This is not speculation

So I had the items in the picture below as a snack today. Turns out I picked the wrong ones on both counts. I’m special!

First, the Doritos. Doritos apparently have not one, but three questionably new flavours out right now. Each one is assigned a degree of burnination. I guess they’re supposed to be really spicy? Being the lover of spicy things, I went for what I thought was the most spicy of the three. As it just so happens, I have no idea which way the burn degrees go. So really, I picked the weakest of the three, as I was informed after I got home and looked at the back of the package. There’s a little picture of a thermometer with the temperature just above the bottom, and an arrow which informs me that my heat level is there.

But damn, those Blazin’ Jalapenos were hot! My mouth was positively aflame! Well, of course it wasn’t actually on fire, but I imagine it would have been if I’d chosen one of the flavours farther up the spiceometer. Like, they were even more intense than the spicy thai ramen noodles that I love so much. There is no doubt in my mind that the Firey Buffalo and Scorchin’ Habanero will break me like a little girl when I try them (and you know I will). Also, I’m not a huge fan of ha-ha-halapeno, so the taste didn’t even resonate with me very well. Better than eating a straight jalapeno pepper, but not by a whole lot.

The Pepsi, on the other hand, was a fault of both my stupidity and my lack of attention to detail. There was a sign on the chip stand that said if you buy a Pepsi and a bag of Doritos, you get a slight discount. So why wouldn’t I? I never say no to an ice cold delicious Pepsi. I noticed the advertised Pepsi bottle has a green band around the top of the label, and assumed it was just part of the cross-promotion. Well it was, but it also served to differentiate the Pepsi With Lime from Good Pepsi. Of course I also failed to notice this until I got home.

Not a fan of the Lime Pepsi. It’s been promoted before, but I never tried it until now because it sounded like something that I would find disgusting. I don’t really think it’s that bad, but I surely will never drink it again if superior options exist. It’s like someone got 7up all in my Pepsi, but it negated the Pepsi and lemon flavours and just left lime and something that sort of tastes like it might be a creepy uncle in the Pepsi family. 7up and Pepsi mixed actually taste much better. But yeah, the lime flavour is overpowering and I obviously could stand it long enough to finish the bottle, but that’s never happening again. From now on, I pay damn close attention to my Pepsi labels.

Feeling downtime

So you may have noticed that the site was down for the last couple of days. Oops! Looks like I forgot to pay my hosting fees. Anyway, back in business and back to posting. I’ll probably get that article up tomorrow. By Saturday, at the latest. Actually there are two to post, and only one of them is even sort of good. But whatever, need to get back on the content-creation train! Anyway, that’s all I had to say for today. Must Ocarina of Time 3D now.

I’d give you my world

I wrote an article today. I don’t know when I’m going to get around to posting it, because I wrote an article two months ago and still haven’t posted it. The one I wrote today is edited and spellchecked though, which gives it an advantage. It really just needs pictures and a link. Also, it’s about Monster Hunter, which means Stephanie will go “ugh… I thought we were done with that” and everyone else will be interested because I haven’t made anyone else completely sick of hearing about Monster Hunter. It was actually just supposed to be a blog post too! But I just kept typing and typing and 2000 words later it wasn’t a blog post anymore. This is actually going in a similar direction so I’mma stop typing now.

Get on your bikes and ride!

First thing to mention today, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I’m working on a new little side project for this summer. The, uh, “field research” is going quite well, and it should be ready to launch on the first of July. I’m thinking that since it’s a wannabe-professional writing project that I should probably hire an editor, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. We’ll see come the end of the summer.

