Category: Video Games

You’ve finally made a monkey out of me

Well guys, that’s it. I’ve finally completed Xenoblade Chronicles. And by “completed” I mean I’ve finished the story. I still have a few dozen incomplete quests in my logbook, my affinity chart isn’t all filled out yet, and four of the five superbosses have gone undefeated, but I decided it was time to put a cap on this one and move on with my life. What I did take the time to do, however, was max out my party affinity, so now all my playable characters are hopelessly in love with one another. And after sitting in Tephra Cave slaughtering millions of spiders, you’d probably want to just put it to bed too.

But my opinion on Xenoblade remains the same as it was after my first week with it; I still think it’s the best game available on the Wii. It’s certainly the most robust. Yeah, maybe pound-for-pound the graphics look a little dated, but the environments as a whole are more astounding than anything I’ve seen on a competing console. The second half of the game quickly spiraled out of control and went from a fairly solid plot to anime/JRPG cliche madness, but it certainly didn’t ruin the game for me. In fact, I thought that the lead up to the final boss was one of the coolest parts of the game. Especially since the locations were given proper names and the mind-boggling reveal at the end was something I totally did not see coming. And, uh, if you’re a Simpsons fan, the post title should ruin that reveal fairly efficiently. Not that the screenshot doesn’t spoil enough for anyone who isn’t at least three-quarters of the way through.

Clocking in at slightly under 150 hours is… well, I’ll probably take longer to finish Skyrim, but man, is that ever a beefy game. I think I probably could have stuck another 10 on there if I’d bothered to mop up the rest of the available quests and take down those superbosses. As it is, I’m satisfied with my clear file. Colony 6 is 100%, and that’s the only percentage counter in the game, so it’s enough for me,

Again, this is my favourite game available on Wii. I’ve dipped my toes into The Last Story, and I’m enjoying it quite a bit so far, but I don’t think it’s going to hit the same sweet spots for me. Monolithsoft didn’t give us a sequel hook as everything wrapped up quite nicely, but they did arguably leave the wide door open for a potential sequel. I suppose it kind of depends on how you interpret the ending, but I for one would embrace the opportunity to spend another 150 hours in this world if the Wii U ends up with a Xenoblade 2.

So laaazy

You know, I’ve had a new movie review sitting around for over a month now, but I have no idea how long it will be until I post it. It was originally supposed to go live in July. And it’s pretty much done, too! The bulk of the writing is done; I still have to go back over it to do a little spellchecking and other fine-tuning, but the words are essentially done. The thing that I’m stuck at it getting some screengrabs.

Normally, that’s the part I’d do first. I’d watch a movie/show, and then go back and take a few shots of important part, and then write the article around those. This time I did all the writing first, and the way that I wrote it calls for a lot of images. And not just the basic screengrabs either! No, I worked myself into a corner full of photoshops and collages. I suppose I could go over the article and edit the parts that call out images I don’t want to take/create, but at that point I’m cheating the reader of a fuller experience. Oh, what a world.

It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just that taking screenshots o a movie is dull and tedious. Making sure I printscreen jsut the right moments, making sure everything is sized and named properly… It’s boring.

This is sort of similar to the reason why my Monster Hunter Let’s Play is stalling. Playing Monster Hunter is one of my favourite pastimes, and talking about Monster Hunter comes in at a close second, so in that case I’m mostly blaming Camtasia. With sprite-based games, I can set it to record and then just have at it as long as I need, then stop when I feel like the session is done and do a little chopping to make everything nice and neat before I produce it. Monster Hunter, being a PS2 game, I guess eats a ton of memory while being recorded. If I go over about 15 minutes of footage, it stops recording sound and just replaces my narration and the game’s audio with a horrible extra-loud static track. So I have to time myself to make sure I don’t record too long, find a suitable spot to pause, and then wait while to video is processed, then wait twice as long while the video is saved to a file. The processing/saving part eats up all my PC’s resources too, so I can’t do anything else with it while I wait. Then I have to do the usual editing, which is not terrible, but annoying after all the other hoops I’ve had to jump through to get that far. Especially if I screwed up the timing and have to fix the sound problems. And then, then I have to hope that while it was paused for Camtasia to do all its things, that my PS2 emulator hasn’t crashed. That’s happened twice now, and it’s even worse than when the audio breaks, because not just footage is lost, but actual game progress. This was the worst project I’ve ever started.

