Cheating Fantasy XIII-2

I’ve been rocking Final Fantasy XIII-2 for a while now, and I just bought the gigantic, overpriced, collector’s edition strategy guide. Yes, I’m terrible at both playing games and budgeting.

Before I started playing the game myself, I gave my youngest brother crap for playing it with the strategy guide spread open in front of hm, but now I understand why. There are a handful of new systems in the game that require careful planning to optimize, but the game doesn’t really tell you a lot about them. Chocobo racing, for instance, is better documented in-game than it is in Final Fantasy VII, but the game still leaves out the part about how to raise your chocobos to not suck out loud.

The game also tells you that if you infuse one of your monster buddies with monsters of other roles, that monster can learn special skills. The truth is that a monster must be fed other monsters of a single, specific role to learn one special ability. So here I was, feeding legions of commando monsters (developed monsters at that) to my one sentinel, when he can actually only learn Reprieve by being fed a wealth of medics. So that was a huge waste of monsters and monster growth items.

The most important thing I’ve learned from the guide, however, is that the game is structured in a way that there are no Lost Forevers. There are a handful of hidden monsters that can only be recruited once, but that’s nothing to worry about. It’s not that I feel like I’m going to need to 100% the game or anything, but it’s nice to know that I don’t have to worry about never being able to get something cool. The best part is, that this ties into one of the things I like most about the game!

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is built not on one big world, but handfuls of little worlds. Like Kingdom Hearts. In fact, sometimes while playing FFXIII-2 I feel like I’m playing a Kingdom Hearts spinoff of some sort. I blame Noel. Anyway, each world represents a certain place at a certain time. There are different time periods for each location, and you can travel through them freely once you unlock each. The game even remembers where you were standing when you left a location. If you search hard enough, you can find special items that allow you to re-lock each world, and then you can play them again as if it were the first time you traveled there.

Of course, the game isn’t entirely clear about this function, but it’s not overly useful anyway. I can’t imagine any reason to restart a world other than to seek out alternate endings. But hopping between worlds is pretty cool, especially since each has it’s own B plot, and they’re usually more interesting than the main story.

I’ve kind of lost my train of thought at this point, but I think the point I was going to make when I begun typing this is that I’ve become a pitiable wreck who can’t play without the strategy guide splayed open in front of me, for fear of missing an item, even though I’ve been assured by the game and guide that nothing is permanently missable. I wish I could put the book down, because the game was more fun when I didn’t have all the answers in front of me. The completionist in me just can’t bear to cast it aside though. I would love to shut the guide, finish the game on my own, and then start a new game with the guide showing me the optimal paths and team builds. But alas, a grownup finds it hard to finish a 60+ hour game once, never mind twice.

In any case, I loves me some FFXIII-2. That’s kinda fitting, because only three people in the world like FFXIII and I’m two of them. I really don’t understand why I’m blogging about it when there is a ton of game left for me in there… Know what? I’mma go do that now.

A foreboding sense of impending crappiness

I’ve been out of the blog world for a while because I’ve been spending most of my free time watching all of Brickroad‘s video Let’s Plays. In the last month I have watched, in their entirety, the playlists for Revengers of Vengeance, Shantae, Spelunky, and Crystalis. I am currently about halfway through the Secret of Evermore set.

Needless to say, I felt like it was time to make my own Let’s Play. Hence the Spelunky video in the previous post. I knew it was a bad idea. I’m not the type of person who has charisma to spare, or interesting things to say. That and I really, really hate the sound of my own voice. But alas, I could not rest until the deed was done, and I spent the bulk of yesterday evening recording a video Let’s Play of MegaMan X.

Don’t get all excited by the prospect of watching the set and telling me how bad they are. I know how bad they are. It’s just… I wanted to have something of at least a little relevance on my YouTube channel. But yeah, it’s pretty bad. I had nothing to say most of the time, and every second sound out of my mouth is either an “umm” or an exasperated sigh. It was a neat project, and I had fun doing it, but the quality of the final product is a little disappointing. I don’t know if I want to post one a week to fluff my content level, or just post them all at once to minimize the pain.

On the upside, MegaMan X is one of the few games I know really well, and I was able to wrap it up fairly quickly and efficiently. There are no game overs, few deaths, and a handful of neat little things that I knew to show off. I skipped over a couple neat things (the hadoken, mostly), but covered pretty much all the game has to offer.

Don’t much like it though. We’ll see if anyone else thinks differently.