Also, how great is Link’s Awakening DX? I think it’s pretty awesome, though it is probably the single most obvious piece of evidence that I’m not nearly as patient with my games as I used to be. See, right at the beginning of the game, you can buy a bow from the shop. But it’s 980(?) rupees, which is way more than you can afford at the outset of the quest. But there is a crane minigame that, for the cost of 10 rupees and a little professional insight, you can grind and have that money much faster than you’d acquire it normally. Each play costs 10 rupees and there are two thirty-rupee prizes, so you have a net gain of 40 rupees a run, which means it takes 25 rounds to secure the necessary funds. It takes roughly a minute to grab both rupee prizes, which doesn’t sound so bad, but who wants to grind a crane game for half an hour? So for the first time ever, I’m skipping the bow for now. I’ll wait to come back once I’ve got the cash or the need for the weapon. I seem to remember having more rupees than I’d ever need by the third dungeon, and I don’t recall the bow ever being required to advance. As far as I can remember it’s more of a convenience, which is a far cry from modern Zelda games that have you use it all the time.

Lastly, where my recent Final Fantasy addiction is involved, I think I need to take a break from Dissidia and focus on Final Fantasy XIII. The game (Dissidia, that is) informs me that I’ve played it for forty-something days in a row now. That’s great and all, but at this point I’m mostly just grinding up my characters so that they’re overpowered when I start up Dissidia 012. FFXIII, on the other hand, I am crazy about and need to spend more time with. Over the last few weeks I’ve been powering my way through the “slow” part to the game, but it’s been slow going, getting in maybe one play session a week that lasts more than an hour. I really have no qualms with what I’ve played so far though. Yes, it’s running through enemy-filled hallways to the next cutscene, but I like it that way! Plus, the battles are dynamic enough that I don’t care if I’m just mashing the auto-battle command over and over. Not to mention that the game rewards you for ending battles as quickly as possible, and I love that the game doesn’t keep an average of your battle results. I would hate to open my menu and see a less-than perfect four-star rating there every time, spitting on my pride. Really, I could talk about FFXIII all day long, but this post is long enough already and I’ll save it for another time.

We’ve got a line in the sky

The past 24 hours have both strained and bolstered my love for Nintendo. Not equally, but we’ll get there. For now, let’s just focus on the worst of it, and then end on a positive note.

Yesterday we were promised a system update for the 3DS that enabled, among other things, the eShop. This is a feature that should have been included at the release of the hardware, but I can understand that they wanted to make sure it was as good as it could be, and delays are always better than half-assed product. But then the update was pushed back and back again up to yesterday. And then I got a message saying it would be available in the evening. I waited all damn day, and when did the update go live? 11:40. PM. If not for the fact that I love my system update, I might still be a little bitter about that one.

The eShop, however, is the glorious ship upon which all my hopes and dreams ride. See, ever since before the original Wii (more on that later) launched, I’ve been dreaming of a time where classic GameBoy games would be provided via some sort of download service. And now they are! Yeah, maybe the only ones worth a look are Link’s Awakening DX (still my favourite Zelda ever) and Super Mario Land (debatable), but some day Pokémons in all colours of the rainbow will be available, and maybe more importantly, the Wario Land series. And Donkey Kong ’94! Oh, and the Kirby’s Dream Land and Final Fantasy Legend series! And Metal Gear Solid! …I could go on like this all day. For now I’ll just revel in my favouritest Zelda and the fact that I actually really like Super Mario Land.

And now, about today’s overload of Nintendo goodness. Where to even start? To put it simply, I think the 3DS is about to really come into its own. The first-party lineup alone is more than I need, nevermind the love Capcom’s showing: two Resident Evils and the all-important MegaMan Legends 3. But that Wii U? I am ever so excited about it! With the first Wii, I admit, I was just as skeptical as everyone else, but I have no doubts that Wii U will deliver on every count. USB hard drive compatibility? Check. Awesome new tablet controller? Check. Some decent horsepower? Check. Console that’s an adorable cross of Wii and 360? Check and double check.

Let’s just get one thing straight; I think that the name Wii U is so, so terrible. That is not the name of a game console, that’s the sound a fire truck makes!