But that movie review? It’ll be done… maybe this weekend. I don’t know. Maybe that’s what I’ll do with my Friday night.

The numbers game

So one of the fellas over at Game|Life posted a story today about how Nintendo product sales make up roughly 70% of the Japanese video game market. Whether these numbers are skewed or not, this makes me very happy, being a big fat Nintendo fanboy and all.

Now we just need to find a way to make those numbers happen over here, and all will be right in the world again. Also then we might get Dragon Quest X, the first traditional MMO I actually want to play.

It also makes me happy that New Super Mario Bros 2 is selling really well, and that people are enjoying it. If you hadn’t been keeping up, the internet didn’t seem to be looking forward to it. To put it nicely.

One of the things that stood out to me is that Nintendo platforms make up roughly 75% of console sales in Japan, and Sony has approximately 23 of the other percents. I’m going to go ahead and assume that the Xbox 360 has the other 2%, and all the other lesser consoles combined account for less than a percent. Also of note is that the only 360 game whose sales are worth mentioning is Monster Hunter Frontier.

So let’s have a look-see at the facts here. MH Frontier is the most popular Xbox game in Japan. Xbox is the most popular console in North America. So why, Capcom, do you not bring Frontier to North America? I don’t have a lot of disposable income, but I would gladly fork over a little bit of what I have each month to have the opportunity to play a big, fancy, HD version of Monster Hunter. I know there’s more to it that that, but seriously. Capcom’s got peanut butter and chocolate here, but they refuse to mash them together.

I kind of hate Capcom right now. Or I would if Dragon’s Dogma wasn’t so rad.

The story so far

Let’s get this straight right away: I don’t always have the best judgement of when something’s a good idea, and when it not. But neither do you, so shut up.

Over the last couple weeks, Talking Time has been all abuzz about rougelikes. For any that might not know, roguelikes are games that are like a really old game called Rogue. Distilled down to their base elements, they are games that feature randomly-generated dungeons and make you start back from zero every time you’re killed. Most are on the PC, with Nethack being the big fish in that pool, and Chunsoft’s Mystery Dungeon series has carved out a pretty well-renowned name for itself as far as console editions go. Spelunky is a side-scrolling action variant on the normally turn-based RPG nature of the genre.

The kids at TT have always been into roguelikes, because Parish (our fearless leader) told them to. Lately, the mania has resurfaced because of a ROM hack, of all things.

Continue reading The story so far

Pour one out

A delicious, ice-cold Pepsi, that is.

Yesterday, Brickroad’s YouTube account was terminated without cause or warning. This is sad for many, many reasons. The most obvious being that Brick was one of the very few video Let’s Players that I could stand to watch for a whole video*. The other big one being that despite the fact that I own the game, I will probably never see the end of Shantae: Risky’s Revenge now because he hadn’t finished uploading that particular LP series before his account was banned. Now I’m actually going to have to go back and play the game. Who even does that anymore?

It should be noted that his current Shiren The Wanderer LP was pretty damn entertaining too. Made me buy a used copy of the game just so I could get in on the action.

But this is a real shame because Brickroad was good at what he did. He was a font of knowledge about most of the games he played, and I am incredibly envious of just how much he knows about some games. I don’t know nearly as much about any one game as he did about several of the games he had LPs of. I wish that there was just one game I could rattle off trivia about throughout a whole playthrough, or that I knew one game well enough to play through at 150% speed. Of course, even if I had the knowledge or skill for that kind of LP, I still wouldn’t be funny enough to keep people hooked. I think I’ve got the reactive humour down, but I’m not nearly as witty as I’d like to be.

