[crossposted from We Fear Change]

Just think...if this was released today, they could have the game automatically detect if a Zapper was connected and choose which game you want to play based on that. So much time we would save...

_Day 1 – Very first video game_Sad to say that like so many others, my first game played was that little bundle of joy Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt [Get it? I know, clever, right?] It’s also sad to say that I honestly have no idea which one I played first. Honestly, it was probably Duck Hunt. Logically, I see it like this: put a plastic rectangle or a plastic gun in front of a 4/5-year-old boy and then take a guess as to which one he’ll be more inclined to play with.

_I have many memories of both these games. SMB was a game that, shockingly enough, my dad played the shit out of. And he was way better at it than either me or my brother. He just kept finishing off loops…I wonder if he’d have kept at SMB if someone told him that there would one day be people competitively speed running the game? Probably not unless there was a decent amount of money involved…

_When a lot of people think back on Duck Hunt, they always mention the dog. I really don’t remember the dog that much. Because real gamers did the skeet shooting. That’s about all I have to say on Duck Hunt =P

And to think that his long hair doesn't really stand out in-game.

_Day 1 – Your favorite character_Happy days, questions I can answer with Xenogears related things. While I could just post “TIE: The entire cast,” not really, some characters are fucking lame, I’ll nominate Mr. Hyuga Ricdeau a.k.a. Citan Uzuki for the role of favorite character. Actually, I’m not nominating him, I’m electing him.

_Why is he my favorite character? Because he’s a dick. Not like, a total dick, but he’s totally a dick. He goes through the entire game knowing more than he ever lets on his companions know, and goes through with elaborate plans involving them that he never tells them about. “Oh, yeah, sorry for getting you thrown in prison. But it’s OK, that was the plan from the start. You’ll thank me later.” You know, Citan, if the end result is beneficiary to everybody, the odds are they’ll still do it. I mean, nobody really like going to work, either, they just do it for the monetary gain. It’s the same idea.

_That’s not the only reason, though, seriously. He’s portrayed as a strong, intelligent and caring man, and over the course of the game, he proves to be all of the above. He’s arguably the best party member in battle…then gets an upgrade near the end of the 1st disc. He’s not afraid to strike his friends when they need to be slapped well, that’s not surprising, I already said he’s willing to have them risk their lives unknowingly and have them thrown in a holding cell. He also does more spoiler things that make him awesome…Citan is just a bad ass, end of story.

_Also, just an FYI, while I’m going to try to avoid too much Xenogears spoilers…sometimes, I’m just not going to be able to help it. You’re just gonna have to deal with it.

_Day 1 – A game that is underrated_I’ve seen more lists without it in the #1 spot than I have with, so the obvious answer is Xenogears. Seriously, list makers, get with the fucking program.

_Day 1 – Your guilty pleasure game_I’m wracking my brain on how to semantics my way into answering this Xenogears, but I’m having a hard time with that…on my own. Thankfully, Dictionary.com has me covered.

_Guilty – synonyms: felonious.

_Felonious – wicked; base; villainous

_Wicked – 3rd definition: Distressingly severe, as a storm, wound, or cold. 10th definition: (Slang) Wonderful; great; masterful; deeply satisfying

_Well, I can easily define the pleasure derived from Xenogears as both “Distressingly severe” OR “Deeply satisfying,” not to mention that the game itself is wonderful, great, and masterful. So my guilty pleasure game is the wicked, wicked, and wicked Xenogears.

It's like staring into a mirror, only he has great hair and is in shape.

_Day 1 – Game character you feel you are most like (or wish you were)_Easy. Fei Fong Wong of Xenogears. Despite hating fighting in Gears, Fei finds himself doing just that constantly. He wants nothing more but to live in peace amongst the people he loves. He is unable to keep his emotions in check. He is a master of martial arts. His character is based around Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung. It’d be faster to list our dissimilarities: NOTHING.

_He’d even fall under character I wish I was, too. The idea of being reborn, fated to meet and love your soul mate in every life…it’s a beautiful idea. So romantic…I’m jealous. Sure, some stuff I could live without (like blowing up my hometown), but just like with love, you gotta take the good with the bad. Besides, in his world, such a thing as fate exists, so there was probably no way for him to not blow it up and kill everybody. Not his fault!

In a better world, Chu-Chu is the person you spoke to to change your party, and Margie joins here.

_Day 1 – Most annoying character_This would fall to Chu-Chu from Xenogears. I mean, where to begin? First off, Chu-Chu is fucking annoying to begin with. Look at that dialog. Fuck off, Chu-Chu. Second, Chu-Chu is a playable character, and she’s horrible to boot. It’d be like Marlene joining the party in FF7. You’d just shake your head in disgust the moment it happened. That’s the exact thing that happens when Chu-Chu joins. Third, Marguerite was at one point in development going to be a playable character. She didn’t make it in and Chu-Chu did. Chu-Chu cock-blocked Margie into being a main character that just stands around the ship all game. Fourth, Chu-Chu’s design is “token cute furry animal made to sell merchandise”.  And yet no Xenogears merchandise exists! Her archetype is a to push non-existent merchandising! It suggests that some should exist! There is no Xenogears merch! Fuck you, Chu-Chu!

See? It's meant to be!

_Day 1 – Favorite game couple_While there were plenty of candidates (Bart and Margie; Citan and Yui; Tolone and Seraphita), there really isn’t any other answer besides Fei and Elly of Xenogears. I mean, they had a kiss that was important enough to be almost shown in anime form, and important enough to give them each unique kiss sprites. They hooked up in four different lifetimes. They each flat-out express their love for one another in words, instead of just dancing around the issue and blushing when they hold hands. Their actually talk to each other a lot to build their relationship, instead of having a love build up because they’re opposite genders and traveling together for a long period of time (although I’m sure that helped). They totally sex’d up in-game before the ending. They take other couples and crush them under Elly’s heels, because Fei doesn’t wear heels due to Elly letting him retain his manliness by wearing enough heel for the both of them. Yeah, that’s right, they actually work in tandem and they complete each other. What has your couple done lately?

_Day 1 – Best soundtrack_Not that Yasunori Mitsuna isn’t always excellent, but his Xenogears score is just…it’s like ear sex. All of his stuff is all great on its own, but Mitsuda is so good at ambiance and matching music to the mood of scenes that everything is always better in-game, and Xenogears is no exception.

_I have a hard time picking out my favorite tracks, due to having mental attachments with some of them with great scenes, not to mention that it’s almost like picking your favorite child: You love them all so much, how can you pick one over the other? So, easier to just go with the basic staples, like the boss battle music and the ending theme of the game.

_Day 1 – Saddest game scene_While there are parts in Xenogears that  would qualify, the game fills me with such joy that I don’t even associate it with the term “sad” anymore. For this, I’m going with the ending of Final Fantasy X. God…that was depressing. Like…really depressing. Even when someone said “I assumed that at the end of FF7, Holy eliminated all of the evil from the planet, meaning both Meteor and people. That’s why Midgar is all shitted up – people stopped maintaining it because they were wiped off the face of the planet forever.” My response was “But at least people are all together in the Lifestream. Plus, Red XIII was the only one of his kind remaining, and yet he miraculously was able to asexually spawn children. Tell me how this isn’t a happy miracle of some kind.” I won that argument. But FFX’s ending? You can’t happy that away any way you slice it. Even Cloud had the right angle in the love triangle Tifa to fall back on. Aeris was willing to sacrifice herself not only for the greater good, but to go be with her BFF Zack. S’all good. But what about FFX? Tidus just disappears and leaves Yuna alone. Yuna wasn’t in a love triangle! She didn’t have anybody to fall back on! And what about Tidus? Where did he even go? He faded away into non-existence! And Kimahri didn’t even get his horn back! Lose-Lose-Lose. FFX ending, you’re the saddest scene ever.

_Day 1 – Best gameplay_…I see what’s going on here. You want to see just how far I’ll take it, don’t you? Especially with the category following this…you want me to have Xenogears not be my answer for two straight questions, that’s all. Well, OK, fine. You win…but not without me bitching first.

_I’m giving this to Tetris Attack/Panel de Pon. While I’ve never liked it when people called rhythm games “puzzle/rhythm” because…I dunno, it’s a completely different genre, they do share one aspect which is what has always drawn me to them. With both genres, it’s almost always pure gameplay. A lot of the time, there isn’t even an AI to get in the way. Sure, maybe in Tetris, the game gave you too many S pieces and Squares to give you a good set-up…but if you get better, you could work around it. Yeah, some of the note patterns thrown at you in Rock Band are hard…but if you get better, you can play it. It’s never a matter of “find the right strategy to cheese the computer.” The solution is always “Get better.” This should put it into some perspective how much I hate Puzzle Quest.

_Don’t worry, I know that this is “Best gameplay” and not “Wax poetic on some of your favorite genres.” But Tetris Attack really is great. It epitomizes what I love about the genre. There are always moves you can make. The end only comes when you either can’t handle the increasing game speed or you’re simply ready to call it a session. It’s simple, it’s addictive, and I can’t really think of a downside to the gameplay. God bless you, whoever made Panel de Pon.

"Bwah! Crush tiny console!"

_Day 1 – Gaming system of choice_This really is a tough decision…do you go with a classic console, which has already had enough time out of the spotlight for us to properly look back on and decide upon the quality of the console and its library, or a current console, which has the power to do things the older systems simply couldn’t do? As much as my nostalgia bug wants me to pick something else, I’m going with the X-Box 360.

_The more I thought about it, the easier this choice became. It has the best online service of the 3 modern consoles sans having to pay for it. Specs-wise, it’s strong enough to properly support any genre. It’s got the best controller on the market, and with Kinect, maybe we can even get a real RTS on a console? …lol, moving on, to top it all off…you can mod your console and put a shitton of classic console games on the hard drive. That was the kicker, even though I haven’t modded my 360 [and don't have a Kinect, either]. But the option is there. I’m thinking about the future, here. In 5 years, when the X-Box4 is out [despite it only being the 3rd X-Box] and they shut down the 360 LIVE servers, there won’t be a good reason not to mod your console and put all those awesome games on an upgraded hard drive. And when that 360 red rings, they’ll be cheap enough to easily replace. In all seriousness, the 360 is a fucking fun console, and as ludicrous as this entire explanation is…the most ludicrous part is that it’s not really a lie.

_Day 1 – A game everyone should play_Xenogears is a masterwork of the classic RPG. The traditional ATB turn-based combat, the way the hand-to-hand and Gear battles intertwined, and not just in the fact that they used the same battle engine. Granted, the battle system isn’t groundbreaking. But there are plenty of tricks you can do with your equipment that most players don’t notice at first glance. The plot is on a grander scale than anything else Square has ever attempted with the possible exception of Ivalice [although whether any of the Ivalice stories would have ever all been connected is now a mystery]. And that’s really amazing, considering a lot of story elements are missing due to budget cuts and time restraints [Thanks FF8!]. It’s huge, complex, and deep enough that you’ll actually spot things you might have missed or forgot about on a second playthrough. The pacing of the leveling is fantastic, as there really is no point where you ever “have” to grind.

_Xenogears is simply an RPG anybody that claims to enjoy RPG’s should play. And if you’re not an RPG fan…fucking play Shadow of the Colossus. It’s not for everybody, but there’s nothing else like it on any console. The closest thing would be Chaos Field, a vertical shmup which is nonstop boss fights. The fact that it’s that unique makes it a “must play.”

_Day 1 – A game you’ve played more than five times_Believe it or not, but I’ve played Xenogears more than five times. I’ve actually played it once a year since I got it…but I haven’t played it this year yet…and it’s December…hmmmmmmm…

_Day 1 – Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper_Sadly, most Xenogears wallpapers are pretty shitty. Ms. Asuka Langley Soryu graces my desktop most of the time, really, but I do let the game pop on there every once in a while. While not really a game, per se, the last gaming related wallpaper I used was a piece from IIDX artist Maya…

...here it is. I don't have a clever caption for this. It's just pretty =)

_Day 1 – Post a screenshot from the game you’re playing right now_All I have to say…

Thank God for Record of Agarest War.

_Day 1 – Game with the best cut scenes_Man, there are so many choices here…first, you have legitimately great cut scenes with jaw dropping graphics that tell great stories…then there are games like Lost Planet 2 and the Dead Rising games where the cut scene fantasticalism comes from the ability to change the character skins. So then…what do I choose? Bayonetta of course!

