Day Four // My Guilty Pleasure Game

Hey guys!
Today is day 4 of my 30 day blogging challenge, where I'm going to be tackling a gaming challenge I found a few weeks ago that I thought looked interesting. In my blog summarising this, I left a photo of the questions, in case anyone wanted to do it, but I'll also copy the question I'm answering into my post every day too.

Sometimes, these posts may contain spoilers for a game - when that happens, I'll warn you before I answer the question, so you can choose whether or not to read on!

Today's question is - what is your guilty pleasure game?

In all honesty, I don't actually have a guilty pleasure game - I love all the games I play, and wouldn't really consider any of them a "guilty pleasure."

However, I do have one game which is slightly embarrassing to admit to now, but when I played it - and loved it endlessly - I was a kid.

This game was Barbie Race and Ride, and I absolutely loved it! I used to spend hours choosing a horse, riding along the courses, and generally just indulging in the fantasy that they were genuinely my horses in real life, haha! I must have spent months only playing that game, and then my Playstation broke and I never got a new one, so had to stop playing it, boo. When I look back on how obsessed with it I was, I cringe a little bit, so that's about as close to a guilty pleasure game I have I'm afraid! 

First Impressions // Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer!

Hey guys! 

On Friday, I got Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer, and I just wanted to write a quick blog post about it to let you know my first impressions.

I'd been looking forward to it pretty much since I first heard about it, aha. It's always been a pet peeve of mine that, on Animal Crossing games, you don't have very much control over your villager's houses - you can send them furniture, but there's no guarantee that they'll put it in their house, let alone where you want it, and in New Leaf they won't even change their wallpaper or flooring if you send it to them. So, a game where you can choose where to put a house, design their garden and have total control over what goes in their house was always going to appeal to me! Plus, I've always loved the idea of interior design, and used to spend hours on Pinterest looking at ways to decorate houses and refurbish furniture, so this is pretty much my perfect game!

At the beginning, unlike other Animal Crossing games, your face isn't decided by answering questions - you can choose your skin tone, the shape and colour of your eyes, your hair colour and hairstyle! I like this a lot, as sometimes it can be a bit frustrating trying to get a face you like on previous games, and this makes it a lot easier.
I also like that you can connect to the internet and upload a picture of the houses you've completed - it means I can go snooping and see how other people interpreted the brief that the animal gives you (for example, a house for cats to hang out, a fast food joint, or a tea party house) and see how they decorated! 
There's also a rating system online, so people can say whether they think your designs are cute/good if you decide to upload them to the HHN (Happy Home Network). You can also enter the code it gives you for your design, so that people can look up the code to find your project, which is a nice touch. Also, there will occasionally be a special character available to design a house for - as far as I know, in the UK at the moment it's Louie the gorilla, and you can unlock the Mario furniture (which is what you can get in the fortune cookies in New Leaf) which is a pretty awesome touch! It's worth noting that, if you decide to accept the challenge, you will have to do it immediately.

After a while, you can remodel the buildings on the high street, starting with the school. You can also choose to remodel a shop, a cafe and a hospital, which I think will be really fun to try, as there hasn't been a hospital on an Animal Crossing game before! No matter what you're doing, unless there isn't a brief for a project, there will be at least one item you need to include in the project - for example, in the school you needed 4 chairs and 4 desks. 

Also, after you've played it for a while, you get given a catalogue, where you can choose to spend Play Coins to unlock some new interior touches, such as fish, bugs, fossils and custom designs, so it's definitely worth spending your Play Coins on these - you can do one per in-game day, and they cost between 1 and 5 Play Coins.

I won't say too much more about it, in case any of you are planning on buying it or waiting for it, but I love this game a lot. Some people are apparently already bored of it, as you literally just spend your time working on houses and other projects, but personally I love it, as I like this kind of thing a lot. I'll leave you with some screenshots, and the codes for the houses I've uploaded in case any of you have the game and would like to see what I've done with my houses! 

 Title screen and my character!

 Umm thanks for that Lopez....

 The outside of Pekoe's house

 Aw Cole, you're so adorable! (he was one of my starters in my main town, Kittyton)

CODES I'VE UPLOADED :

MIRA : 0298-7719-446

JEREMIAH : 0598-7719-306

ZELL : 0093-7719-346

ASTRID : 0693-7719-456

ROSCOE : 0093-7719-406

REDD : 0196-7719-426

GOLDIE : 0103-7712-426
RIBBOT : 0801-7711-400
SHARI : 0394-7714-450

SPECIAL CHALLENGE : 0695-7754-409

Day Three // An Underrated Game

Hey guys!
Today is day 3 of my 30 day blogging challenge, where I'm going to be tackling a gaming challenge I found a few weeks ago that I thought looked interesting. In my blog summarising this, I left a photo of the questions, in case anyone wanted to do it, but I'll also copy the question I'm answering into my post every day too.

