activities. Let's talk a bit about what I've spent my time doing.

Leading up to Christmas, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen with Crystal putting together a huge pile of cookies to give to family and friends. We spent a full twelve hours in the kitchen baking brandy balls, pecan-bourbon cookies, cherry-pistachio fudge, cinnamon nuggets, and jam thumbprints. 

Post-Christmas I've spent most of my time playing with one of my presents (and a rather old game, the existence of which I had missed until recently): Final Fantasy Tactics A2. I burned a huge amount of time playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced back in the heyday of the Gameboy Advance. I never actually played the original Final Fantasy Tactics since I never owned any of the Sony systems. Unfortunately, my Gameboy Advance has a bad battery, such that I can no longer use it without plugging it into the wall. Tactics A2 is a Gameboy DS game and I am enormously thankful for backwards compatibility in my 3DS. Functionally, the game is very similar to Tactics Advanced. With a little less than 10 hours played, I'm enjoying the story in this game more than I enjoyed Tactics Advanced. I'm unsure how I feel about the item crafting in this game. I find that I am having a hard time getting equipment that I need to train my characters without constantly changing their jobs. In spite of this minor issue, I'm enjoying the game a lot. Look forward to me talking more about it next week.

Finally, on Thursday, I made my trip to the cathedral to see become reacquainted with the sacred text. Which is to say, I watched Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Again, I have no desire to spoil the movie for you. And, I need some more time to sort out more of my feelings on the movie, or at least my feelings about specific elements of it. Look for more discussion on it later, likely hidden under a spoiler tag. I will summarize briefly: I think this is my new favorite Star Wars. Gone is the frenetic pacing of The Force Awakens and the ham-fisted storytelling of the prequels. The Last Jedi builds on the characters of TFA and delivers huge emotional and story payoffs on them. I am delighted that we are able to spend more time Finn, Rey, and Poe. Each of these characters face critical moments in the film where they have a choice to either continue on their current path or change direction. These moments are the best points in a film that brought me to tears on multiple occasions. 

I hope you will join me again next time. Have a great week and game on!