_Why Bayonetta? Because it takes one viewing of a cut-scene of Bayonetta to understand the tone of the game: Over-the-top dialog, over-the-top plot, over-the-top action, over-the-top gore, and over-the-top sex. The cut scenes perfectly represent the game itself. Damn Xenogears for being so sparse with the anime cut scenes…

Ramsus in his element...with no shirt on, as evidenced by the lack of collar ;-D

_Day 1 – Favorite antagonist_My choice here is Kahran Ramsus of Xenogears. At the start of the game, Ramsus is just a bad ass with a sword and a hot girlfriend. Then he upgrades to bad ass with a bad ass giant mech with a hot girlfriend. Then as the game progresses, you find out a bit more about his past, and his connections with members of your party. Then he starts to go insane for seemingly no reason. Then you find out that his life sucks. Like…REALLY fucking sucks. As in “He literally got thrown in the trash as a baby” sucks. He’s an antagonist who’s manipulated by forces greater than himself throughout the whole game. By the end, you know almost everything there is to know about who he is as a character. You pity him by the end. The only issue I have with him is that Citan doesn’t slap his bitch ass into the party at the end.

_Day 1 – Favorite protagonist_As much as I would love to answer this with a Xenogears character, I have been answering these questions honestly. And to say that Renegade class Shepard from Mass Effect isn’t my favorite protagonist would simply be lying. He’s such an arrogant, smug asshole that you can’t help but love him. Some people might be a little squeamish at the fact that he kills people without remorse…but, really…did those people ever not deserve it? Well, OK, Samara in ME2 didn’t deserve it, but she only died due to Shepard’s actions and not by his hand, which isn’t too bad, right?

You know, I didn't realize that picking Shepard for this category would give me another reason to post this pic until halfway through that paragraph. That was silly, wasn't it?

_Day 1 – Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in_I was really tempted to say “Xenogears” for this one, but I’d have a hard time talking my way out of the civil wars between Aveh and Kislev, the entire planet being ruled by Solaris from the shadows, and half the planet getting mutated in some way, shape or form by the end. Plus, if I was to live here and then get dropped off at the beginning of time, there’s a 1 in 15 chance I could get potshotted in the back, so I’m tempted to say “No Xenogears” for this one.

So…I’ll go with Parnasse from Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. Why Parnasse, you ask?

The city is made out of fucking candy!

_Plus it’s on a magical continent. It’s pretty boss, to be honest with you. I’m trying to think of shitty things that happen there, and other than “The bad guys chase your party into town,” I can’t think of anything.

God, I don't even know what game this is, I just googled "SRPG isometric" and this made me cream myself.

_Day 1 – Favorite genre_You’d think with the way this has gone, that I’d say RPG. Or Puzzle or Rhythm from earlier. But no…it’s the Strategy RPG. They hold a special place in my heart. I love the way that every game in the genre has just accepted the simple point-and-click world map. I love the overtly drawn out battles. I love the fact that every plot of every SRPG always involve warring factions. I love moving on grids. Honestly, I could have said “the Strategy-RPG genre” as my guilty pleasure, if you wanted me to answer it for the original intended meaning, because even though a lot of them are legitimately good, I really do enjoy the entire genre far more than I know I should.

I was going over this post and I realized what a sausagefest my Xenogears pics were. Problem solved.

_Day 1 – Game with the best story_Man, this one is just a gimme. I can’t say Xenogears fast enough, although I could have said it faster, like before I said “Man, this one is a gimme.” That’s just semantics, though.

_But man, the story is so good…I don’t even know where to start. It works as a love story between Fei and Elly. It works as an epic narrative. It works as a typical “Mild mannered youngster from a small village embarks on adventure and saves the world” story. It works as a giant mech story. It…doesn’t work as an intriguing sewer mystery, but that’s about it. Plus, they also did nanomachines way before MGS4. Yeah, you got fucking served, Kojima. Wait, they actually talking about nanomachines in MGS1 too…oh yeah, people on the internet are just stupid, that’s all.

_Day 1 – A game sequel which disappointed you_Fuck you Wild ARMs 4! Your gameplay might have been passable, but your plot was the worst fucking thing I’d ever experienced in my life! The story in the franchise mode of yearly Madden installments are more gripping. Fuck. You.

_Day 1 – Game you think had the best graphics or art style_

Thank God for Record of Agarest War.

_Oh, art style. Well then…I suppose my answer is a little different then…ah ha! A perfect opportunity to praise a normally unheralded game, GrimGrimoire. A 2D RTS on the PS2 (Let that sink in for a second), it is rather fun game, with an incredibly fun plot which starts off giggly and ends awesome. But artistically, it is a rather beautiful game. It’s brought to us by Vanillaware, the same people who made Odin Sphere, and is done in the same style, with the “living” sprites. So why this over Odin Sphere? Everybody already knows Odin Sphere, jeez!

Why is the other one a fake sequel? Because I wasn't in it!

_Day 1 – Favorite classic game_Hmmmmm…that’s a pretty vague adjective, “classic.” I’m…going to assume you mean “really old game” and just stretch that definition to “Game more than 20 years old,” to which the winner is Super Mario Brothers 2. The REAL Super Mario Brothers 2. The one with Mouser in it.

_SMB2 is a terribly underrated game, a victim of Black Sheep-itis if there ever was one. I remember even as a child, other kids in elementary school always complained about SMB2 because “It’s not like SMB1.” Boo fucking hoo. Mega Man isn’t like SMB1 either. Guess that sucked too [Well, MM1 did. MM2 was where it started getting awesome ;-D]. You see how that entire argument is retarded? Exactly. SMB2 is great in its own right. Sadly, due to stupid kids from the late 80′s, we haven’t seen more games in this style since. Thanks a lot, guys.

_Oh yeah…consoles that aren’t current gen fall under “Classic consoles.” Xenogears is the best classic game. Disregard all previous statements.

_Day 1 – A game you plan on playing_I already told you, I’m planning on playing Xenogears again, and I plan on playing it continuously throughout my life. Well, actually, I only hinted at that…but it should have been apparent.

_Wait…you probably want something that I haven’t played that I’m planning on playing…you sly sons of bitches. OK then…I’ll be your huckleberry again. So…I recently got a DS and a PSP, so I’m roaming around in handheld country right now, dipping my toes in a bunch of games I got from Gamestop’s Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale…but I’m basically treading water right now, waiting for the Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together remake and The 3rd Birthday, both due out next year for the PSP. Tactics Ogre was originally an SNES game made by much of the same development team that went on to make Final Fantasy Tactics. In a twist of fate, TO was made when they were with Enix, then they left to join Square, and years later Square and Enix merged to form one mega-company, allowing the same team to now head up the current remake. Yeah, that’s pretty bad ass. Anyways, the best way to describe TO is “Hardcore FFT.” Yeah, exactly, “Fuck yeah.”

_The 3rd Birthday is basically Parasite Eve 3, only it’s not named “Parasite Eve 3.” Why is this awesome news? There are any number of reasons why this is awesome, but first and foremost is that PE1 and 2 are fucking sweet, and it’s about time Square started releasing new entries in their long overlooked series. I bet after 3rd Birthday, Chrono Break will be soon after.

_Day 1 – Best voice acting_You’re killing me, list. Oh well, another opportunity to give some credit where credit is due. The VA in Dead Rising is incredibly underrated. The game isn’t incredibly serious in tone, but the cast delivers their lines the authority. And while they aren’t really nobodies, the VA’s aren’t done by the usual suspects you come to expect from video games or big name talent. There isn’t a bad performance in the bunch, and it helps make the game what it is.

_Day 1 – Most epic scene ever_

_Bart is so fucked.

_Day 1 – Favorite game developer_Before leaving Square to form Monolith Soft, the majority of the team work on Xenogears and then Chrono Cross. They then went onto make Xenosaga Ep.1, and I said “Monolith, you guys rock my God damn socks.” XS Ep.2 was…decent. While I freely admit that it’s easily the weakest entry in the series, I do hold that the game still holds some merit. But Ep.3…after playing that, I actually said “I will buy anything Monolith Soft does from here on out.” I’ve actually been looking for a copy of Baten Kaitos Origins for quite a while now, and I’m actively searching for Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier now that I have a DS. Fuck, I’ll get the damn DBZ game too, I don’t give a shit. With XS.ep3, they relayed to me “Everything we do is worth playing. Even the mediocre stepping-stones have a purpose. Trust in us.” And I do.

_Day 1 – A game you thought you wouldn’t like, but ended up loving_I didn’t go into Eternal Darkness with the highest of hopes. Yeah, yeah “OMG best new Nintendo IPz in 4evur!” hype and all that, but I’m just not that into survival/horror. But at the time, my Gamecube library was pretty lacking in any titles at all, not just quality ones, so I decided to hang onto the copy I had stumbled upon and gave it a go. Funny enough, I found a decently playable game, and I’m not exactly sure why. Thinking back, it had a lot of similar trappings that other S/H games that I didn’t like had…the shiny “Nintendo” logo on the box must have just made it transcend all of the flaws and delude me into liking it. Oh wait, that didn’t work for Earthbound, so it must be a decently done game ;-D

"We're registered on Starmen.net, and we didn't find your last statement to be humorous at all."

_Day 1 – Your favorite game of all time_It’s been a long road here…has it really been 4600+ words? Boy…time flies when yo…wait a second, “time flies” my foot, this has taken me forever to write-up. No fucking joke, I answered half of it with stuff pertaining to one game and this still took me more than a day to write. Sheeeeez.

_So…the moment you’ve all been waiting for…you ready? My favorite game of all time is…

I actually didn't post this pic every time I mentioned it before on purpose to make this seem more shocking and suspenseful. And I do believe it worked.

_Some might accuse me of being a Xenogears lunatic. Some might call me a Xenosagagears Freaks. Some would even go so far as to say Xenogears fanboy (Ooooooooooh, ahhhhhhhhhhh). To all of those, my response is “Yes, yes, yes.” I make no denial about it. Despite its faults, the game can do no wrong. Regardless of the missing pieces of plot, the story is flawless. While the battle engine might only be a slightly modified variation of an already existing one, it’s completely unique, ground breaking, and its impact on the industry as a whole can not be overstated, and the reverberations are still being felt today and other developers are still scrambling to catch up. One might call the sprites “muddy and embarrassingly low-res, even for the PS1″ and the polygons “plain with stiff animations;” I’d call them “deliberate and highly stylized.” I could make the argument that the Japan-only supplementary book “Xenogears: Perfect Works” is the only piece of media with “Perfect” in the title to ever live up to the billing…except as it’s indisputable fact, I don’t actually need to argue the point.

_On a serious note, Xenogears holds a very special place in my heart. When I first finished the game as a young teen, I didn’t fully understand everything that had gone on before me. But while I didn’t fully grasp it, I did know that what I had experienced was something truly special and not quite like any other RPG I had played at the time. Some people might say that it was the latent life force of the game, pulling at the strings of my soul, as it knew we were to be connected. Others would say it was my young self subconsciously recognizing “fate.” I’d be more inclined to say that it was a young me recognizing something beautiful. In any case, I felt the urge after finishing it for the first time to start it up again within the week. I’ve been playing it ever since. As ridiculous as it might sound, Xenogears has been with me through a lot. It’s gotten me through some tough times, and it’s been there through the good.

_There are adults now who grew up with the Lord of the Rings novels, or with the Beatles, or Star Wars. Those things are a part of who they are. I’ll grow old and Xenogears will be a part of who I am. That’s the best way to describe my feelings towards it.

_crossposted from We Fear Change

_You’d think that I’d have learned my lesson. “CE was awesome after you doubted it. Don’t doubt CE DX.” Yet I did…at first. “CE was like taking Pac-Man and making it fucking awesome times 100. What’s there to improve?” I just auto-assumed it’d be more of the same, just new maps. Silly Hojo. You should have known. Well…at least I turned my opinion around after seeing Pac-Man eat like…a thousands ghosts in a video preview. It made me realize “CEDX is going to be awesome and different. I’m sorry again, Pac-Man!”

_So…Pac-Man Championship Edition DX came out this past week. God…it’s so good. The stage designs actually IMPROVE on the original games. Where in the original game, both sides of the screen were simply mirrors, in DX, you often get dot patterns that flow between the screen wraparound. Whipping along corners and warping from border to border around ghosts sleeping ghosts is just…awesome. It’s hard to put into words just how good it is. Like I said, I’m not a big fan of the original Pac-Man. Sure, it’s fun for a little bit, but playing the same screen over and over again just gets stale. But the CE games is like having a MASSIVE Pac-Man board, only you do them in small bites. Shitty explanation? Maybe. But I think that’s the best easiest way for me to explain why it appeals to me.

