Always hate it when I forget about this site. Would have rapidly come up on a year now before updating. Bad Ash! Anyways, here’s a quick gaming update:

I’ve created a profile over at The Backloggery, which is a fun site either for its stated purpose–getting players through those games that they own–or just looking back on what you’ve played. I was a little shocked, looking back after getting everything. Or, at least, I think that’s everything.

Finally finished Dragon Warrior VII, some eight years later. Just couldn’t ever get into the game, and I found out that my mistake all along was not going ahead and reading up on the class system. Once I had it figured out, the game became more fun because I had set goals in mind. The game itself though…eh. The word “unintuitive” comes to mind for most of its elements. Considering Final Fantasy X came out just scant weeks after it did, it’s small wonder the game didn’t do well over here.

Also, now that the NDA has been lifted, I can now say publicly that I’ve been enjoying testing World of Warcraft: Cataclysm for a little while now. While I’m sure everyone’s read plenty about the expansion, let me emphasize one point–this baby is huge. Tons and tons and tons of content. I’ll try and keep a running blog about my experience testing the game.

Finally got around to finishing this bugger. It was a diamond-in-the-rough find in a mom-and-pop used video game store in Newport a while back. I had been playing it at the pace of one colossus a month until recently I finally sat down and dropped the last four in quick succession.

It’s a beautiful game, and it definitely will be a citation for those in the “video games as art” camp, but it’s not flawless. The controls definitely could have been tighter, and the framerate dipped frequently. However, the “puzzles” in each fight are top-notch stuff, and I’m very impressed that they managed to keep almost all sixteen fights entirely unique. It’s games like this that have that proper software engineering shine–you come up with a core idea, then your gameplay elements, and then you build your art and interaction mechanics around it, and not the other way around. Then you iterate to refine it all down to something amazing. Sometimes developers get too caught up in a pretty picture or idea and forget to actually build a game. The magic really happens when you get a solid, immersive gameplay experience to enjoy the pretty pictures and soundtrack with, and this game delivers on all fronts.

To look at another example of excellent design, I was pleasantly surprised by the “hidden corners” there were in the world. They obviously put a lot of thought into where you are going to travel and where you won’t, and all you get to guide you is a simple beacon of light to point you in a single direction. I didn’t accidentally “stumble” onto any of the wrong lairs, and I suspect most players won’t because the game world is so intricately designed.

Sounds kind of frustrating to the modern gamer, doesn’t it? There’s no minimap, no big, pastel-colored arrow hovering over your objective, no signposts saying “Colossus this way!” That’s the beauty of it though–the whole progression, from travel to combat, is very laissez-faire. The player gets a few nudges in the right directions but that’s it. You don’t have autoaim holding your hand or play on rails to get the right approach. I believe an attentive gamer, when going back to a more “traditional” action-adventure game after this one, might have a more critical eye to these artificial elements, the things that give accessibility at the dear cost of immersion.

The impact of this game can be summed up in three simple words: advancement through regression. That is a wonderful thing.

Final Fantasy Tactics A2 has got a pretty solid hold on me. I’ve stayed away from it for a little while because it got a surprising amount of negative press, but in most respects I don’t think you can deny it’s an upgrade from the previous game on GBA. There’s definitely a sense of “two steps forward, one step back” with the game but it’s still enjoyable to play, especially for those completionist types like myself.

Most notable is a pretty distinct change in the KO/revive system, which I surprisingly haven’t seen mentioned in the reviews I’ve read. Fans of the series and the genre in general are familiar with the annoying roadblocks that corpses (or knocked out bodies, whatever) become.
In this game, characters are removed from the battlefield and can be placed wherever when a Phoenix Down or Raise spell is used–unless you break the law.

The law system, arguably one of the weakest aspect of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, received an overhaul and, I’d argue, becomes an asset in this game. You are still prohibited from taking certain actions–and some enforcement is still a little suspect, such as a lucky (unlucky) melee crit knocks an opponent back, breaking the law against knockback–but the penalty for breaking the law now is that you forfeit a) the privilege of reviving fallen party members within battle, b) extra loot awarded upon victory, and c) a clan benefit that you select before the battle starts. These benefits are part of a new, albeit limited, system that has you put your clan through trials that can earn you special titles and benefits. The good news here is that the law restrictions become an added layer of strategy depth–since the penalties aren’t nearly as severe, you may elect to break the law to allow you additional freedoms in an especially difficult battle at the risk of not being able to bring back your fallen troops during that battle.

On the other end, while in the previous game, gear became available through quests and the shop as the story progressed, gear acquisition in the new title has been replaced by a bazaar system identical to that in Final Fantasy XII. It’s a cumbersome way of gearing up since the loot you gain in quests does not really give you an idea of what items it will turn into up until you actually give up the items to the shopkeeper. This is an odd bit of smoke and mirrors, and it’s simply nonsensical to keep the identity of the gear hidden at the endpoint since anyone can turn in the loot, get the item, and then load up a save right before if it turns out to be something they don’t want (or couldn’t use) but that they gave up their loot for. It also makes it difficult to steer yourself towards certain pieces of gear even while consulting loot and item tables found online. It took me nearly 10 hours to get something for my White Mages other than Cure, meanwhile I got tons of gear for classes I didn’t even have access to yet since they have not only job but quest prerequisites.

I’m only halfway through the story (or so I estimate) but as of right now another problem the game shares with its predecessors is that battles are simply too slow. Most fights are six-on-six, and it’s not unusual for it to take 10+ turns to take one of your adversaries down. Thankfully the Summoner I just got is speeding up things a bit, but it’s still very slow.

Anyways, I can’t comment on the story as of yet, but it’s not bad. We’ll see how it turns out.

I can’t express how disappointed I was by this game. It’s been many moons since the first game was put out on the original Game Boy (though it did see an updated version on GBA). Part of the charm of the original game–a fantastic product–was how its platforming elements called upon the original battle between plumber and ape. Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis, despite the implication that it is a sequel, has more in common with Lemmings than the original Game Boy title. The platforming elements are gone, so this is solely a puzzle game. I suppose it’s passable as a puzzle game, but I didn’t play it long enough to really find out.

It’s a bummer though, when a game you really enjoy finally gets a sequel that may as well have been Samus guiding Metroids away from the Space Pirates.

Just as a reminder to long-time visitors and a notice to possible new ones, I designed this site with Firefox in mind. It’s still not perfect with Firefox, but it’s good enough. With Internet Explorer there’s a few bugs–most noticable is the blank box on the right under the calendar. If you click that, it will take you to the next set of older posts. I don’t know how it is in the other browsers (Chrome, Opera, etc.) but I think it should still be relatively navigable.

Until/unless I get some help with the CSS though, it’s not gonna change. Sorry!

Edit: Looks like it’s all fixed, thanks to the girlfriend. She rocks the CSS-bah.