I like to think that Brickroad’s influence shines through fairly obviously in my Let’s Plays. Both in style and substance. Just look at my video descriptions: a total ripoff of the Brickroad three-bullet-point system. I dressed it up a bit, but it’s unmistakable.

I’m still not really into reading or watching LPs in general, but there’s no doubt that I’ll pay attention to any new Brickroad projects. That is, assuming they happen. Hopefully this YouTube debacle doesn’t stop him from playing video games for the amusement of others.

The last thing I want is for this post to double as an eulogy.

*As it turns out, most of the Talking Tyrants who do video LPs are pretty decent too. Better than me, at any rate. You’d do well to check them out.

StartSelect Saga

I’ve somewhat randomly decided to start playing Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga again, partly because I had some strange desire to actually use my Game Boy Micro, and partly because I wanted a bus game. By that, I mean a game which I play exclusively whilst riding the bus. Since I spend at least 80 minutes on the bus each day, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

Only problem here is that I seem to have some kind of mental block when it comes to playing video games on the bus. I have no idea why, but I have a terribly difficult time even pulling a handheld out of my pocket, never mind turning it on and actually playing the stupid thing. Totally inverse of where I was when the first DS debuted, when I’d take any opportunity to whip that baby out and get some portable gaming done. Maybe I’m subconsciously ashamed of being an adult playing video games in public. I blame my location. I generally don’t even get StreetPass tags when I walk around with my 3DS, never mind actually see other people play video games in public. Roughly 50% of the bus riders I see have got their noses in iPads, but not a one has ever been playing a game. Never, have I seen anyone over 10 years of age brandishing a DS or PSP when not at Comic-Con.

I should move to Japan.

But the thing I originally wanted to post about is that Superstar Saga is driving me crazy. And it’s not really the game itself that I have a problem with. No, it’s just as enjoyable as it was (almost) a decade ago. It’s the controls that are getting to me.

You know how every game that’s ever been made by Nintendo uses the Start button (in Wii’s case, the + button) to pause? Not this game. In Superstar Saga, the Select button is the pause/menu button. And Start is the button you use to swap between the Mario bros. There is a lot of swapping required, and because of the silly button reversal, I end up going into the menu every few seconds. It’s so incredibly frustrating that I kind of want to stop playing.

But I won’t, because Superstar Saga still hits all the right notes where buttons aren’t concerned. It’s a fun, breezy romp with a battle system that keeps you engaged. The music is wonderful (but who would expect any less from Yoko Shimomura?) and I still have to stifle my laughter at the often humorous dialogue. If I can get past this silly Start/Select inversion, I’m sure it’ll be a wonderful time for everyone involved.

So me. It’ll be a wonderful time for me.

The only game I play online

Hey so it’s Monster Hunter time. If you’re not interested in reading what I have to say about Monster Hunter, now would be the time to go enjoy what exists of the Articles archive.

I spent pretty much the entirety of last weekend playing Monster Hunter 3. For some reason, I felt compelled to go back and hunt Cedaeus, the final boss of the offline mode. I thought that maybe time and experience and better gear would make the fight less frustrating. Not so. Underwater hunting is still awful, and is exacerbated by the fact that Cedaeus is a gigantic (and surprisingly speedy) whale monster. It took three separate outings to get him, but I did it. It’s strange, I guess I’ve never slain him before either, because my hunt log says I only have one Cedaeus kill to my credit. Oh well.

Following that, I got annoyed that my Jaggi+ armor set still wasn’t strong enough, and decided to go online to challenge some high rank monsters, whose item drops would allow me to create better armor.

Monster Hunter 3’s online mode has a ranking system that governs what levels of hunts you can play, called Hunter Rank. I’m currently stuck at the point where I can only play up to 4-star hunts, which is the first tier of high rank quests. What that means is that it’s the beefed-up versions of the easy(ier) boss monsters. The problem here is that you need quite a few HR levels to unlock the next star level, and you need a lot of experience points to go up a rank. Also, hunts take about half an hour in general, and don’t dole out a whole lot of experience. So if you want to play MH3 to its full extent, you’ve got a lot of grinding in your future.