_We are currently going through…a strange time in gaming. It’s fully mainstream and there are more people than ever sayings that it developers should be doing [X]. I mean, even when gaming was “underground,” people complained, but it was easier for the developers to just ignore us. Now you have some people saying that games should be THIS long, or that games NEED multiplayer to hold people’s interest. While gaming is being pulled in so many directions, it’s easy to forget that if a game isn’t fun, it’s not worth playing. Gameplay trumps all, and Pac-Man Championship Edition DX is a shining example of this. A variation of a 30-year-old game still holds up and has managed to be one of the best releases of the year.

_At first, I thought to myself “Yeah, dissolve the old blogs, only have the one.” Then Moku said “There’s no reason to not have both.” Which was true. Also, Ayai over on Press X To Win had recently put up the first new post in forever, which begs the question “Would it really be fair for one person to just crush all the blogs like so much ants when other people, while not super active, might still want to use them?” This is not to say that I don’t take WFC seriously, but where I’ve put a rather decent amount of effort into every post here, over there is going to be a much more loose atmosphere. Not that there won’t be serious posts, or posts that I don’t put effort into, or vice versa, but…you get it. Or at least I hope you do. “Posts over there might end up more like this posts than the normal posts I post here.” Kay? Whatever.

_So that said…what does this mean for the future of Slaves to the Grind? Well, long story…slightly condensed, it meant that at one point, I was taking it upon myself to say that there was no future for it. But along the way, I then decided that this means nothing for the future of Slaves. As in, it will continue as it has: With me likely doing the bulk of the posting, and everyone else free to post something at any time if they feel like it. Good day to you =)

_During a time of my life when I probably should have been focused on more scholarly activities, I spent pretty much all of my free time on the computer. I would literally run to the computer and sign on AIM. While AIM was connecting, I would open up the start menu and start up Minesweeper. If she was online, I would play and chat at the same time, Minesweeper always taking a backseat to the true object of my affection. We hadn’t been friends for long before I had started to grow feelings for her…if you asked me what it was that attracted me, I couldn’t really answer. I already known plenty of online girl friends (as in friends that were girls), I didn’t know what she looked like (At least, not when I first developed a crush on her. She did turn out to be very cute ;-D) It was more something about her mannerisms that I found charming. Something about the way she…typed? I don’t know. For whatever reason, I became fixated on her.

_As you can imagine, she wouldn’t always be online. So plenty of time would go by where I’d just sit around with an AIM buddy list docked on the right side of the screen while  played Minesweeper. Sometimes hours would pass while I played. Endless squares, numbers, smiley faces, deady faces. I would say that I was singularly focused on improving my times…except that I’d always take a moment between games to see if she signed on. But past that, I was singularly focused. Other people would chat with me, but I  would always converse with them between games. Times always came first.

_A long time past. Lots of Minesweeper. Lots of conversations went by. She never really noticed that I was completely into her, because every once in a while, she’d mention her long distance relationship with her boyfriend. That never really stopped being painful. Long down the road, she broke up with him. A while after that, I asked what she thought about me. She liked me as a friend. Straight out of a movie. And just like the movies…it’s bad. I still talked to her after that, because I liked talking to her. But I noticed myself playing a lot more Minesweeper during those conversations.

_Let us assume that everything told here is just a single possible theory as to the meaning of the game Minesweeper. The narrator of this story is in fact the Smiley Face at the top of the window, with his heart being the minefield. It must be tread on lightly, lest one wrong move set off an explosion resulting in a loss. Just like in life, some relationships are easy, with solutions falling into your lap. Others may ask for lots of guesswork, and in the end will likely prove to not be winnable.

_Of course, this is all a bunch of shit. Minesweeper doesn’t have a meaning. It’s just a logic/guessing puzzle game. Or does it? I don’t know. But I think that’s the point. What if someone DID see meaning in it? Would that make Minesweeper artistic or would it be the person that saw the vision of what it meant? When watching children’s shows on PBS, do you think there was a grand artistic vision behind them, or that the creators simply wanted to make something wholesome that kids could watch? What if someone looks at a Warhol painting, and all they see is a picture of soup? Would any of these facts render any of these as art/not art? Is being “art” something you can actually label as “fact”? If a hundred people walked out of a theater saying that “Eraserhead” was visually striking, full of symbolism and stunningly artistic, but one guy said “I didn’t get it, it’s just a jumble of shit,”  would you toss out his opinion and say it’s definitely “art” because the majority disagrees, even though the poplar opinion is still just an opinion? If you were to consider anything put to canvas as art, does that include those coloring projects I had to do in middle school? (Seriously, I was assigned coloring projects in middle school. What a joke.)

_So what’s my point in all of this? I’m not sure. I think the main point is “Don’t put so much stock into what other people think, because they might think something stupid, like Minesweeper having a meaning.” Past that…I just kind of had an idea, and went with it. I just wanted to put something down in the blog while I had an idea and the drive. I’d been having a hard time writing anything I liked lately. I think this came out…average.

_As a footnote, I rarely play Minesweeper anymore, though I do still enjoy it when I do, and I don’t particularly like looking at the AIM window very much.

_So…I’m just gonna spoil stuff right off the bat, just so you know. Not TOO much, but some stuff. I figure Super Smash Bros. Brawl spoiled enough plot points of the game already, so why the fuck not, right? “Oh, Porky’s in a tube? There’s a giant, horrible place called New Pork City?” Anyways…Mother 3 isn’t a direct plot sequel to Mother 2/Earthbound, but the main lackey from Earthbound, Porky, returns and is the main villain of this game (this isn’t revealed for a large part of the game…but thanks to Brawl, if you didn’t know before, you knew after. And if you somehow managed to avoid SSBB and therefore didn’t know and then decided to read a review on Mother 3 and didn’t heed the spoiler warning…sorry). So as to not go into too much detail on the main plot…basically, Porky came to a peaceful little village and done fucked shit up and made it un-peace. Shit ain’t cash, son. While it might not be apparent from my description, Mother 3 is a bit more serious than its predecessor. If you’ve played Earthbound, the change in the tone is apparent pretty early on. If you don’t notice it during the forest fire when you’re playing as Flint, frantically searching for your family, you’ll notice it when sprites get punched in the face. And if you don’t notice it when people’s houses get struck by lightning when they don’t obey the new totalitarian task force hanging around in town, then you’re just dense [That's not EXACTLY how it goes, but you get the idea].

_Besides the overall change in tone of the main plot, another big change is the character dialog. Now, not to say that the character dialog is bad in Mother 3, but it’s not as clever or unique as it was in Earthbound. At first, I thought that there might have been something lost in (fan) translation, but as I played on, it became apparent that they just wrote less blatantly silly dialog to match the tone of the game. Now, I much preferred the plot of M3 to EB…but in regards to character dialog, EB has this one beat. It seemed that everywhere I went in EB, someone was saying something laugh-out-loud hilarious, whether it was irreverent or reverent. Not that M3 didn’t have any of that, but it wasn’t as often as it was in EB. Other than that, the writing in M3, thanks to excellent direction, felt much tighter this time around. It’s actually hard to believe how much of a leap in presentation there is in the two games when you consider that in the 12 years between EB and M3, HAL Laboratory didn’t make a single other RPG.

_So what were some of the problems I had with Earthbound that are no longer present in Mother 3? How about basic RPG design? The difficulty level in Mother 3 doesn’t jump all over the place. From area to area, believe it or not, the difficulty tends to gradually go up, as opposed to spiking up and down and side to side at random. Early bosses aren’t too hard, but some of the later bosses can be pretty difficult…you know, like a well designed RPG? Also, now when you go to a store, not only can you see what each item actually does, you can specifically see how much better or worse equipment is before you buy it. PSI abilities and skills? Descriptions of all of them are displayed in battle. Statuses like possession and fucking homesickness that aren’t curable in dungeon? Nonexistent. Even the menu navigation has been sped up! It’s like all of the dipshitted design that never should have been in Earthbound in the first place were *SHOX and awwwwww* actually addressed! It’s like a downloadable patch in the form of a completely different game on a handheld system instead of a homeconsole and 12 years after the fact. God…it’s fantastic. I mean…it sounds like I’m gushing here, but…there’s really nothing else I could think of that I really had a problem with regarding Earthbound that wasn’t improved dramatically in Mother 3.

_So…what else is there? There was a new addition to the battle system, that being the ability to do additional damage with your physical attacks by tapping to the rhythm of the various battle music. It’s reminiscent of the timed hits in Super Mario RPG…only…to music. It’s a very neat way to hold one’s attention during random battles [random meaning "various battles against generic cronies" since there aren't RPG style "i'm walking arou-OMG random battle!" fights]. The rhythms range from a simple holding of the beat, while some have more complex 7/8 time signatures [Well, complex if you don't know jack shit about music and time signatures], and some boss fights have  irregular time signatures and swung beats and then suddenly change rhythm. I can easily see people being annoyed by the complex rhythms, but for a music dork like me, trying to time your attacks with the rhythm can be addicting and rewarding.

_Graphically, the game is very similar in look to EB, which had a very simplistic and charming style to it. But Mother 3 does have moments where it shows off the power of the…Game Boy Advance…oh yeah, how many times do you get to use that phrase? Anyways, it goes back to the improvement in the overall direction of the game, that the sprite styles could be near identical, but the improvement in the graphics can’t help but be noticed. A prime example is the sunflower field…

Why, hello Lucas. Did you plant all of those yourself?

_Now, could they have put a backdrop that good looking on the SNES? No. But was there anything comparatively speaking in EB that stood out the way that this area did [and not just for plot reasons] in Mother 3? Again, no. Like I said, direction. This scene and the chapter in which you return to your hometown from the beginning of the game are executed superbly, even if the latter isn’t about graphics and is all atmosphere.

_It’s hard to judge the soundtrack on its own merit. I mean, EB had a great soundtrack, and this one does too…but M3 was more memorable…but that was because I had to focus on the music so much during the battles to combo fuckers. I mean, that’s not fair, is it? Hmmmmmm…perhaps…I’ll say that Mother 3 had a better original score, since EB borrowed from so many songs. Oh wait. Silly guyz.

_What can I say to sum it up? While there were aspects of Earthbound that I enjoyed, I really couldn’t get over the fact that, from a GAME design standpoint, calling EB mediocre would be kind. Mother 3 cleaned all of that up. Take the charm of Earthbound and wrap a good game around it. That’s Mother 3. My final verdict: Mother 3 gets the “Most Improved Player” award.

I would've taken a better picture than this...but I didn't take this one because my XBLA Compilation Disc seems to not want to work right now. But still...check out those Fantavision-esque visuals!

_Boom Boom Rocket_A fun little title that’s basically a DDR/Fantavision hybrid. And anything that can be explained as a hybrid of anything with Fantavision has to be good, right? Anyways, it’s a rhythm game and, seriously, it’s DDR with fireworks instead of arrows. Also, as far as I know, you can’t use the dance pad with it. But maybe you can? It’d probably be horrible though. Tons of jackhammer and full spin patterns. Actually, says on Wiki that they patched the game to include peripheral support. Good god. Having never played it on a DDR pad…I’d recommend sticking to the controller.

_One minor gripe I have with the game is the songlist. It’s all remixes of public domain classical music. “Oh boy, I’ve never heard anything like that before!” I know right? Nothing against Beethoven, Wagner or Tchaikovsky or anything, but third rate techno versions of their stuff are kind of “eh” at this point. I realize that licensing music is expensive, but couldn’t they have put in a COUPLE original tracks? I guess I’m just spoiled.

Ditto for this pic, but this gives you a good idea of how how the layout changes and shit, so I don't mind it as much.

_Pac-Man Championship Edition_I didn’t grow up with Pac-Man like a lot of people did, so when playing the classic game, I don’t find the same joy in eating dots and blue ghosts that many others do. No, not even if I have a bow on my head. Something about the whole “Play the same exact stage over and over again until you lose all your lives in an epic quest for High Score!” just doesn’t quite click for me. But THIS…man. If I were to compare Pac-Man Championship Edition to Street Fighter II Championship Edition, then PC-CE : Pac-Man :: SF2-CE : SF1. Yeah, Street Fighter fucking 1. That’s how much this blows the moldy oldies out of the water. The gameplay of “eat dots, avoid ghosts unless you eat a giant dot, then you eat blue ghosts” is there, but the presentation and level design and progression is just top notch. The changing stage layouts and time limits add so much to the formula, it’s amazing that it wasn’t done sooner. Coming from somebody that, as already stated, wasn’t a huge Pac-Man fan, PC-CE gets a huge recommendation for me, unless you’re some crazy Pac-Man purist that says stage layouts changing is for fags.