But on the plus side, we’re going to have a plethora of great games to play! Think about it this way: Four Swords could get a real revival! And not like I’ll play any of them (Arkham City being the only possible exception), but there are a buttload of “core” games headed to Wii U too, which nearly knocked me off my seat. Anyway, I should go and actually watch that press conference now. Following like five live blogs of it was all well and good, but I’d like to see some of this stuff in action.

They’re preaching lies

I’m sitting here trying to finish up Secret of Mana on my phone, but it’s getting to a point where I just don’t think it’s possible to continue. It’s really bad because I’ve beaten this game several times before. I wish I could just say that it’s because I’m getting old and suck at games now (which may be more true than I want to admit), but it’s actually because SOM for iOS is so, so badly balanced.

In the Super NES version, the game was pretty easy. If you get stuck somewhere, it’s because you forgot to buy the better armor at the last town. Maybe you played too fast and didn’t level enough (though level gains aren’t nearly as important as in, say, Dragon Warrior) and need to go back and grind a handful of bees or chobin hoods. Bosses were the only real challenge, and that was until you realized that spamming magic would essentially end the fights before they really began. What I’m getting at is that I never really faced a sticking point before. But now they’re everywhere! The game has been totally rebalanced in the enemies’ favour, and now the bosses are usually where you find respite from the terrible onslaught of death.

Mooks have been way upgraded for the iOS version of the game, their attacks doing a whole hell of a lot more damage than ever. Magic is even worse. And that wouldn’t be too bad on its own, but your character’s hit rates have gone way down. I swear nine out of ten times your attacks will whiff. I first got stuck in the upper land forest, where the combination of overpowered caterpillars and unhittable moles and fish ripped me a new one over and over again. I don’t remember ever using cups of life outside of bosses back in the SNES days, but by God, the merchants are sending their kids to college on my cup of life purchases alone this time around. It seemed like for most of the mid-game that every time I walked onto a new screen the sprite would be dead within ten seconds.

But a combination of grinding money and buying the (awesome) Gold Island armor as soon as possible really made the areas between getting Flammie (SOM’s airship stand-in) and entering the underground city really easy (or at least bearable). Now, in the underground city however, things have gotten retarded hard again. My armor is no longer game-breaking, but merely enough to keep my dudes from dying in a single hit. Making my way through a single hallway is tough, and getting from one end of an entire screen to the other without a casualty is nearly impossible. It gets worse too, because I’m stuck right before a boss with no supplies and no MP and he’s apparently immune to physical attacks? I definitely don’t remember this guy. So basically I have to work my way back out of this area (which is one of the longest dungeons) to get stuff, but getting out alive in my condition is going to be yet another nigh-impossible challenge (see the image above, and that’s right outside the boss room).

I remember a long time ago, when Secret of Mana was fun. But now it’s tedious and unfair and frustrating. I don’t like the iOS port, and until they put out a patch that at the very least puts my hit rates back to a reasonable level, I don’t think that I can finish it.

You’re mad

Still plugging away at Final Fantasy on my iPhone, not really sure what I should do next, because I got the airship right after Lich, and then went on to get my class changes right away. Thought Pants might be better off with magic. He’s not.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played this game too, and that was the first time. Having gone so far off course on my second playthrough makes me feel really cool because I don’t really think about sequence breaking when I play games. But it’s so easy in Final Fantasy! If you wander around enough (and have a vague idea of what you’re looking for), the game basically cracks right open once you kill Lich and get that canoe.

Oh, and check this out! During my first outing, I played FF1 pretty rigidly, always using my fight commands and saving as much of my black mage’s MP for bosses as I could. Large mobs were annoying and took several rounds to defeat. It was not efficient at all. This time I’ve been wantonly blasting whoever I can with magic, and it turns out that you generally will have enough MP to go around anyway. And then I got the Gauntlets and Healing Rod.

I never realized that items like these were in the game; you can equip them for weak stat bonuses, but really what you want is to use them as items. When using these particular pieces of equipment in battle, they cast thundara and heal respectively. With no MP cost. And they never get used up or go away. So now that Gus can cast thundara every round with no MP drainage, cannon fodder enemies are rendered completely moot. Even nine-monster squads are vanquished in a single turn. I don’t know why the game even bothers to keep sending them out.