That’s not so bad though, because Monster Hunter is pretty darn fun.

Continue reading The only game I play online

Prolonged Fantasy VI

I’ve been very, very slowly chipping away at Final Fantasy VI. Or, I suppose it’s Final Fantasy III because I’m playing the Virtual Console edition. But all that aside, I started playing this in February. From what I’ve read about it over the years,  FFVI should not take 5+ months to complete.

The problem is that I cannot seem to remember that it’s there. Every time I pick it up and start playing again, it sems that a new game comes around to distract my attention from it. And this isn’t the first time I’ve had this issue either! I’ve tried playing it (admittedly the highly illegal ROM of it) a couple times before, and the farthest I’ve ever made it was to the ghost train. I know this for a fact because I haven’t got even the slightest recollection of Terra or Locke’s paths from the point where the party splits following the battle with Ultros.

I’ve finally progressed beyound that point though, and I’ve just arrived at whatever the town is where you can learn a little bit about Locke’s past. I probably should have remembered that one town’s name too, because Locke has always been my favourite FFVI character, even though I’ve never really played the game. That opinion is based almost completely from Nintendo Power’s coverage of the game. It’s funny, Epic Center was always my favourite NP feature, but I never played any SNES RPGs during their time. I was always afraid of games I wouldn’t be able to beat in one rental.

Before I move on, Locke is still my favourite character. “It’s a little tight, but the price was right!”

Anyway, I was a little distraught at the event battle just before this part of the game, where you have to defend a hill against a force of encroaching troops. FFVI up until that point wasn’t a tough game. I kept a big stack of potions on hand, and just chugged those as I brute-forced my way through anything that posed a threat. But this battle was different.

There’s a part that plays out the same near the beginning of the game, where you’re on a map that’s made up of a small maze. Your party is at the top, the enemy below. You get three groups of characters to move around while trying to stop the baddies reaching your side. The first instance of this is pretty easy. There aren’t a lot of bad guys, and it’s the beginning fo the game; of course they wouldn’t make it very hard. Only the second time around, you’re squaring off against a regiment of soldiers led by Kefka, who (SPOILERS) ends up being the main antagonist of the game.

It became clear very quickly that my parties were painfully underleveled. I had never stopped to grind in this playthrough yet, and while I still had a good supply of potions and tonics, the soldiers were doing a pretty good job of carving up my two-person squads. (There was one squad with three characters, but they only saw a single fight). In the end I got screwed because one party was constantly barraged by enemies, and since you can only move one squad at a time, your control is frozen as the camera pans over to any inactive parties that are besieged by enemies. Because of this, I was only able to move my backup squad at the top about one step between each battle, while the enemy party that was near the top was able to slide on in at two steps between fights. It was stupid, and a waste of like twenty minutes.

On my second time around, I tried something competely different. I stuck Terra and Sabin together, and sat my other two squads at the two choke points at the top of the map to intercept any incoming enemies. With Terra and Sabin, I beelined directly for Kefka. On the way they were accosted by at least seven enemy squads, which I cut down handily by spamming Sabin’s Aurabolt. Terra doled out poitions when necessary, and I FireDanced my way past the Rider at the bottom. I proceeded to continually blast Kefka with Aurabolt and he retreated before I knew it. I think only one enemy squad made it to the top before it was over.

I’m now starting to wonder if it’s a trait exclusive to FFVI, or if more FF games become a cakewalk if you just plow through them with a sack full of potions. I’m wondering if the rest of the game is like this too, or if I’m eventually going to have to put some thought into it. I’m sure that I haven’t seen the last of the gimmick bosses, but aside from that, is brute force the best way to get through all the mooks? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I think at this pace I should be done by about this time two years from now.