Protip: Don't do exactly this.

_Left 2 Dead_It’s funny that this game uses the Half-Life 2 engine, because Half-Life 2 isn’t that hard, but this is ballbreakingly difficult (And yes, I know those things have nothing to do with each other). A lot of it comes from the random nature of the zombie distribution. As opposed to almost every other FPS in existence, there are no set encounters. Everything is random. Sure, there are some semi-set encounters, like sometimes you’re guaranteed to fight a tank SOMEWHERE in a stage, but where exactly is random. Or a guaranteed witch SOMEWHERE, but her placement is also random. And parts where there will ALWAYS be a giant horde, but how large that actual horde is is random, and how many special units show up is random too. I mean, the game is hard anyways, but when so much is random like this, the likelihood of the game throwing you a fucking screwball is high, and there WILL be times when you will die simply because you got thrown a FUCKTON of said screwballs in rapid succession. Like “Oh shit, the Tank! WTF, a spitter too? WTF and a smoker?! And a fucking charger?! Fuck you and your random bullshit!”

_The biggest aspect of the game, even though the BS random layout of enemies came to mind first, is what I refer to as “forced co-op.” Any time a game has co-op functionality, and AI take control for their characters when you’re not playing with other people and you’re at a disadvantage because the AI is a fucking moron, that’s “forced co-op.” Stuff like RE5, where the AI will waste far more ammo than any reasonable person should shooting dead corpses, or stand beside you while you’re dying and wait a few seconds before reviving you, maybe just to see you sweat it out a little bit, or maybe both your partner and the zombies are controlled by AI and AI gotta stick together. Or Gears of War 2, where they made AI Dom just as easily killed when downed as the player, meaning that if he felt like being a dumbass for no reason and charging forward to get himself downed, you had no choice but to follow his fucking dumbass to inevitably revive him. Unless you like revert to checkpoints. Maybe that gets you off. (This is a good time to mention that the same now goes for the ALWAYS AI controlled Cole and Baird in Gears 2, as well. And seeing how Gears 2 only has 2 player co-op…ugh…for fuck’s sake.) Anyways, Left 2 Dead is the same kind of thing. If you don’t have 3 friends playing with you, you’ve got 3 AI’s. And while they’re pretty good at shooting things due to being game-engine-breakingly accurate with any weapon they hold, they’re so limited in what they do, they can’t help but be a hindrance. You can’t give them orders and they can’t use or even pick up any of the throwable items. Meaning if the AI feels like using a melee weapon when it’s highly inappropriate…tough shit. He’s dying. You can’t give him a fucking gun or even tell him to pick one up. Come across a med pack and one of your AI partner’s has room for one? Well, he’ll just…hover around it. For fuck’s sake, pick up the god damn thing! Why can’t i tell these bastards what to do? Why the shit WOULDN’T you pick up a med pack if you have room for it? Maybe now would be a good time to have 2 molotovs…well, too bad you’re the only one that will throw ‘em. And too bad the AI won’t even pick them up so they can give them to you when you use up whatever is in your “throwable item” slot. Playing the game effectively is so dependent on playing with others, it’s fucking silly. Hell, even the amount of enjoyment you get is relative to the amount of people you play with. I realize that online is popular and all, and while I like playing co-op games, I don’t like being FORCED to play co-op to enjoy a game. And that’s why I use the term “forced co-op.” (FYI, I don’t consider Gears 1 forced co-op, because Dom doesn’t fucking kill himself.)

I'm tempted to say that this is inspired by another game involving skating, but the thought of associating this game with it make me sad.

_Yanya Caballista: City Skater_Oh lord. This…thing…is just an abomination. Maybe the developers were just too close to their own work to be able to step back and objectively look at what they had made halfway through development and say “This shit doesn’t fucking work,” and start over. OK, you might say “That probably wasn’t financially viable,” but if you’ve seen this game in action, you’d know…the budget on this shit couldn’t have been high.

Here’s the gist of it: aliens have invaded and are causing a ruckus in San Fransisco only, for some reason. Skateboarding tricks are the only thing that please them, so a group of young punks take to the streets to skate the aliens away. Yeah…I could have told you that “skating game” is another genre that doesn’t need a plot, kind of like “rhythm game.” Anyways, the plot could be considered charmingly ludicrous if the game itself wasn’t so gut-wrenchingly awful. The controls are about the stiffest thing you could ever imagine anything involving a person on a thing with on wheels being. The only kinds of  turning you can do are “slight lean to the side” and “extreme turn bordering on 90 degrees.” Jumping feels like you’re on the moon with an eye patch on, it’s so floaty and trying to judge where you’re going to land is so shitty. The trick system is broken beyond belief. The best way to describe linking tricks is the compare it to the command shortcuts in Street Fighter 4, and if you’ve ever played SF4, you probably just hung your head down and slowly shook it back and forth thinking about the fact that they not only left them in Super, but didn’t even give you the option to turn them off. Anyways, all of these describe the controls WITHOUT the fucking fingerboard peripheral included in the game, which makes the controls even worse if that’s believable.

S'up Goku Guy from Yanya.

_There it is. In all of its anti-glory. So how you’re supposed to use this fucking thing is you hold the controller sideways and put your right thumb over the Triangle circle [Right thumbstick] and your left thumb over the X circle [Left thumbstick]. Pushing the board up moves you forward, full left or right tilts you in the respective direction, and moving the top part at an angle will turn you. It all sounds reasonable…except it’s fucking horrible. As you might imagine from a piece of plastic so small, simply tilting one end of the board without moving the other is harder in practice than in theory. That combined with the controls being extremely sensitive make trying to actually TURN with this abortion on thumbsticks like passing a kidney stone – difficult, painful, and you’d sooner just tear the fucking thing out, which in this case is easy as it only involves taking the fingerboard off of your controller. But that’s not the only “great” thing about trying to use this godforsaken thing. You jump by pressing down the X circle. Now…the board itself is very smooth with no tread of any kind for your finger to really stick on. So to actually move the fucking thing requires exerting a little bit of pressure down on it, lest your thumbs simply slide around on the damn thing. So…exerting pressure down on the board to move…pressing down on the board to jump…fuck me, did they think any of this shit out in development?

_Now, I could go on about the shitty stage design, the shitty time limits, the fact that the game itself is short and artificially extends itself by re-using levels and by making the stages only beatable through repeatedly playing them and memorizing the layout…but I think I’ll sum up this game by saying that I’d rather wear a noose as a necktie than play this again.

There was a bowling ball when i took this picture. Hooray sprite flicker!

_Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game_I owned this long ago in my time of youth. Then I traded it for an original brick Game Boy, a copy of Qix and Metroid II. Seeing how the acquisition also gave me a console with which to play Pokémon Blue and Pokémon: TCG, I think that it was worth being without TNMT2 for almost a decade.

_As a said youth, I couldn’t beat this game. That’s because I was a dumbass. Well, not exactly. But more that outside of shit like Punch-Out, I didn’t think everything had a set pattern like everything totally does. I gave games too much credit. “They know everything I’m gonna do!” I didn’t realize that they behaved in specific ways. I wouldn’t say I was a dumbass, seeing how even though I didn’t realize this, I was still getting A’s in elementary school and was reading at a higher grade level than the hallway grade level that I walked down to get to class each day. So…I’ll go with ignorant =P

_Having the opportunity to load up the arcade perfect TNMT game on XBLA and play it alongside TMNT2, it’s amazing how different the games are. At the time, you thought “OK, downgrade in graphics, but we got some new stages and the gameplay is in tact!” While the base gameplay (bmup) is the same, the approach you have to take is vastly different. The Attack+Jump move in the NES version isn’t actually attack+jump, but it’s jump quickly followed by attack, and is much harder to do and therefore is far less spammable. Foot soldier’s fists also see a huge priority boost over jump kicks, making those harder to spam as well . Calling them “the same game” back then would be like calling Final Fight and Streets of Rage the same. “Yeah, they’re similar…buuuuuuuutttt…” To wrap it up, sweet game, much easier now than it was then, if you need more of an explanation, then…I don’t know what to say. How do you not know about a TMNT bmup?

_Grandia 2_This was such an improvement over Grandia 1, it’s not even funny. The biggest improvement…the story. Simply put, the characters have more purpose and the story has more direction than the first one did. The soundtrack was good, the battle system was sweet, the VA was improved, and the game did an excellent job of keeping you from getting lost. It’s always clear on where the next destination is, and there’s very little aimless roaming around towns to trigger events. It’s funny that this little blurb is so short, because I liked Grandia II a lot. I think it’s because I did a full review on Grandia 1 and my main gripes were improved, so…there’s not much more to say without simply rehashing things and spoiling plot. So…there.

Such epic graphix animationz.

_Mega Man Legends_This was a rather charmingly fun game. Calling it “Mega Man in 3D” like some people did at the time of release wouldn’t be a very accurate description, though. The gameplay almost reminds me of a mech-sim, which sounds…really strange. But I was thinking about the last boss fight and how I was spamming unlimited buster shots at him while rolling to dodge attacks, and in my head, it seems kind of mech-ish. Only with more auto-targeting.

People have been clammoring for a MML3 in the hopes of next-gen dog kicking. True story.

_What’s funny about MML is that the game really bears no relevance to the MM universe in any way. Even though he’s called “Mega Man” throughout the whole game, the main character isn’t THE Mega Man from the series. Same goes for Roll. There’s no Dr. Light or Dr. Wily. The bosses are all giant machines piloted by people and not equally sized robots with an attack based around a theme. If you replaced the main characters with different skins and names, they could have named the game anything. There’s no platforming in the game. It’s an action RPG/lite-shooter hybrid. Why Mega Man? I dunno. Whatever. Fun game, even with the inevitable “God awful plot triggers” moments present in most early PS1 RPG’s.

Let's assume that this particular squad of jet fighters is known as Team Gemini.

_Gunstar Heroes_There’s a good reason why this game is so highly regarded. It’s like Contra, only with less cheap deaths due to health and stage designs set-up so that when you continue against bosses, you never have to go in with a peashooter. Add in the stylistic cartoonish sprites, a boatload of different weapons to use, diving jump attacks, a kickin’ soundtrack, the M. Bison guy…it’s a really easy game to like. I’ve heard some people call it overrated, but I’ve never heard anybody call it out-and-out bad, and for good reason.

While it doesn't have the jiggle physics of Dragon Quest VIII, Tales of Vesperia does have better still images.

_Tales of Vesperia_My first foray into the Tales series was the Pre-gimped Special Edition Vesperia. Before I even begin to get into Namco-Bandai’s absolute joke in handling this game, let me say that I really enjoyed this game a lot. The battle system, while a bit mash heavy, was a lot of fun. Combining Artes to try and find combos was pretty awesome. I spent a lot of time just trying to find situations where i could chain together combinations of 4 Artes that would all connect, so as far as quality of battle engine in an Action RPG, this definitely gets high marks. Most of the characters are likable, although some of them do far less developing than others, such as Estelle, who never really becomes any less naive throughout the course of your 50+ hour adventure. While “her eyes are opened” a little bit, you’d think a princess whose never really seen the outside world would have her eyes opened more so than they are. Even so, Yuri is a strong protagonist. His counterpart, the NPC-except-for-one-battle Flynn, falls more into the stereotypical idealistic the-world-is-TOTALLY-blac-and-white main character you’d expect to find in a JRPG. Yuri, on the other hand, is more of a realist and right from the start lets you know that he knows that everything is totally drab shades of gray. He doesn’t particularly like fighting, but he appreciates a well fought battle. He’s sarcastic and plays semi-mean spirited jokes on Shithead/Karol in some of the skits.

_The use of optional “skits”  for character and relationship development (a staple of the Tales series, I’m told) was a very good move on the part of the developers. Some people might call the use of character portraits moving their mouths alongside text to develop character a shortcut so as to not animate the characters doing anything during these scenes, but seeing how there are so many skits in the game and that they’re all optional, I can give them a pass on that. They are all voiced, however, so there’s a shitton of VA in the game, although it’s strangely absent during parts of the main quest. I guess having no VA for the random main plot scene is less random than having no VA for 30 or so skits out of a few hundred.