Rated M for potty mouth

 

I don’t know what I’m doing. I kind of feel like I should hop on the Let’s Play bandwagon, but I’m no good at the talkies. Or Spelunky, apparently. Anyway, this was mostly just to play around with Camtasia for a while before I actually started recording the world’s worst LP. Also, I swear a lot when I play games alone. So yeah, don’t let the little ones be watchin’ this.

I have a terrible voice too. Getting kind of used to it though, after watching this thirty-seven times.

What? I have a blog?

You know what sucks? Finding a house. It’s not really a terrible process but it sucks up so much of your free time… Actually it’s not that bad, but between that and wedding stuff and work it’s very hard to make time for stupid things like maintaining a blog. I don’t even really have that much on my mind lately, so it’s not like I have a need to blog that is going unsatisfied.

Anyway. You ever heard of Lana Del Rey? I hadn’t, but for the duration of January, my Xbox decided that I really needed to know about her and what a great singer she is. Generally I don’t listen to my Xbox’s music recommendations, but worst case scenario, I’d be GISing a pretty girl. It was from that subsequent Google search that I learned she had a song called “Video Games” so okay. This is going well, might as well look into it. Also the word “sexpot” comes up a lot, but that is irrelevant.

I also learned from the Google search that she had recently “bombed” on SNL, and that the internet was making a really big deal of it. So while I’d never heard of her, she was known to people who hate comedy.

I continued to take my curiosity to YouTube, because it seemed like the quickest way to get the deal on this chick. The first song that came up was “Blue Jeans” and I listened about halfway through the song before I clicked back and loaded up the “Video Games” video. That one lasted until about the two-thirds mark before I closed the browser window.

Lana Del Rey’s music strategy is apparently to make it as unbearably boring as she possibly can. Adele, despite all the hype around her, is boring as fuck, but at least she sounds like she’s interested in the songs she’s singing. Lana, on the other hand, seems to be boring herself to death and sounds like she’d rather be stuffing her arm in a meat grinder than recording a song. I don’t know if she’s just purposely trying to act aloof, if that’s going to be her thing, but it certainly doesn’t make me care about her music. I suppose it beats being another Gaga. Don’t misunderstand me here, because I don’t think slower, more somber songs are bad. I like dark, artsy stuff, but it has to be done right. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is one of my favourite Beatles songs. Matthew Good’s Hospital Music is an amazingly deep album. Lana Del Rey just fails to interest me at all.

Normally I would just brush an artist like this aside and completely forget they exist, but the fact that that she called a song “Video Games” makes me semi-involved. Actually, it doesn’t involve me at all, but it’s something I want to ramble on about. So this song is dreary and boring and just not fun at all. Unless this is a song about Tom Clancy video games, that’s really the opposite of how it should be. Actually it’s not really about video games at all, it’s just a word she ends a few verses with. And an easy way to bait nerds like me into paying attention.

Regardless of whether the song is actually about video games though, I feel like a song called “Video Games” should be fun.  You know, like video games. It’s a legitimate reason to use chiptunes. Though it would be unfair to blame the actual music here. It’s not bad, and I probably wouldn’t mind listening to it if it weren’t overshadowed by the insufferable vocal track. Video games are fun, they are there to entertain, to help people forget their woes for a while and have a good time. This song is exactly the opposite of that. Yeah, I guess there are boring and depressing games, but they generally are not good games.

Speaking of YouTube, the video is pretty stupid too. Actually, so is the video for “Blue Jeans.” They’re both dumb viral/hipster mash-ups of other people’s home videos, with little bits of Lana making pouty faces spliced in. I mean, I’m not sure if they’re actually real people’s video bits that have been collaged together. They could absolutely be staged. But the fact of the matter is that the videos are completely unrelated to anything and only serve to bore me even harder.

Her Wikipedia page makes it sound like Del Rey put the videos together on her own. Given the amateurish quality (and blatant egotism), I could believe that. The only times collages aren’t stupid are when children make them (because it’s cute) and when somebody makes one that’s actually meaningful. These videos aren’t meaningful: they’re just random clips hastily slapped together. No relation, no progression, no reasonable deeper meaning. It’s just stupid hipster garbage.

So the music and videos are all absolute hipster fodder (except now that she’s getting popular, the hipsters won’t have anything to do with her), but Lana herself… not at all. She’s still a far cry from trash like Britney, but she’s got a fairly mainstream popstar look to her. And that’s just not acceptable. If you’re going to act like a hipster, look like a hipster. Get you some thick black glasses, a bad haircut, and a goofy hat at least. Probably a year-round scarf would be a good idea too. Or, better yet, just stop making lame-ass hipster songs.