Sometimes, these posts may contain spoilers for a game - when that happens, I'll warn you before I answer the question, so you can choose whether or not to read on!

Today's question is - what game do you think is underrated?

I actually have two games that I think are underrated - one not quite so much any more, as they've started to advertise it a bit more, but it's still pretty underrated in my opinion.

The first one is Animal Crossing. 
I know that when New Leaf came out, and now the spin off Happy Home Designer, they started putting some more adverts on TV for them, but on the whole Animal Crossing still seems to be one of those games that people mainly hear about through word of mouth - although I admit, they do seem to be putting posts on Facebook etc more now (mainly for Happy Home Designer). If you take to instagram, there are people who have whole pages dedicated to Animal Crossing, but on the other hand, there's still so many people who either haven't heard of it, or think that it sounds boring from what they've heard about it. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it appeals to all age groups and it's a nice, relaxing game that you can play at your own pace, and I think more people should give it a chance!

The other game I feel is underrated is Xenoblade Chronicles. 
Again, it didn't really get all that much attention when the remake came out (it was originally released on the Wii, but has since been re-released on the New 3DS and as a download on the Nintendo eShop on the Wii U) but it was part of something called Operation Rainfall a few years back (a project to ask Nintendo of America to localise three games - Xenoblade Chronicles, Pandora's Tower and The Last Story). Personally, I didn't even know anything about the game until they added Shulk into Super Smash Bros 4 (for the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS) and my brother told me who he was, then he preordered the game and loved it. Then he let me have a file on his copy and I loved it so much that I ordered my own copy a few weeks ago and am working my way back through it! It seems to be one of those cult games that has a dedicated fan base, but that not many people know about, and it's an epic adventure game with really likeable characters and a gripping story line, so it should definitely be better known in my opinion!

Day Two // My Favourite Character

Hey guys!
Today is day 2 of my 30 day blogging challenge, where I'm going to be tackling a gaming challenge I found a few weeks ago that I thought looked interesting. In my blog summarising this, I left a photo of the questions, in case anyone wanted to do it, but I'll also copy the question I'm answering into my post every day too.

Sometimes, these posts may contain spoilers for a game - when that happens, I'll warn you before I answer the question, so you can choose whether or not to read on!

Today's question is - who is your favourite character? 

*may contain spoilers*

This question was actually a lot harder to answer than I thought it was going to be - I've played so many games over the years, and in most games I really like at least one character, if not multiple - but I've managed to narrow it down to a few (sorry, I couldn't choose just one!)

First up, from Xenoblade Chronicles, I really love Melia Antiqua. She's got lilac hair, she's amazingly gifted with ether, she's posh, and she's fiercely protective of her friends, even when she has an unrequited crush on someone who's crushing on someone else - oh Melia. There's another Xenoblade character I want to mention, who I can only refer to as 7 (as is the custom of people who have played the game and don't want to give people spoilers) and they're probably my favourite character to play as to deal more damage, plus their design is amazing!

Next up, from Fire Emblem Awakening, we have Chrom. The Prince of Ylisse, leader of the shepherds - a group of warriors who help him battle to save the land from grave peril. Chrom is probablu my favourite character in Awakening, as you'd imagine him to be a suave, smooth talker, but in reality he's a bit of a klutz in training, and pretty damn awkward too! However, he has some amazing moves and Falchion (his sword) and a heart of gold, so he's secured a place on my list.

 Finally - the adorable, angry faced little pink puffball that is Kirby! I can't remember how or why I started liking Kirby, but I do know that he's been my main in Super Smash Bros for as long as I can remember, and he's just adorable. Plus, having the ability to suck in your enemies and stealing their abilities to use against them is always a plus!  

Day One // My Very First Game

Hey guys!
Today is day 1 of my 30 day blogging challenge, where I'm going to be tackling a gaming challenge I found a few weeks ago that I thought looked interesting. In my blog summarising this, I left a photo of the questions, in case anyone wanted to do it, but I'll also copy the question I'm answering into my post every day too.