I honestly cannot wait to see what other items like this I can find. Something that casts healara would be nice, because while ~50 to the team each turn is more than enough for dungeon crawls, it’s not quite enough to keep up with the bonus dungeon bosses and their unusually strong magic. But then again, I suppose that’s what all my unused MP is for.

I ain’t gonna be easy

I know that when you make a game that revolves around issuing commands that has a touch-only interface, you’re probably gonna have to represent some of those commands with icons. But why, exactly, is the item icon in the iOS version of Final Fantasy a teapot?

I mean, okay, I guess a teapot in general might be classified as an item, but never in the game do you gain a teapot as an item. Your characters never interact with an teapot. There are no enemies shaped like teapots. I don’t even think NPC houses have teapots. I suppose that the teapot is a little less generic than using a bag or maybe a backpack as the item command, but it’s still completely irrelevant.

The teapot doesn’t even represent any items you can carry. Why not make the item icon a potion? That’s likely the most common item subset you’ll be using. Why am I thinking way too hard about this? And where do you go after beating Lich?

I’ll be a pharaoh soon

Since the time I first decided to buy into the hype and start watching it, I’ve been a pretty big fan of Fullmetal Alchemist. Some of the fandom is because I’ve always been interested in the concept of alchemy, though the show kind of fantasizes the idea. If you’ve never watched it, it’s basically magic with a loose scientific explanation. Given that physical alchemy is currently viewed as a sort of front for a type of spiritual growth, maybe it’s not too crazy that here it’s portayed as the ability to alter matter by scribbling shapes on a nearby surface.

I’m also really keen on the characters. Yeah, it’s an anime, so they do often fall into the common tropes, but on some counts, they feel very original to me. Mainly the principal characters, Ed and Al. The two are brothers who tried (and failed) to resurrect their mother via alchemy as children. The botched transmutation cost the former and arm and a leg (ha!) and the latter his entire body. The big thing that separates these two from the bulk of anime heroes is that they don’t have a grand cause. They aren’t out to save the world. They aren’t trying to win over the hearts of their romantic interests. They aren’t training to become the world’s greatest pokémon trainers alchemists. Nope, their only goal is to restore their bodies and make up for their mistake. With a twist of guilt as well, as either brother always seems more concerned about getting the other’s body back to normal than his own. Ed especially, as he was the one that led the charge into the realm of tabooed alchemy, which left his brother’s soul tied to a magically animated suit of armor.

The villains are pretty neat too, being false humans (known as homunculi) created by… well, that’s a fairly important plot point, so I won’t spoil it here. But the idea is that they don’t want to rule the world or take revenge on the human race or anything big like that. They are simply soulless creatures living as human husks, and as such their goal (or at least for the ones with the majority of screen time) is a humble one; to find a way to make themselves true humans. While that would rob them of their immortality and totally sweet super-powers (imagine goth X-Men), it would seem that being able to live forever just isn’t good enough for some supernatural beings.

Anyways, more to the point, I’ve been watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which I was informed was different than the original series, but as far as the first ten episodes, it seems like more of an abridged version with slightly better artwork. I’d read that the original run had its own story, different from the manga it was based on, and that Brotherhood was a more precise adaptation. I’ve never read the manga myself, but the main difference I’ve seen so far is that Brotherhood skips a lot of the filler episodes and focuses on the events that further the overall plot. This isn’t to say that I’m disappointed with how the series is so far, I just imagined there’d be some more stuff in there that we haven’t already gone over. Like the first episode. And the new(ish) conclusion to the (first? I forget) Liore incident.

I might have to look a little closer into how it all unfolds before I invest in the rest of the blu-ray sets, but the original run was 50-something episodes long and this one 60(ish?), so maybe it branches off a little farther down the line. Even if it doesn’t it’ll nice to have a crisp, high-def collection of the series.