So yeah, if this thing seems detached and poorly written, it’s because I was trying to stretch my thoughts too thin. I really just wanted to complain about a couple boring songs. And hipsters. I’ve been reading too many long, thoughtful blogs, and have forgottent that my sweet spot is more in concise, to-the-point writing. Also I haven’t blogged in like forever. Give me a damn break.

Lara Croft < Bears

I plugged away at Tomb Raider for a couple hours this weekend because it’s been sitting on my PSP’s memstick for ages now and I’ve barely touched it. I’m not entirely sure, but I have this gut feeling that I hate Tomb Raider.

It’s not really Tomb Raider that I hate though. The concept is fine. Indeed, I actually quite liked Tomb Raider: Legend (though not enough to complete it), but I cannot fathom how people enjoyed the older games. Moving Lara around is just such a hassle. Even back in 1996 I don’t understand how people found the awful, awful control scheme acceptable. I mean, people knowingly played this game instead of… well, anything else? I imagine that playing Tomb Raider is roughly as painful and annoying as jamming a fork into my thigh repeatedly.

Anyhow, after roughly five hours of gameplay I’ve only just completed the Lost Valley, which goes to show how much trouble I’m having here. There was a bear at one point that mauled me to death nearly a dozen times before I was able to get past him. The little dinosaurs didn’t give me too much trouble, and the T-rex didn’t even hit me, but I stopped counting how many times Lara crumpled to the ground dead because of a misstep or when she decided to walk off a cliff despite the fact that I did indeed press the jump button.

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to stick this one out, guys. I can’t imagine that the game is very long, but it’s just so bad. And not Power Glove bad. I feel like I should pack it in and go back to Final Fantasy XIII-2, which is a game that wants me to win. I like those games.

(This post is terrible because I’m overtired and pissed off at Tomb Raider.)

Happiness, re-shelled

The only thing that makes me happier than looking at this wonderful cover, is the fact that I own the book it belongs to.

It’s a big mother, too. Check it out. I’m not much for comic book collections; do they usually reprint them so much bigger than standard comic size? I’m not complaining, of course. I love that fact that I could knock someone out with this baby. The sheer girth of the thing makes me feel a little bit better about how ridiculously expensive it was. For someone who is such a big TMNT fanboy and has never had the opportunity to read the original TMNT comics though, it was worth every penny. Plus, it was a birthday gift to myself. How could I not spend a little extra on such a wonderful guy?

The return of X, again

It hasn’t been a thing lately, but if you’ve combed through much of my site’s backlog, one of the most prominent themes is me being a huge MegaMan fanboy. In recent years, the love has waned a bit, mostly due to Capcom not really doing anything interesting with the franchise. MegaMan 9 and MegaMan 10 were fantastic throwbacks to the golden age of gaming, but that’s really about it. The MegaMan Star Force were just gussied-up versions of the dried-up Battle Network series, and the cancellation of MegaMan Legends 3 was a huge blow to the small but loyal contingent of fans of that particular series. MegaMan Universe just never interested me.

So I guess really the best thing that Capcom could do was port one of the best MegaMan games to iOS. MegaMan X was a landmark game that hewed closely to the tried-and-true MegaMan formula, but pushed it to the limit, making the game faster and more exciting. All these years later, it’s still one of my favourite games ever, and by far my most-played SNES title. Why wouldn’t I want to play it on my phone?

Oh, right, because Capcom released a near-perfect remake of it on PSP some years back. MegaMan: Maverick Hunter X was the reason I bought a PSP, and it’s easily the definitive version of the game. MegaMan X’s iOS port is mostly faithful to the SNES original, but you’ll notice that the graphics have been all smoothed out to help make it look a little more contemporary. They certainly look nice, and the sleeker presentation is in no way a knock against the game, but to me, X looks a little weird when not presented in chunky SNES pixels.

A handful of the other major changes are definitely for the worse. The most blatant one being that you’re playing a SNES game with a touch screen. We all know how much I hated Secret of Mana‘s iOS port for that. And Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. My opinion is the same as it was when I wrote those posts: touch screen controls are not a good idea for games designed for buttons. MegaMan X makes a little concession to that end by giving you an easy mode, but if you don’t know every pixel of this game like I do, the rough controls will probably cause you more than a few pains.

