I've finally finished Golden Sun Dark Dawn, and it was pretty awesome. The last boss was the only hard part of the game, excluding the post-game optional bosses, and it was a disappointingly short game (25 hours), but it ends with a cliffhanger that suggest they might make a fourth game, which would be awesome. I guess you could call me a fan of the series; the graphics are always ahead of their time, the art style is cartoony yet fits perfectly with the magical and spiritual atmosphere. The storyline isn't too complicated and yet it draws you in and makes you feel like they could make multiple games out of it (or they could make a single game that actually lasts more than 20 hours, that'd work too). The world is mysterious and the Lore only pokes at it a little; it reveals nothing and leaves it all to your imagination. The games themselves aren't too hard (with the exception of the second one which can be a little annoying with the non-linear part of the game once you get the boat) so they're good for children to play, plus the puzzles are fun and the results of your labor pretty to look at, since it takes things from Hinduism, Buddhism and other oriental religions and spiritualism.

After that, there was an hour left before the TESO beta began, so I figured I'd play some Rust to see how my house was doing. Well, ends up the server got hacked and my house was erased, so I spent that hour rebuilding it; lucky I hadn't died and kept my inventory, including the pickaxe I love and my handmade handcannon that makes hunting a piece of cake.

By the time my house was finished (building a house takes time), it was 6:20pm so I jumped in the beta and... well... I'm disappointed. They made pretty much no change since the stress test almost a year ago. The graphics are dated, the character modeling and customization very primitive (Argonians and Khajiits look terrible; the Argonians are smooth and the Khajiits look like humans with striped skin and weird faces, AKA the Lazy Artist Syndrome where they can't be bothered to draw fur so they just color the skin instead), the combat feels clunky and unresponsive, the classes are extremely limited and offer little to no freedom, but at least the music and voice-acting are good, though the voice-acting can be a little cheesy, But the biggest flaw of them all is without a doubt the community, which is made mostly of prepubescent whiners who complain about everything single thing, including the other whiners because they keep whining, which is pretty ironic (especially since I'm also whining about them). Part of 'em, however, are the opposite. They deny everything that's wrong with the game; they say that the graphics are fantastic and that we shouldn't expect too much from a MMO since MMOs aren't meant to have nice graphics, and that that's the level of quality we should expect from a game with a 200 millions budget that'll require a 15$/month subscription and that expecting something better makes us childish and retarded and that we should stop playing and/or kill ourselves (as I said, prepubescent whiners).

Now I know this is the first beta test since the stress test almost a year ago, so things WILL change, but since the game is supposed to release in April, I doubt they'll have time to change much about the game so unless you don't need to buy the game AND they offer you a free trial, I doubt I'll play it. I'm really, really disappointed since I was so hyped about it; they really shot themselves in the foot, though I guess that's what happens when you hire a no-name company to make your first ever MMO (or online, for that matter) game. If this one sucks, they might learn from their mistake and rise from their ashes later like Square Enix did with Final Fantasy XIV and A Realm Reborn.

Oh yeah, and I took a break at 9:00pm to finally watch Skyfall and... well the disappointment continues. I still don't like Daniel Craig. I remember the time when James Bong 007 was a hero that just couldn't exist in real life since he was so perfect at everything, but the Daniel Craig trilogy just seems like your average vigilante cop movie to me. He's clumsy, he keeps failing and doing stupid stuff, he loses his temper and has way too many flaws, and he just doesn't respect Ian Fleming's very idea of James Bond. Now I know the Daniel Craig trilogy is supposed to be a prequel to Dr. No and that James Bong is supposed to be a newbie in those, but that only makes it worse. See, that's where the technological plotholes come in. Dr. No takes place in '62 while the prologue uses technology from 50 years later; it just doesn't make sense and is an insult to the original serie. Now if you look at the ending, it hints that they're gonna end the serie there, which would be fitting since the movie came out in 2012, 50 years after the first one. A very imperfect end to a fantastic serie about the world's best spy, but at least if they end it there (and I hope they will unless they bring Pierce Brosnan back to continue the original serie instead of making their prologue bullshit), it'd be the perfect timing to do so.