_Now…on to Namco’s treatment of the 360 version of this game. Like I said earlier…it’s a joke. There are some things which I can understand. The JP PS3 version has the entire main plot voiced. As I mentioned, the 360 version is not. OK…audio takes a lot of space. Whatever. I’ll give ‘em a pass. But…no fully playable Flynn? There’s no excuse. It’s not like “There was no room to code another playable character.” I have no idea how much space that even takes since I’m no coder, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say that’s why the other character, Patty, was removed (who was obviously planned from the start, as there’s a room that directly references her, and scenes with the full party forming incomplete circles with a single spot open for one other person). But Flynn actually IS usable for a single fight. If you have the key item that lets you change control of characters mid-battle, you can switch to him and use him in battle. He’s in the game. You can open up the menu when you control him and adjust his Arte set-up. He’s fully usable. They just…don’t have him join your party at the end. His battle engine code is wasted space after that. Why? Just to cockblock? What about all the DLC costumes on PSN? There was DLC within a month of release. To compare it to the 360, I played the game 16 months after release, and the only DLC for the game are for items obtainable in game. That’s like if FF7 was released today and they had DLC for things like the Fire Materia. You can also purchase…level ups. Yeah. Want to level up without grinding? Pay 200 MS points. Fuck. And…that’s it. The only downloadable content for the 360 Vesperia are for things that are already obtainable in the game. That’s literally IT. 16 months after release, there wasn’t even a PATCH for the game on start-up. Although it’s not like there’s anything in the game buggy enough to need patching. They couldn’t even be bothered to patch in something like the ability to skip cutscenes. Some people refer to the 360 version as the “Beta” version. I wouldn’t even call it a beta. A beta would imply that they intended on finishing it, and while they did “finish it” on the PS3, I think it gives them too much credit. No…the evidence points to Namco deliberately holding back on it. It’s like when George Lucas released the original theatrical versions of the Star Wars trilogy on DVD in non-restored, non-anamorphic widescreen. Basically “I could’ve…but didn’t feel like it. I’d rather just do the laziest thing possible and sucker as much money out of the people that made this series what it is today.” Beta versions of games are what real companies make to test games. This is more like a “sham.” Honestly, I’m fine with the 360 version as it’s still a lot of fun, but to say their handling of it anything but a mockery would be a lie.

_Mass Effect 2_Enough ranting about a company’s ridiculous business practices and onto a company that can’t help but gloat about how great their own games are and how they’ve reinvented the RPG wheel. See what I did, “reinvented the wheel” because Mass Effect uses the dialog wheel thing?

_ME2 was rather fantastic. But the gameplay was decidedly more 3PS than RPG. Granted, the first ME was kind of 3Ps too, but it felt more like an action RPG that used guns instead of swords. This was basically a stop’n'pop 3rd person shooter with spells in the form of biotic powers. If you watch videos of gameplay, they look similar, but trust me, they feel very different. Outside of that, there have been plenty of improvements. The plot is far more focused this time around, meaning both main story and side-quests. Overall, there are less side-quests to do in ME2 than there were in ME1, but the loyalty side-quests for each character make up for it. Every recruitable character has a loyalty mission, which are all pretty lengthy and have their own mini-plot to them. They all flesh out the character they’re attached too rather well, both moving them forward in development and giving you backstory on them. And in the biggest improvement over ME1, the Mako was removed. Praise whatever deity is appropriate or all of them for this wonderful removal of a gameplay element.

_One gripe I have was the equipment management…I read reviews saying how it was “vastly improved over ME1.” Yes…it is better…because they removed it completely. The only things you really “equip” is your weapon loadout when going off for a mission. So if you call “No equipment system whatsoever” an “improved equipment management system,” then yes, it’s better. Really, I’m only complaining about peoples semantics there, but it DOES bring up a point about the game…there’s very little customization outside of the skills. Sure, you get to use different weapons, but it’s hardly robust. You’ll be rolling through a lot of the game with the standard weapon set. If you don’t download the DLC from the Cerberus Network (a.k.a EA’s Anti-Used Game Protection Network) then the amount of weapons becomes even more not robust. It’s like BioWare spent so much time making this vast, “open ended” game with all these sweet dialog choices that they forgot that some people consider character customization kind of a big aspect of RPG’s. In its current form, ME2 is kind of like Gears of War with a lot of talking and biotics. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed ME2, but I also missed the customization aspects of ME1. Here’s hoping that they can find a good middle ground in ME3.

_And of course, as you probably figured as it’s BioWare, there are plenty of bugs and glitches to be found. My favorite was the love interest not showing up on your lap for cuddling during endgame.

Come here, baby...I'll hold you just the way I know you like it.

_Final Fantasy XIII sees the franchise return back to the series roots. Final Fantasy has always been based on attacking via menus, the presence of stats, and crystals, and FF13 has them all, so it’s just like every other FF game! Yeah…that’s a load of bullshit. I mean, if you wanted to trick a FF fan into thinking that this was a traditional FF game, you could tell them that, and they might buy into it. The quick and dirty description of this game that it’s a story heavy RPG with fast-paced battles with a ton of the fat of traditional RPG’s trimmed off. So…that’s the quick and dirty version. But you know me…and this isn’t a Roundup post, so “quick and dirty” isn’t gonna cut it here.

_First, let’s dive into the battle system. Battles play out in a kind of hyper-speed Active-Time Battle, and if you had to compare it to any other previous FF game, it most closely resembles FFX-2. The biggest difference here is that where in X-2 you controlled all 3 party members, here you only control 1 and the computer AI controls the rest of your party. This sounds worse than it actually is, as the pre-programmed AI is actually quite good (More on this later). You have two main commands: Auto-battle and abilities, which are kind of the same thing. Abilities brings up all of the attacks available for you to use, and Auto-battle will automatically select from [almost all of] those skills. If you’ve scanned an enemy and know what he’s weak against and what status ailments he’s susceptible to, Auto-battle will automatically select those for you. Because, like I said, the game is “hyper-speed ATB,” the ATB gauge fills rather quickly, so manually selecting your abilities can take up precious seconds while the gauge is full and you’re missing out on time you’d otherwise be attacking if you Auto-battle’d. So, obviously, for most of the game, you’ll be using Auto-battle. You might be saying to yourself “Spam auto? That doesn’t sound like I’m actually doing anything! That’s possibly something I didn’t like about the gambits in FF12! Is there ANY strategy in this game? Do I ever really do anything in battle? ” The answer is yes…yes, you do have to do something.

_All battles center around the Paradigm Shift system. What are Paradigms, you ask? Well, besides being a sweet 1980′s corporate buzzword and sounding totally sweet when mispronounced, they’re basically FF13′s job system. Paradigms are comprised of roles. You have your Commando [Fighter], Ravager [Black mage], Sentinel [Defense tank], Synergist [Buffs], Saboteur [Debuffs], and Medic [...Medic]. Now, before you go thinking silly things like FF5 or FFT jobs, where your Black Mages, Time Mages and Healers can cast black magic for decent damage, or heal people or even smack people with their staffs, in FF13, people in a respective role can only preform actions in that paradigm…FOREVER! Meaning that if Ms. Lightning is a Commando, she can only do physical attacks as a Commando, and will never gain the ability to do magic attacks or cast Haste or even fucking DEFEND as a Commando for as long as she ever shall live under the role of a Commando (Actually, she doesn’t even learn the defend technique, Steelguard, as a Sentinel, so specifically, Lightning can NEVER defend =P). For characters to preform a role’s actions, they must be in that role. Now, while by the end of FF13, all characters can eventually use every role, unlike many other games involving jobs, every character doesn’t learn every skill in every role. Add to that the fact that the stat progression of every character is very noticeably different, and even their attack animations and movement speed in battle make them more or less proficient at some classes than others, and you’ll find that every character has their own unique strengths and weaknesses and can be useful in any situation, although certain female characters are better than others and can be useful in pretty much every situation at all times.

_So…how does all of this shit work in battle? Well…in the menu, you can set-up 6 Paradigms for your 3 character team. You can use something like Com/Rav/Med, for a physical attacker, a mage and a healer, or maybe start a battle with Syn/Syn/Sab to quickly buff your party and weaken the enemies. Or if you want to be dumb, you can have Sen/Sen/Sen for triple tanks. Anyways, you can switch to any of your Paradigms mid-battle when needed. So…if the enemies are kicking your ass a little too hard, maybe switch to a Paradigm with a Synergist and a Medic, then when you’re healed and buffed, back over to an offensive one to lay the whooping. A boss is about to unleash a strong attack? Quickly switch over to a Paradigm with a Sentinel to soak up the damage and a Medic to heal him back up after he takes it. Basically, all of the strategy from the old FF games that used to involve things like going into menus, spamming elemental weaknesses, knowing and exploiting boss patterns…it’s there. It just moved from the attacks/magic/item menu into the Paradigm menu, and the battles play a lot differently because of it.

_One last thing about the battles. As mentioned before, the party AI is overall pretty good. When you have them in different roles, they have certain scripts that they follow. If they’re in the Saboteur role, then they’ll only cast de-buffs that the enemy isn’t immune to, and once they’re afflicted with it, they won’t attempt to cast it on them until it wears off. As a Synergist, they always cast Haste first, followed by Protect if you’re fighting heavy physical attack users, or Shell if they’re magic based. But although the scripted AI is good, having come on the heels of FF12 with its advanced gambit system, I’d have liked to have had the ability to customize the AI scripts myself. The AI will ALWAYS cast protection based buffs before offensive buffs, which at times you simply don’t need. Maybe I want Bravery first, dammit. Sure, they might be weak to both Fire and Thunder, but Thunder doesn’t have travel time. Yeah…some form of customization would’ve been nice.

_Fuck…four paragraphs on the battle engine? What is this shit, a real review? Well…no, it’s laced with profanity and I’m putting a bunch of informal bullshit like this in it. Well, let’s move on to the rest of the game, shall we? As you may have heard, FF13 is very linear. Extremely linear. You might be thinking, “It’s a FF game…how linear could it be?” Well…if it was a rail shooter, it MIGHT be a little more linear for the first 30 hours or so, but even some rail shooters have alternate paths if you shoot a hidden box or something. I mean, they usually still lead to the same end of stage boss, but I’m just saying. LINEARITY SPOILER – Seriously, for the first 10 chapters of the game, the only “optional paths” are a side tunnels that leads to treasure spheres that you have to turn around and go back down once you’re done collecting the loot (And yeah, “Treasure sphere.” Chests have become way too cliché for a franchise as grandiose as Final Fantasy).

_So what does the linearity mean for the gamer? Well…it has pros and cons. One thing that I really liked about it was the absence of stupid ass event triggers. One thing that always irked me about RPG’s was when someone told you “Oh, go to this town and talk to this guy,” and they didn’t give you any description of what he looked like or where in the town he might be, or, even better, the game was designed so awesome that there’s something specific you have to do in the town to make said person show up. Or maybe he’s actually not even there, and you’re supposed to just give up and try to leave the town and you bump into him on the way out. Those are always fun. Anyways, stupid bullshit like that is a big waste of fucking time. The rail-quest presentation of FF13 does away with these annoyances. “Here we go, rolling into a new area…I wonder where I’m supposed to go? Oh…a cutscene started. They’re taking care of it for me. Kay. New dungeon. What direction should I head? Oh…it’s a tunnel, and there’s a wall to my back.” There’s a lack of towns, but everything you’d normally do in a town in an RPG has been streamlined in other areas. You’d normally go to a town to advance plot: that’s done via automatic cut-scenes, as mentioned. You’d go to town to buy weapons and accessories: shops are accessed at any save point. You’d go to towns to rest at an inn: your HP is restored automatically between fights. Yes, there aren’t any towns in FF13…but they’ve pretty much eliminated the need for them, unless you just loved talking to random NPC’s that have nothing better to do than say the same line of dialog over and over again (Damn those Pulse l’Cie!”).