Today's question is - what was your very first video game?

If we're going by games on a handheld console, then my very first video game would be Pokemon Red, which I got for Christmas one year, along with a pink Game Boy Colour to play it on. My brother got the same present as me, but he had Pokemon Blue and his Game Boy Colour was green. I can't remember if we bought these or if they were also Christmas presents, but we also got a link cable - so we could trade Pokemon, seeing as there's always a few that are native to each version of the game - and we also had these big chunky lights that we could clip onto our Game Boys so that we could play when it was dark (luckily, backlit screens now exist on consoles, haha)

If we're going by main gaming consoles that plug into the TV, it was either something on the NES - most likely Duck Hunt or Wrecking Crew, I still have fond memories of those games, and also of watching my dad play Gradius - or, one year my brother got an N64 for either his birthday or Christmas and one of the first games we had for that was Super Mario 64, but strictly speaking that wasn't mine.

So, as the Game Boy Colour was mine - and was probably my first console, apart from an old Playstation I had that broke - I'm going to go with Pokemon Red being my first game. Also, fun fact - I still have it in my room, although I'm not 100% sure where the Game Boy is! 

Blogging Every Day In October // The Video Game Challenge

Hey guys!

If you follow me on any other sites - twitter, facebook, etc - you'll probably know that I am a massive fan of gaming - Nintendo games in particular (you'll also see that I've mentioned it a few times before on my blog if you're a fairly regular reader)

So, when I stumbled across a gaming challenge a while back, I saved it and knew I wanted to do it somewhere, whether it was on my instagram or somewhere else, and I eventually decided that I was going to try and turn it into blog posts so I didn't have a character limit restricting me if I wanted to go into more detail, or if I wanted to post pictures or anything!

I know that it'll be pretty hard to do, and that some days I'll be posting longer blogs than others - some questions won't require much detail, whereas some will make me have to go into a lot more detail and post pictures - but I'm going to try my hand at blogging every day in October! It's only a 30 day challenge, however, so I'm going to have to either think of an extra question for the final day, or do some kind of summary or something. 

Anyway, I'll leave the photo of the questions in this blog post too, in case any of you want to do this too, and I look forward to starting this challenge - I hope you enjoy it too! 

It's something a bit different to what I'd usually blog about, too, but please let me know in the comments whether you enjoy it, or if you'd like me to go back to blogging about other things instead! 

Things I'm Grateful For

Hey guys!

As I've been having a stressful year so far (as I mentioned in my last post) I thought that I would compile a list of things that make me happy/things I’m grateful for, as I know a lot of people have it a lot worse than I do (even though I don’t always remember that as I’m wallowing in sadness on the sofa playing games to take my mind off things.) Some of the things on the list may seem small or petty to other people, but it’s my list so it’s what works for me. 

1 – my family and friends. 

I’m lucky enough to have an amazing support system of people around me, and even if I do forget to text people back sometimes and hate phone calls (oops) I’m so thankful to have people like them in my life.

2 – I have a roof over my head and food to eat every day, 

not to mention clean running water.

3 – music. 

As silly as it may sound, I love just putting on a pair of headphones, putting on a playlist of my favourite songs, then just settling down and losing myself in the music.

4 – health. 

I’m not the fittest or healthiest person by a long shot – I have a terrible immune system – but it could be a lot worse. I don’t have any life threatening illnesses or anything like that.

5 – going to gigs. 

Seeing bands I love with my friends, discovering new bands, and meeting new people as well as making amazing memories while listening to awesome music – what could be better?

6 – writing. 

I’m so thankful that I grew up surrounded by books and that I learnt to read at a fairly young age, as books help to inspire me to write, whether it’s blogging, writing fiction or just jotting down little notes.

7 – makeup and hair dye. 

I know this may seem pretty superficial to some people, but I’m grateful that my mum has always been willing to help me to dye or bleach my hair, even if sometimes she’s hated the end result, as it means I’ve had a lot of hair colours over the years which have made me happy. I’m also thankful that she’s let me wear makeup since I was about 13, as I really do not like myself without it and now I’m apparently pretty good at applying it!

8 – playing games. 

I’ve always used things like books and games as an escape from real life, and luckily I recently started a new game which is pretty intense and mega detailed, so I’ve been able to lose myself in that and keep my mind off everything while exploring a new world.

That’s just a small selection of things I’m thankful for and which make me happy, which have been helping me smile lately through all the sadness. 

What are some things you’re thankful for, and which make you happy?