As I’m sure everyone noticed from my photos on Friday, I have a Vita. If I could do things all over again, I’d never have bought the 3DS until Kingdom Hearts 3DS released and put all that wasted money toward the Vita and all of the super-fun games I have to have NOW. My 3DS has been sitting in its charge cradle for months. I think the last time I took it out was to download my Ambassador program games and then play a bit of the original The Legend of Zelda. And then it dawned on me that I need to stop pushing myself: I really don’t like Zelda games. It’s time to move on.

Nothing has been released since then that has warranted my attention. I’m interested in Paper Mario 3D and of course the new KH when those release, but in the meantime, there is nothing that interests me.

The Vita has the exact opposite effect. There were more than 4 games I wanted at the outset of the Vita launch. I couldn’t get all of them because well, money be a little tight at the moment, but I have two new games (Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Touch My Katamari) and two games downloaded from the PSNn (Super Stardust and Plants vs. Zombies). And then I wanted Dungeon Hunter. And then Resistance and Gravity Crush release int he forthcoming months. I haven’t been this excited about a handheld since the original DS released.

Sadly though, I really haven’t had much time to play with it, other than the occasional PvZ and Stardust run. I’m really trying to get FFXIII-2 DONE this week. Well, my original goal was the weekend. Since I was above the recommended levels for the final bosses, I decided to take a run at it. Yeah, that didn’t end well. I had zero problems until I reached the last boss. All it took was one mistake in shifting to bring on a Game Over. After two hours of trying, I decided to screw it and return to fragment hunting. I know I won’t be getting all 160 fragments, since one fragment quest requires you to find and battle all monsters, rare and otherwise, and there’s no way in hell I’m doing that. But after spending most of Sunday sidequesting, my characters are now 3000 HP higher than they were before, I have different monsters in my pack, and I have better weapons. I may try to max out my characters completely before going into the final bosses, since I’m not that far away from doing so. If I can’t beat them like that, there may be some controller throwing. Fair warning.

My plan for last week was to do nothing but Final Fantasy XIII-2. But then…on Valentine’s Day…I succumbed to two things. One, I played the Mass Effect 3 demo, which totally went against my media blackout for spoilers for the game. I was very pleased to see that there were no spoilers, but I’m not going to get more into it here. If you really want to know what I thought of it, you’ll have to listen to the EvilCast podcast, where Blake and I go nuts over it. It’s not up yet, but check back often this week; it will go up eventually.

Two, I got a text message from a friend–best friend’s husband, actually–asking if I would play Gears of War 3 with him and a couple of friends so we could get Achievements for 4-player and playing on Insanity. Those are two Achievements I definitely want, so I agreed to let Serah and Noel have a night off so I could die a lot whilst killing ugly things.

It became apparently very quickly that I’m not as versed in Gears 3 as everyone else. One guy has played so much, he’s level 70, my friend is level 30, and the other player is in his 20s. I’m at level 13 because I haven’t really touched Gears 3 since I beat it twice in the week it launched. Playing on Insanity with veterans is no way to re-wet your feet. I am definitely the queen of dying the most. At least we’re playing on Arcade mode, so it’s not as bad of a hampering when someone goes explodey…something I did a lot last night while we wrapped up Act II.

I have a lot of fun playing with these guys, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they fired me before we finished playing. Compared to them, I am that bad. I die the most and I have the least number of kills. I haven’t been last place for every chapter, but that’s been my average. I hate seeming like the “stereotypical girl gamer” in that I’m not as good as the boys, but hell, in this case, I’m definitely not as good as the boys. At least they haven’t made fun of me for “playing like a girl” or anything, so it’s my own chip on my shoulder. I hate that damn chip.

Okay, well, I WISH that were true. I haven’t played it as much as I wanted or should have, which is something I hope to correct this week. But I can say that what I have played has been greatness. I’m not sold on the story yet, but I’m digging the improved gameplay. And that’s all I can really say at this point since I’m reviewing the game for Gaming Angels.

I can also say that I’m LOVING the strategy guide so far. But more on that another time.

So what else can I talk about? Well, how about the gaming cave I’m constructing? My son has been in the smallest bedroom in the house since he was born, and it’s definitely time he moved into one of the larger bedrooms, especially since the closet in that room is a complete joke. The room was originally our office, but I didn’t want to turn it back into the office. I’ve taken over the front dining room as my office over the last year or so, so I just moved all of my bookshelves from the current office into this one. However, there isn’t enough room for my other computer desk and my PC in here, so that will return to its original home in the tiny bedroom. It will be joined by the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the near future, which will be the dedicated gaming room. Now my husband and I won’t have to fight for rights to the giant TV at night. He can watch TV, and I can game.

Also, with this new, minimal setup, I can use my new awesome headset that will allow for piping in the TV sound through my headset. The way our main TV is set up now, there is no way I can hook up the headset without crawling back behind our TV and navigating through the millions of wires. So why does that matter to me? It matters because now my gaming won’t alert our son that someone is still awake. I never had the TV loud when he was in bed, but it’s loud enough to let him know that he’s the only one in bed. Plus, now my husband won’t have to be tortured by repetitive music when he’s home. It’s a win-win in so many ways.

However, I am still incredibly sore from switching all of the rooms. I moved virtually all the furniture by myself, so plenty of muscles have been exerted that haven’t been used since the rugby days.

Now I need to go look at TVs worthy of the gaming cave.

I apologize for the complete lack of posts last week. Streptococcus decided it would choose Monday to invade my throat and I was left fairly comatose to the world for about four days. I wasn’t entirely unproductive, though. I read the first two Hunger Games books in two days and played lots of Final Fantasy Origins on my PSPgo.

Final Fantasy Origins is a bit different from what I’ve played of the original Final Fantasy on my iPad. The iPad version only offers one difficulty level, and it sits somewhere between the Normal and Easy modes on Origins. Hardly any of the item locations contain the same items as Origins, and of course, nothing costs the same. I probably would have continued playing on my iPad if I didn’t hate the controls so much. The placement of the virtual d-pad is just flat awkward and there are no options to move it. So to Origins I go.

I started two games, one on Normal and one on Easy so I could feel the differences. Holy cow, Normal mode is unbelievably punishing. I love barely surviving a boss fight just to die on my way out of the dungeon. I would heal myself if I had any frickin’ magic. Oh and Red Mage is so dang useless. He couldn’t hit the broadside of a Buick with his attacks. And then there’s his weak spell casting. Useless dude, absolutely useless. Sadly though, Easy mode is a complete polar opposite. It should be called “Win” mode instead of Easy, because unless you’re a complete idiot, you can win every fight the first time. You can still die if you try to be invincible and never heal yourself, but the amount of magic the mages get is insane, so you never run out of spells to cast. I’ve stopped needing to buy potions a long time ago, and I still haven’t gotten the first Crystal. Middle ground, people. Middle ground.

In stack of shame news, I’m still plugging away at Resistance. This has taken me far longer than planned, thanks to distractions like Final Fantasy Origins and the demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. According to the IGN Wiki that I use to monitor my progress–the game has no Trophies, so I could care less about using a guide for completionist purposes–I have two chapters left, and thank God. I find the overall story to be intriguing, but damn the game feels unnecessarily drawn out. I thought it was over twice already just to be sent out somewhere else. I have to, HAVE TO beat it tonight, because tomorrow is Final Fantasy XIII-2 day, and the start of a fresh season of strategy guide reviews.

Can you smell the excitement? It smells like beautiful, beautiful collector’s editions of guides.