_Now, that’s where a downside comes in. While later on in the game, you DO get to explore a nice open area with side-quests and multiple paths and such, but single paths leading forward with a single dead-end fork with treasure at the end is a large percentage of the main game. If you’re the kind of RPG player that likes exploring huge worlds and getting lost in adventure and at times having so many side-quests open to you, that you just wander around a town for 30 minutes trying to activate them all so as to save time so you don’t have to come back later, then this is a big let down. FF13 doesn’t give you a real sense of being in a grand world, with an endless amount of vast possibilities waiting to be discovered. The linearity is a stark contrast to FF12, where every time you finished a story dungeon, it seemed like at least 5 hours of side quests opened up. When I played FF12, by the time I finished all the side quests, I forgot what had happened in the plot. While I understand that the linearity in the game was to try to help focus on the story and character development, I don’t think it was necessary for them to go to quite the extreme that they did.

_The writing in the game is some of the best the series has seen. The standout comes in the form of the characters and the character development. Every character gets a good amount of time devoted to them in the game towards development. By the end of the game, I liked every character in my party a lot more than I did when they first joined the party. This is one of the stronger casts in a Final Fantasy game. I liked the main story of the game, but the presentation was a bit disappointing. Even with the aforementioned focus on plot, the story presented in the main game is abnormally confusing if you don’t read the optional datalog entries found in the menu screen. You’ll have terms like “Fal’cie” and “Pulse l’cie” and say “I wonder what those are…I’m sure that somebody in the game will explain it to me.” And someone in the game does…the datalog does. The optional datalog. The one that you have the option to never open for the entire game. The one that it’s very possible to ignore for 50+ hours and just be left scratching your head and wondering to yourself “I think from the context clues that I kind of understand what a Fal’cie is at this point…but I really wish there was some kind of explanation at some point in time ever in the game.” Maybe they were thinking TOO far ahead and said “Let’s not put a long-winded explanation of what these things are so when people so a 2nd and 3rd playthrough, they don’t have to sit through those couple minutes of exposition.” But then, if that was the logic, any time a character reveals a motive, why not just have them say nothing? Repeat players already know! In fact, why not just have NO DIALOG AT ALL? Obviously, they don’t do that because that would be stupid. Also, if you don’t want to hear about that stuff on a 2nd playthrough, you can always just skip the cut-scene. Meaning that if they HAD explained what fal’cie and l’cie were in the natural course of the game [which, by the way, are terms used A LOT in the game because they're VERY IMPORTANT!] and repeat players didn’t want to hear it, they could always just go “Pause -> Skip.” Maybe the dialog seemed unnatural, because the characters in game already knew what they were. Then how about a little narration or something? So…the fact that even with the focus on story, they still managed to botch up a couple parts in the plot presentation like that is a bit discouraging. But all that aside…the cast was excellent, and I enjoyed the plot, although in typical FF fashion, a couple parts of it were a bit “…wait a second, what?”

_The musical score in the game is another standout for the genre. As many as stated, the battle theme, “Blinded by Light,” is one of the best battle themes of recent memory. Walking around Oerba the first time while “Dust to Dust” played both on the field and in battles was a fantastic design choice. The somber tone of the music fits the mood of the party and the area perfectly. All of the character theme’s go well with their respective characters. You can feel a bit of their personality reflected in the tone of their songs. The ludicrousness of the guitar riffs for Snow. The laid back, heavy on the bass theme on Sazh’s theme. The high notes seemingly trying to hide the low chords in Vanille’s theme. Music during story scenes fit with what’s going on and aren’t overbearing. There’s a wide range of dungeon themes, from large orchestral pieces to more ambient work to vocal melodies. I always enjoy nice variation from dungeon to dungeon. While there are other specific tracks I could talk about (The Yaschas Massif, for example), I’ll stop here and say that the score for the game front to back is quite good.

_Another complaint comes when you actually do get to change your party. Every time you change your party, it will automatically change your Paradigm set-up. You can have up to 6 Paradigms set, but when you change your party, it will erase them all and automatically set up 3 new ones and leave 3 blank ones. And before you ask, no, it doesn’t remember your Paradigm set-up if you change your party back to the previous set-up. It’s god damned annoying. It really makes you want to not change your party much when you finally do get the ability to change your party.

_Now, time my biggest god forsaken complaint about this game…money. Similar to FF12, enemies don’t drop any money. Because that’s realistic. I mean, why would every random Flanitors and Behemoth in the world all randomly carry around the exact same amount of gil on their dead corpse? That’s not realistic at all. More realistic is if they all randomly have a spoil. More realistic is if every wolf you kill randomly has a Wolf’s Fang…because wolves normally don’t have teeth or anything. They’re all feral herbivores that gum their strict veggie diet down the hatch and attack any human that dares to tread on their territory. Or it’s realistic that giant fucking Adamantoises the size of dinosaurs carry around Gold Nuggets and completely made up transformation catalysts inside of the pockets of their shells. And it’s realistic that people turn into crystal, and a man could have a tiny chocobo live in his hair without it becoming encrusted with bird shit. Maybe somewhere, in someone’s ass-backwards mind, this whole “enemies don’t carry money” thing works and makes sense. Hell, even in theory, it kind of makes sense. But in FF12, it was nothing but a big fucking pain in the ass. But at least in FF12, you didn’t actually need that much money. In FF13…you need a fucking TON of money. If you want to get weapons worth a salt, you don’t need a king’s ransom in gil. You need 5 fucking monarchy’s ransoms in gil, plus a pharaoh’s ransom and all of his slave laborers. And the only way to get it is to grind endlessly for untold hours on end. And the best part is that when you’re grinding for money, you’re not even guaranteed to GET ANY! Because you’re not actually getting money…you’re getting random drops, which you’ll then sell for money! And the best items for money come from retardedly difficult enemies with mind blowingly low drop rates! Fuck you, Square! Stop this bullshit! Make enemies drop money! If it was really that fucking much of a problem, then a league of nerds would’ve already stopped finding gold pieces in the bellies of dragons in pen and paper RPG’s years ago. But they still do because it’s a fucking awful idea not to, and they’d probably physically assault the dungeon master that did that to them. Yes, NERDS would PHYSICALLY ASSAULT a person for not finding gold on the dead corpses of random monsters. This is what you’re risking, S-E. Assholes. Good thing you’re based in Japan, because otaku are wussier than nerds and will probably just kill themselves on your corporate building.

_If I was a professional reviewer, I’d have to dock points for some of the ridiculous design choices made in the game, like how far into the game you have to go to level your character and for Paradigms, the main game mechanic, to be introduced. But since I’m not, and I can be totally biased and grade the game on my own personal enjoyment. Final Fantasy XIII is “Delicious; Would gladly eat again.”

Kaim, as stoic as ever

So where do we start? I suppose the very beginning is as best a spot as any. Right off the bat I gotta say I really appreciate a few things in the options menu. I like the fact that there is original Japanese dialogue (which is kind of a misnomer because the game was first recorded in English). I do love when game companies include a Japanese dialogue track. Not to say english dubs are bad, I happen to be a very big fan of the dub for Persona 4, but I like the choice being there. One thing does bug me a bit though, the subtitles included are “dub-titles”, meaning they follow word for word the English track. This leads to some phantom subtitles where people aren’t talking but are being subtitled. Also the voice actor for Jansen takes a lot of liberties with the script and ad libbed a bunch so it’s kinda weird. Back quickly to one other small thing I liked was the option to switch the confirm button between A and B on the 360 controller. Being a long time fan of RPGs I’ve gotten used to the confirm button being A on the SNES, and then Circle on the Playstation systems. Needless to say I hate when and RPG switches it up, but having the option here is very much appreciated Mistwalker!

Going over the story the game starts you out in one of the coolest ways I think I’ve ever seen in an RPG. Two warring factions beating the crap out of each other Lord of the Rings style, large machines cutting a swath of destruction on the battlefield. Then enters our protagonist Kaim, kicking ass like any good battle hardened soldier would. Right away I get a little bit of a Cecil (Final Fantasy IV) vibe from him. Then we get the moment that just gave me goosebumps: he’s approached by several soldiers and the camera pans behind him as the games battle theme kicks in and the combat menu seamlessly fades in around him. It’s just executed so well that you can’t help but smile. After a boss fight naturally shit goes sour and the bloody apocalypse rains down on both factions leaving nothing in it’s wake…except for Kaim naturally, confused as to why he alone has survived.

From that point the games story takes Kaim and his companions Seth and Jansen to various locales in the name of their nation Uhra, investigating the Grand Staff which seems to be some sort of magical amplifier; literally a gigantic staff. I really don’t want to get into specifics because I would be spoiling this absolutely amazing game, but the journey through all of Disc 1 has been very entertaining. One of my favourite aspects of the game is the “Thousand Years of Dreams”. Kaim is an immortal, and as such he has lived for a thousand years. He has forgotten many of these memories and at certain points in the game he will suddenly remember something from his past. These are presented in beautifully crafted short stories written by the award winning short story writer Kiyoshi Shigematsu. The voice of every story is amazing, it begins to breathe much more depth and life into Kaim’s character which at the start is pretty much just a cold and stoic man. Some of these stories are pretty powerful, they’ll elicit some strong emotions at times, some could even make you cry. But they’re all amazing and add so much flavour to the game. As long as you’re not afraid of reading…

Seth, the fantastic female lead

Overall my impressions from the first disc are very high. Before I end this quick impressions post I did want to touch on the music which is fantastic! In typical Uematsu style the soundtrack is full of memorable songs so far and I’m just head over heels in love with the main Battle Theme and its Boss Theme . Quickly touching on the battle system itself, it’s decidedly “old-school”. However it isn’t bogged down by superfluous crap like so many RPGs these days seem to be want to do. It’s simple and elegant and frankly I like that. I’ve heard complaints that it’s too simple. But frankly if a random battle or regular encounter takes longer than about 3 minutes, you’re doing something wrong developers. Battles like those should be quick and not too frequent otherwise you start to bog down the flow of the game.

In closing, do yourself a favour and check this game out. So far Disc 1 has been awesome and I’m sure the rest of the ride will be just as enjoyable! If you don’t have a 360, go borrow or steal one. This RPG is worth it if you’re a fan of the genre for sure. And make it to the end of Disc 1 at least before you think about quitting if you’re not digging it too much. The end of Disc 1 is fantastic! Emotional, powerful and very entertaining! I can’t wait to pop in Disc 2 and keep going.

This is my gaming rig. You can't see it here, but my computer is to the left. All my Nintendo games are on the top left on what was originally meant to be a Beanie Baby shelf (lol). To the left of the entertainment center are my PS1 games, some "legit" PS2 games, borrowed Dreamcast games, and at the bottom are Genesis games. To the right, you'll find the actual legit PS2 games, followed by original X-Box and 360 titles. And to the right of those, you'll see my beatmania IIDX controller and the artbook "puzzle/ Maya Takamura's Pieces."

_That’s just my gaming rig…wanna see the general layout of my entire room? Here’s the huge pic. Seriously, it’s huge. Did you click it? I told you. I left some fun goodies around for you to see. Neopets plushies on my dresser, the dressers from my childhood which are covered in stickers which i used to collect for no reason other than to put them on my dresser, my sister’s Twilight DVD on my Febreezed chair, the Powerpuff Girls plate on the floor, my bed being made for the first time in well over a year specifically for the purpose of these pictures, my Wall-E throw blanket…you can also see a lot of the poster themes I have going on on each wall.

_While I had my sister’s camera, I also decided to take some more pictures…various things around my room and fun with figurines…let’s have a look-see, shall we?

My drawer of handheld systems and other various things like the case for Rogue Squadron for the N64, a game I've never owned in my entire life.

You may have heard about my ancient TV that doesn't even have composite inputs. Well, that box on the right is what makes modern-day console play possible on it. It's my Composite/RF converter. And that there on the left is my composite selector. You'll also notice on top of the selector, not hooked up at the moment, is a splitter, which i use for streaming. My consoles run into my composite selector, which then run into the RF adaptor, which then runs into my television. And when i stream, the splitter is also plugged into the selector. That's some hardcore shit, huh? And yes, the carpet is fucking filthy.

Doink. (don'tmindmyfingers)

This is the fingerboard that makes Yanya Caballista possible. Go hit up eBay before somebody else does!

My 2010 calendar. 2009 was Pixar's Cars, 2008 was Graffiti World, and 2007 was Alex Grey. I'm a red-blooded male and I decided it was high time to have sexy women on my fucking wall =P

I am the mighty Asuka! A+ #1 Evangelion pilot! Cross me and feel my wrath! I don't need boys and am not attracted sexually to Shinji in the least!

A close up look of the complete jigsaw puzzle that came with Maya Takamura's...puzzle =P. This took about 3-4 hours to complete.