One of the really cool things about MegaMan X -and it’s something that didn’t even carry into the sequels- is that by defeating certain stages, you’d trigger environmental changes in other stages. The most prominent being that the lava in Flame Mammoth’s stage turns to stone if you’ve beaten Chill Penguin. Most of the other effects are less obvious and less functional. But that doesn’t matter, because they don’t happen here. Flame Mammoth’s stage? Lava’s always burnin’. Spark Mandrill’s stage? The airship never crashes. So on and so forth.

The one upside here is that since the heart tank in Flame Mammoth’s level used to be on the lava and only accessible after freezing the place (by defeating Chill Penguin), it’s now placed on the floor directly above where it used to sit. It takes absolutely no effort to gain it now, but it does cut back on the amount of backtracking you need to do to 100% the game (you need the Fire Wave to get the heart tank in Chill Penguin’s level, meaning you’d have to replay one of the stages).

Another concession to level design was made to the iOS version of the game. Sort of. Before, stages were single, smooth scrolling maps. Not they’ve been chopped into bits, with stark transitions between screens. The transitions don’t really bring down the value of the game, but they’re a little jarring to me since I’ve probably spent more time in these levels than in my own backyard.

Lastly, while this version of MegaMan X sports some slightly updated graphics, the music is ripped directly from the SNES version. This is awesome, because MegaMan X has a terrific soundtrack. The remixes found in the PSP remake are also available. The catch is that you have to buy them. With real money, like. It’s not really a big deal because the original tracks are better, but I couldn’t help dropping the two bucks to have the remixes available. You can buy all the weapons, armor parts and heart/sub tanks too, if you’re retarded and can’t find them for yourself. That’s kind of a waste of money though.

It does get better though! One of the things that really stuck out to me was that most of the dialogue has been rewritten, and it’s not too bad! I didn’t play Maverick Hunter X enough to know if it’s the same dialogue as from that version, but it’s sure different from the SNES original. Some of the best corny lines (see the screenshot above) have been retained though, which is just gravy. The “hadoken” scene is rewritten almost entirely, and it is magnificent (see screenshot below). The odd thing is that the dialogue font is tiny and a full paragraph barely fills up half of the text box. Not really a problem, but it stands out as kind of an odd design decision.

Speaking of odd design decisions, there are no extra lives in this particular port. At first I thought I had just remembered the extra life locations incorrectly, but I know for a fact that there is one not far above where you find the helmet parts in Storm Eagle’s stage. It’s not there. Instead, you just get two lives every time you begin a stage. Not that you should really need more than two lives to beat any single stage in MegaMan X, but it’s just another weird little change.

Also included are Game Center achievements. Being an admitted achievement whore, this makes me very happy. The highway stage even has its own set of achievements (which oddly do not count in Game Canter) that unlock pieces of a puzzle as you earn them. Most of the GC cheevos are stupidly easy to get (Defeat Chill Penguin, Defeat Chill Penguin with his weakness, Defeat Storm Eagle, etc.), but a couple are genuine achievements. Beating all the robot masters without taking a hit would be pretty breezy on the SNES, but with touch controls? Super hard.

Capcom saw fit to make a handful of other additions to the game. The aforementioned easy mode is counterbalanced by an unlockable hard mode, or so I think. It’s still a grey [locked] square, and I assume it will come in an update. Hopefully not in exchange for moneys. There is a new ranking mode that contains time and score attack modes, and a survival mode (which may or may not be a boss rush) which are mostly there as an excuse to have Game Center leaderboards. The score attack and survival games are also [locked], and I’m not sure if they’re going to be in an update or if I just need to clear all the time attack stages to unlock them. I really don’t care enough to actually play time attack. The regular game is fine with me, thanks.

So what’s the final verdict on the iOS port of MegaMan X? It’s your quintessential 16-bit iOS port. It’s got a few improvements, a few odd changes and extra features, and kinda broken touch controls. But it’s nice to have a version of MegaMan X that I will quite literally be able to play whenever I want. The PSP remake might be a more solid effort and more playable, but most of the time I play my PSP at home, whereas my iPhone is always with me. $5 is a pretty steep price for a questionable SNES port, and the fact that it’s a quick and dirty port that pushes microtransactions may sour a few on it, but I’m happy to have MegaMan X in my pocket.

I am ego

Last week, there was a big celebration for work. Part of that was having a team of two from each branch compete in “Minute to Win it” challenges. Somehow I managed to convince everyone from my branch that naming our team “Team Ryan” was a good idea. It was that or “Team Jacob.”