Joyride Studios shows why I prefer their Halo figures over MacFarlane's, even if the details on the MacFarlane line are superior. Can the MacFarlane figures hoist marines into the air like so much paper? Can they?!

A close-up shot of my Pop'n Music poster. Is it bad that I have a Pop'n Music poster hanging on my wall and I own no Pop'n games? Is it bad that I have this and have only played Pop'n once? Is it bad that when I acquired this poster, I had yet to ever play Pop'n Music? Let's just...not answer any of these questions...

I got this at Comic-Con 2007. I was debating between this and Knights of the Round, and decided on Kefka. I was with Herlock, and at the same time, he bought a Knight of the Round figure at the same booth, and when the seller grabbed it, he put a "SOLD OUT" sign in front of it, and in my head, I said "Fuck, I should have got a KotR," just based on the fact that they were hotter items. But that quickly went away when the guy did the same thing to the Kefka figure after he grabbed mine ;-D

My collection of PS1 and PS2 memory cards. You might miss it at first glance, but there's a 7th PS1 card on its side on the left. Boy, I sure did love the disc era before hard drives!

A better look at the Powerpuff Girls plate you might have seen lying in my room in the giant pic. Yes, it is shaped like a heart. And yes, Buttercup does have a big smile on her face while Blossom has the angry eyes. This does seem a bit out of character. Anyways...this is my apple plate. I take this downstairs and core apples on it. Plates without the Powerpuff Girls on them are for babies. In all seriousness, though, I've been using this plate a lot since I started my diet, because it's a lot smaller in size than most of our other plates, so it makes it easy to keep my portion sizes small if I use it.

When I first bought the Space Channel 5 Special Edition for the PS2, I found out soon afterwards that not only were there SC5 figures made back when the original game came out on the Dreamcast, but they also came out in the US! Holy fuck! Anyways, I found out soon afterwards that...they're rather rare nowadays and they go for more money than any of the games themselves will run you. This made me sad. Well...one day, a random eBay search found me a lot containing a Pudding and an Evila, both sealed (as you can see), for the grand total of $15...AFTER SHIPPING! I totally bit. And there they are, in all their reporting glory...well, not really. You can't really report very well when you're sealed in plastic. Makes me feel kind of bad, really...

This is a Dugtrio I made out of clay back when Pokemon Blue was popular, putting the likely date sometime in early 1999, meaning my likely age was 14. Looking back at my experience in the field of the clay arts, I'm surprised at how well it turned out XD Also, you get to see a good look at my DOAXBV X-Box skin. The only reason the Dugtrio is there is because the base happens to fit near perfectly on the original X-Box logo. Seriously, epic coincidence. I mean, consider the date I made it and that the original Box didn't come out until almost 2 years later.

Wall-E is very sad to leave this house.

Over the past 20 years, I've stayed in different rooms in the house at different periods of time. The room I'm in now as we prepare to move out is the room I was in when we first moved in. While the orientation is different, my current bed is in the same spot my old bunk bed was in the old days. When I was a kid, my aunt hand-made me a teddy bear, which I slept with every night. In those days, I put him in the corner of the bed, the same spot in which he resides in this very picture. As the days wind down in my childhood home, I've decided to return him to his old stomping grounds. I'm a pack rat and I hate getting rid of my old things, as evidenced by the fact that Teddy is still around, along with many of my old stuffy pals (not pictured). Everything tugs at my heartstrings. I'm going to miss this house.

I was trying to make a giant, horrific abomination of goo to screencap. Then I messed up and got this, which is a lot sillier.

_World of Goo_I downloaded this last October, during the 1st anniversary “Name your price” thingamajig. 1 cent for a critically hailed puzzle game? I took the bait. And what delicious bait it was. World of Goo is a physics based puzzler comprised of many stages, in which the goal of each one is almost always the same: use balls of goo to form a structure to get from point A to point B. This starts out harmless enough, but by the time you reach the end, the levels get increasingly more devious, sometimes bordering on cruel. But that’s half the fun, isn’t it?

As you make your way through the game, you’ll stumble across signs on each level. At the beginning, the signs serve as the tutorial, and later, they serve as the storytelling device. Yup…somebody dropped a plot in my physics-based puzzle game. But it’s actually kind of interesting. It’s all very silly and enjoyable, and even so, since it’s all told via optional clickable signs, you can skip a lot of it if you so choose. Reminds me of Braid in that regard, with the “What are these books? I’m running past this bullshit!” Although the Braid plot was kind of really WTF out there stuff and World of Goo was not as much…but still a bit out there…and a little morbid too, considering the style of the game. All I know is that when I was finished…I felt bad for only paying a cent for World of Goo. It was very much worth more.

"Oh, please, would you save us from all ze money?"

_Dynamite Headdy_Ah, yes…an oddity of the Treasure line-up, to be sure. Where they have games like Gunstar Heroes and Ikaruga that many people seem to have played and look back fondly on, and then games like McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure and Silpheed: The Lost Planet that make you go “…that was Treasure?” Dynamite Headdy seems to fall under a different category. A category of “Oh yeah…Treasure made that didn’t they? I wasn’t really interested.” I guess controlling unnameable creatures with dis-attachable heads as a means of attack/maneuvering just isn’t a hot seller with the 18-32 male demographic that all gamers are, eh? Back to the drawing board, Treasure!

Anyways, Dynamite Headdy is a pretty good platformer that is pretty impressive graphically too (for the time). It takes advantage of the one thing that I remember the Genesis having over the SNES, that being those sweet faux-3D graphics. All of the balls in Vectorman, the effects in Adventures of Batman and Robin, and now there’s 3-1 in Dynamite Headdy, although to a lesser extent than the last two. I don’t know if it was just different processing capabilities on the Genesis, the people working on the Genesis doing slick sprite work, or maybe the super secret POWER OF BLAST PROCESSING (this is TOTALLY IT, by the way) but while Mode7 is remembered by more people nowadays, and enabled awesome games like F-Zero and Mario Kart to even exist, thus making it superior in the gameplay department, the Genesis’ faux-3D was far more aesthetically pleasing. I mean, going back today and looking at the tracks in F-Zero, or the mine cart section of Final Fantasy 6/3…oi, they are not the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen. But seeing Vectorman in action, or the boss battle with the Mad Hatter in Batman and Robin…those still manage to impress, even now.

Putting all that aside, Dynamite Headdy was a damn fun game, but I’m glad I played it on Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, because the US version is A) harder than the JP version and B) has no continues to boot. What is it with Japan and making games harder when they localize stuff? Do they hate US gamers? Do they just want us to hate their games so we stop buying them, thus making it so they no longer have to cater to us when developing games or bother localizing anything they make? Actually, is it even the Japanese that make the games harder during localization? Maybe it’s the US publishers who are to blame. Regardless of who’s at fault, the question still stands: who the fuck thinks we want games to be abnormally difficult and that that makes them infinitely more enjoyable? I mean, I don’t want a cakewalk, but I don’t want a game to walk out of my console and kick me in the balls on the default difficulty.

Short version: get SUGC, play Dynamite Headdy, save state at the beginning of each stage to simulate continues, have fun.

Not the best screencap, but my card isn't that good and I'm not leaving the last dungeon to get a better one. Hope you don't mind seeing it. Anyways, I'm standing on an enemy. It's standard fare by this point in the game, but I still <3 puzzles.

_Valkyrie Profile 2:  Silmeria_Excellent game, one of Square-Enix’s strongest games on the PS2, and easily the best tri-Ace game I’ve played. Although, I’ve only played this, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time and Infinite Undiscovery, so that’s not too much to go by, is it? As to avoid spoilers, I’ll simply say that I liked the plot. The battle system was pretty neat, although I’d imagine that you could probably make it look a lot prettier than I made it look. I pretty much dashed all over the place, then mashed all over every enemy and quad Soul Crushed them. I apologize, as I”m doing a piss-poor job of describing the gameplay right now, especially considering how much I enjoyed it.

At least I’ll be able to describe the dungeon aspect of it well, as it’s not really complex. If there’s one thing I love in RPG’s, it’s puzzle based dungeons. If there’s another thing I love in RPG’s, it’s being able to solve puzzles in said dungeons without having to worry about random battles because the enemies are displayed on the screen. Enter Valkyrie Profile 2! Well…VP2 isn’t SUPER heavy on the puzzles if you want to just get to the end of the dungeons, but it sure as shit is if you want to get all the treasures in them. And who can resist the allure of those treasure chests in plain sight like that? The puzzles revolve around a little projectile your main character, Alicia, fires, called photons. When they hits enemies or certain other thingamajigs, they’ll turn into crystals for a certain period of time. You can stand on these crystals and jump off of them, or hit them with another photon and instantly switch places with them. And just so you know, dungeons take place in the 2 dimensional realm, so this isn’t as annoying as it sounds. Add in the reflective properties of the photons, and having to crystallize multiple enemies or enemy spirits, and the puzzles can get very tricky. You want to keep me interested in you, RPG? Put puzzles and actions in your fucking dungeons! Case in point: there’s no way I’d have gotten through shitty Wild ARMs 4 otherwise.

"Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!"

_Pikmin_Looking back on this game, all I can think about is how much I enjoyed it until the end boss. Everything was fun and games, and then they introduce an end boss that plays unlike anything else in the game with a retarded pattern. He sucked. All I remember him doing at the end was just jumping into the air nonstop giving me no time to attack. Awesome. Go fuck yourself. Everything else I liked. And from playing the game, I definitely could tell that the removal of a time limit of any kind probably would detract from the game. Seeing as how the game is rather simple as a puzzle/strategy game, the removal of a time limit would thus take away any difficulty, and a lot of the fun was in seeing how much you could do in a single day. But the most fun I had with Pikmin…was loading up Super Smash Bros. Melee and getting my Captain Olimar trophy to complete my trophy collection. Boy, I love the way Nintendo has us buy multiple products to unlock all the features of a single game. They sure do care about their fans [money].

You see the red devil flinching from getting hit? That's from normal armor bow. AND IT HOMES IN WHEN YOU HAVE GREEN/GOLD ARMOR! Fuck every other weapon, seriously.

_Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts_Here’s a game notorious for its cruel difficulty, but surprisingly, I had less trouble with it than I anticipated. Once I got the hang of the “lol no adjusting in midair” jump mechanics, I found that it wasn’t as daunting of a task as many make it out to be. There are “limited” continues, sure, but the game hands them out so liberally, you’ll hardly notice unless you lose all your lives without killing anything or getting a single bag of money. There are a lot of tricks to beating this game, though, and learning them all is the trick to doing it as painlessly as possible. First off, you must know that the bow and arrow is your friend. It’s far and away the best weapon in the game, all the time, in every situation, for every and all opportunities, no questions asked, no exceptions, get it ASAP, never get anything else ever. 2nd off every weapon except the bow and arrow is horrible unless you have green armor, but if you get Green Armor without the bow, you’re probably gonna get hit pretty quickly and lose it, so it’s a moot point. 3rd, once you get the green armor, never ever ever ever get hit. If you do, just sit in a corner and cry. Or pray that you’re lucky enough to find more armor quickly. 4th, seeing how everybody already knows about the infamous 2nd loop, when the stupid bitch tells you to go find her bracelet, don’t get it ASAP. Keep the bow and arrow. It makes getting back to the last stage easier. Just wait until you get back to the last stage, and get the bracelet then. Yes, it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to get a bracelet to appear on the last stage, but it’s even MORE of a pain in the ass to go through all the previous stages with the shitty bracelet. So…that’s my thoughts on the game. Yes, my thoughts on the game is actually mini-walkthrough on how great the bow and arrow is.

…if you actually want to know what I thought about SGnG…it’s pretty fun, the bow and arrow makes it a lot less painless than people make the game out to be, though it’s still hard, especially having to bracelet the last stage, and the final boss is a joke. The only thing that would make him difficult would be if you had to use the torch against him, but since you’re forced to use the Bracelet, it’s impossible to use the torch, making him fucking easy.

Nothing gets you more pumped for gaming than a big, muscly man tearing his shirt off, right? Right?!

_Saturday Night Slam Masters_I wish I could find more SNES games for 99 cents. Seriously. Granted, is Saturday Night Slam Masters an A+ title? No. But is it awful? Also no. It’s not even a sports title. Hell, even some sports titles run you more than 99 cents, which is shocking. Well, onto the game. It’s an arcade port of a Capcom game…wanna guess how cheap the computer is? I hope you said “Not at all” so I can slap you in the face at laugh at you. As great as it would be to try and body slam the CPU, it’s a crap shoot trying to grapple them, so your best bet is to just use a large character and cheese out everybody with long range slaps. Preferably Haggar and spinning lariats. This is more a game I bought due to nostalgia more than it being good. Can’t say I recommend it. If you need a SNES wrestling game, you’re better off buying WWF Royal Rumble. But this does take me back.

I didn't take this screenshot, but I can guarantee that this run did not end well for whoever did take it. It makes for a neat image, though.

_Mirror’s Edge_Whew…this was a doozy of a game. You want something new done in the first person genre? Here you go. Most people think of first person games and their mind will immediately jump to “shooter.” The next genre might be “action RPG.” But…platformer? The thought of first person platforming harks back to thoughts of jumping around on pipes and boxes and indescribable horrors on Xen in Half-life, or any other god forsaken platforming experience in any other FPS we’ve played in the past. But…those were FPS’s with platforming shoveled in. This…is a first person game built around platforming. Built around running and movement. The stuff that you asked yourself whenever you missed jumps in every other FPS like “why the fuck don’t you just GRAB THE FUCKING LEDGE AND PULL YOURSELF UP?!” happens in Mirror’s Edge. That’s what it’s built for. The controls can seem complex at first, but after a while, they became second nature. Everything just flowed effortlessly. When doing time trials, what used to be simple paths soon become puzzles. “How can I do this better? Can I do this maneuver there? What path am I missing?” A first person game inspired by parkour, it’s a truly unique experience that I highly recommend trying at least once. There’s nothing else like it available right now.

Again, ME is NOT an FPS. If you do try it, DON’T go in to it expecting it to play like an FPS. It will only end in disappointment.

Okay...there was nothing remotely like these one-button KO's in Super Metroid.

_Shadow Complex_I’m sure you’ve all heard the comparisons by now: “It’s like a modern day Super Metroid.” Well…as much as I’d like to give you my opinions on the game without making the comparison, it’s pretty much true. The weapon upgrades, the acquisition of rockets, grenades, and foam and the backtracking you’ll need to do to open up previously passed doors which were locked and now openable with your newly acquired weapons, finding hidden capsules to increase the capacity of said weapons, your health being displayed via boxes that represent 100 units of health each, a map that looks like this, a sprint that is eventually upgraded to the point where you can dash through certain walls and enemies, killing them instantly…if it wasn’t for the fact that Super Metroid was made 15 years ago and has gotten all of ONE 2D sequels in that time frame, Shadow Complex would seem like a blatant rip-off. But since we’ve been deprived for so long, it ends up coming across as ” a fresh Super Metroid for a new generation with cut-scenes and terrorists.” And while the game might borrow/bite off of Super Metroid really, really, really hard, that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

There are a few cons off the top of my head. The game plays in a kind of semi-3D. You move around purely in the 2D plane, but enemies do appear on the Z-axis. When you aim up and down, your character kind of aims automatically into the foreground or background at them. Most of the time, it works pretty well. In large, open environments, aiming at people on the Z-axis is relatively painless. But when people are in the background down long, narrow hallways…aiming on the Z-axis gets…really, really awful. It’s the kind of thing that when you first aim early on, you say “That’s kind of strange, but it’s not too bad,” and you get used to it, and if with clever environment design, the limitations of the aiming could have gone virtually unnoticed all game. But, alas…it’s noticeable in quite a few areas. Thankfully, it never springs up in any boss areas. The other thing that comes to mind is one point of the level design. If you look on the map, the purple area on the far right becomes pretty much completely inaccessible at the end of the game. The final boss is an automatic trigger on the top section of the map directly above the purple section, and when the yellow part is flooded, you can’t go through it to get to the purple section, effectively cutting the entire part off. For a Super Metroid clone, and Super Metroid being a game built around exploration, collecting and backtracking, to have such a large portion of the map be made inaccessible at the end of the game just seems like a huge oversight and downright silly.

But those are really the only cons that stick out for me, and they really don’t make up a very large portion of the game, and when a pros and cons list looks like this…

Pros:

• Super Metroid

Cons:

• Occasional aiming issues
• Parts of the map can become inaccessible during endgame

…I’d say that the Pros outweigh the Cons by a lot, wouldn’t you? ;-D

This dark mass of shit is the final boss. Hope you don't mind spoilers...as if anybody cares about Doom spoilers =P

_Doom 3_About 5 years late, but I was all up on the hype train! …ok, not really, but man, remember when was coming out? Everybody was shitting themselves with anticipation. “Oh man, look at those lighting effects, this is just gonna be incredible!” It’s funny, thinking back at how big a deal lighting effects once were. Games like Doom 3 and Splinter Cell were hyped up big time as having mind blowing real-time lighting and shadows, and these days, even budget titles have decent lighting effects. Granted, they’re still nothing compared to what’s in either of those games, even now, but if you step back and imagine seeing the games we get now coming out 5 years ago…we’d shit bricks at the lighting effects. Now, physics are the big thing. “Oh man, the physics engine they’re working on is whoooooaaaaa.” Anyways…while playing Doom 3, I couldn’t help but think 2 things…how it felt so dated but at the same time wasn’t enough like the old Doom games. It sounds weird, so I’ll break it down…

The whole “stage progression” thing felt…really old. Going through 40-odd stages in an FPS…like, killing a handful of enemies in a couple corridors and hallways, finishing a stage, then sitting through a long loading screen and starting a new stage…this game came out in 2004. By then, Half-life and Halo had already dropped in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Both of those games had impacts which are still being felt in first and third person shooters being released even now. Matter at hand…in Halo, you have 10 long levels, with minimal loading times during each stage. In Half-life, you have about 17 chapters, all of which flow into one another with no interruptions, even by cutscenes. It plays like one giant stage. These are the two most common game models you’ll find in these types of games now. The game length might be the same regardless of the structure, but the stages feel meaty. It’s easy to remember what happened in a stage because they each have their own graphical style. If you break it all into bite size chunks, it all becomes blurs and forgettable. “Remember the stage where you fought that boss?” “Uhhhhhh…was that stage 32? Or 33? Fuck me, I don’t know.” But you know what I do remember? I remember gravity gunning razorblades at people in Ravenholm. I remember Assaulting the Control Room in scorpion tanks. I remember sneaking around the tall grass in All Ghillied Up. I remember some stuff in Doom 3…but I don’t remember where I did jack shit. Even a game like Goldeneye that a lot of us have fond memories of…that had a fuckton of stages, and not all of them have the most descriptive names. “Oh man, remember Depot?” “I loved Surface!” Hell, I had to look up the names of those stages when writing this and re-reading them in the final draft of this post, I’m having a hard time remembering what the fuck stages Depot and Surface were. They don’t put a fuckton of stages in FPS’s anymore, and for pretty good reason. It’s not a good thing if you don’t really remember anything you did in a game right after you’ve played it. It doesn’t speak much for the game design.

Now…as far as not feeling enough like the old Doom games…you have these small stages, with imps and guys spawning out of nowhere because that’s totally awesome game design and not something that a decade’s worth of first person shooters hadn’t taught us wasn’t necessary to make a fun game…well, before I get into anything else, let’s start with the beginning of the game. The game starts off with you arriving on Mars and being told to go find a scientist. You then walk through a bunch of hallways for a couple minutes, doing nothing and can talk to people while looking for this scientist. Man…that’s pure Doom right there. Seriously, did nobody have the balls to say within 5 minutes of starting up Doom 3 during testing to say “This is not Doom.”? Maybe id wanted to try to put more substance into Doom 3? A novel idea, perhaps…but seeing how the stages are so short anyways, using up considerable chunks of time in them with PDA’s containing a bunch of text along with some people talking and cutscenes just make the stages seem boring and uneventful, like “I spent less than half of my time in that last stage fighting enemies.” That’s totally the spirit of Doom, right? Games like Shadow of the Colossus can get away with having no enemies in a world…because when you do find one, it’s a huge, epic encounter that makes you go “Holy shit.” RPG’s can get away with having people blab at you or assaulting you with text because the stories are far more interesting far more often. I’m not sure who was picking up Doom 3 under the impression that they were gonna get some awesome plot, and I’m not sure who at id was under the impression that they were great storytellers. I’m not sure what was going on here. It’s a reboot of a franchise whose first game in the series has an in-game plot synopsis that takes up all of one paragraph. The original Doom games are frantic, mindless FPS’s with no plot outside of “Armies of hell are bad. Kill them.” And yet here’s Doom 3, hanging out with a bunch of bullshit. If you’re gonna try to give me plot, try to have a good one…or at least design your game well enough to make me not care that it’s bad.

If this doesn't make you shed a tear of happiness, then you're just an awful, awful person.

_SEGA Superstars Tennis_I loved Virtua Tennis. I loved Tennis 2K2 more. I liked Top Spin less than those, but it was still fun. Mario Tennis I liked less than those, but it was also fun, although I haven’t played a whole lot of it. Funny enough, with the exception of the super shots and gimmicky courts on Mario Tennis, MT game plays shockingly similar to all the others. This lies in the fact that there really isn’t a way to properly simulate actual tennis in a video game format. If there is, it would be using Wii-mote functions, and if it really actually came anywhere close to actual tennis, it would be far too difficult to be any fun, and by the time you got any good at it, you’d be good enough to go play actual tennis. You probably wouldn’t be in good enough SHAPE to play tennis, but that’s another story. So…what’s all this have to do with SEGA Superstars Tennis? Well…pretty much that it plays like most any other competent tennis game. Think Mario Tennis with a Sega theme and without stage gimmicks, and there you go.

Now, compared to other tennis games I’ve played a lot throughout the years, the gameplay here is nowhere near as polished. It’s obvious that they were going for a pick-up and play style due to the fact that only 2 face buttons are used during gameplay, but here’s what baffles me. The two face button control top spin shots and slices. Those are the two face buttons. OK…but, there are also lobs and drop shots in the game. I knew they were there, because the CPU did them to me, but I couldn’t do them. Try as I might, no button on the controller let me do a lob or a drop shot. Then I look in the instruction booklet and found out how to do them. To preform them, you to press one button, then quickly press the other. That was their solution on how to put lobs and drop shots in the game. It wasn’t “map it to one of the unused face buttons,” it was “Press one of the already used buttons, then the other one in quick succession.” Man…just writing it down makes me feel dumber. Granted, I suppose I should have read the instruction booklet first to find out the controls, but seeing how every other tennis game I’ve played that had 4 shots in it had them mapped to the 4 available face buttons on the controller, after pressing Y and B and having nothing happen, I just figured “Well, I guess I’ve only got my normal top spin and slice shots to work with.” I just figured 4 shots=4 face buttons. Nope. Ugh. Why you would have 4 commands for any game and 2 unused buttons is simply beyond me. The other big issue comes during net play, where the controls sometimes become unresponsive. If I had to guess, it’s due to the game engine being programmed to only begin a back-swing or attempt a hit on the ball when the ball is on your side of the court, so when you’re standing right at net, you can see how this can become quite a problem. But the unreliability of the controls at net takes away a big part of the strategic part of the game. All in all, it’s an OK tennis game, certainly not bad by any means, but it certainly could’ve used more polish in the gameplay department.

Where the game truly shined, however, was in the presentation. There are 16 characters from 8 franchises, and even more franchises are represented in stages and mini-games, many of which have never been seen on a current-gen console. Seeing Gillius Thunderhead from Golden Axe show up in full-on green, performing rolls to hit tennis balls just out of reach just tugs at the old nostalgia strings. There are almost endless amounts of character cameos on every playable stage, and there are just so many different SEGA franchises making appearances here, it’s just batshit crazy. Sending ChuChu’s off in rockets, hearing the announcer say “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone!”…hell, even seeing a 3D version of Alex Kidd, a character whose only game I ever played was Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, which is horrible, but I know he hasn’t appeared in a game in nearly 2 decades, and he  somehow managed to bring brought a grin to my face. After having played this and, in the past week Sonic and SEGA All-Stars Racing, it’s amazing that Sumo Digital over the past 2 years have developed more games capturing the spirit of old-school, classic Sega games than Sega themselves have made in the past…I don’t even know how long. Now, do I think they’d be able to make a good Sonic game? Or Golden Axe? Or Streets of Rage? No idea. Maybe? They’ve shown that they definitely know the source material and are good at staying true to it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’d know how to make a platformer or hack’n'slash or bmup…but I’d like to see them try at least once =D