Correction: 1997/98 -> 1996/97
So in my epic rant about my history with the Final Fantasy series, I messed up some important dates. This is not surprising considering I tried to basically "wing it," but my memory has been playing tricks on me.
Final Fantasy VII was
not released in Sept of 1998, but rather Sept 1997, and the N64, similarly, came out the winter before that. I did buy FF VII on release day and did buy a PlayStation the summer before. I did also use my McDonalds money to buy the PSX unit; I worked there for roughly 6 months in grade 11.
What I said about that time of my life being a time when I largely moved away from video games and into more of a student career still holds, however. As I got closer to University and deeper into my University career, I neglected video games to a large extent. Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil were two of the only console games that I played and finished as a University student; other games such as Xenogears, Alundra, and Final Fantasy IX were played briefly and largely neglected.
I felt certain that I picked up FF VII on my way home from class, but it must have been an excursion from my high school--quite far out of the way--rather than directly home from University.
The Longest Final Fantasy Wait
There's a story that I like to tell about how between 1997 and 1998, I waited for 16 months for the release of Final Fantasy VII. Today, I would like to tell that story again.
The prologue to this tale is how I came to be converted into a Final Fantasy fan, and for the sake of brevity, I'll keep that part relatively short. I first played Final Fantasy II/IV for SNES back in 1995 and was
not won over by it. I was much more of a Zelda fan back in those days and the active time battle system just wasn't my thing; but cut me some slack--I was only 15. I did have some significant RPG experience, at least, thanks to Dragon Warrior, which I got a free copy of for subscribing to Nintendo Power back in the day. Anyway, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past ceased to be my favourite game of all time sometime early in 1995 when I got into Secret of Mana. I didn't even realise at the time that Secret of Mana was published under Squaresoft--the very same Squaresoft that published the Final Fantasy series and would later merge with the creators of Dragon Warrior/Quest, Enix, to form Square-Enix.
I had a couple of close friends in Jr. High School. One was Alex, who was also a big fan of Zelda and became an even bigger fan of Lufia--the Taito RPG. I used to debate with him constantly about whether Lufia or Mana was the better game, which is significant because he drove me towards becoming an even deeper Squaresoft fan, although I didn't realise it until later. The other friend of mine was Fritzkrieg, who fatefully rented Final Fantasy III/IV one day, late in 1995. He called me up on a Saturday afternoon to invite me over, saying that he had the awesome new Final Fantasy game. I wasn't enthused, so I made him agree that we'd only play it for an hour, and then we'd play something else.
From the very first minute that I played Final Fantasy III/IV, I could not stop myself. Fritzkrieg and I played for at least four hours straight that day, and I left his place reluctantly. In the week that followed I scraped together every last penny that I could get my hands on to afford the game--it completely tapped me out. I played FF VI for 20 hours/week for the next six weeks straight before finally showing any signs of burning out on it, and I continued to play it regularly for another two or three years after that.
Final Fantasy VI has been my favourite game of all time ever since, perhaps only being de-throned this year by World of WarCraft.
It was in early 1997 that I bought a copy of GameFan magazine--the best gaming magazine that has ever been published--which had a massive article in it about Final Fantasy VII. At the time it was being showcased at some sort of expo in Japan, or something, and GameFan had all kinds of screens of it. One thing that you might assume is that if this story got so much coverage in GameFan, other mags must have been all over it. But the fact is that covering gaming announcements in Japan wasn't as common-place a practice back then as it is today, and Final Fantasy--although a very strong brand at the time--wasn't the sort of household name at the time that it is today either.
So there I was, clawing at my face in anticipation of this unimaginably incredible 3-D sequel to my favourite video game of all time. I was
dying, and my life being what it was at the time, I felt like the only person on earth who cared about this fantastical Final Fantasy VII thing. I was so excited that even thinking the name "Final Fantasy VII" made me feel like the earth was giving way under my feet. Even now, that was probably the most excited that I've ever been about any video game, and I had an incredible
sixteen months to stew over it.
Between 1997 and 1998, I bought every game magazine that I saw which featured FF VII on the cover and read as much as I could about it (having a part-time job at McDonalds helped to pay for this stuff.) I watched the Nintendo 64 arrive and do a belly-flop, which broke my heart because I have always been a dedicated Nintendo fan. But Final Fantasy VII was never far from my mind. In May 1998, I bought my PlayStation, along with Soul Blade (the amazing predecessor to Soul Calibur.) Suikoden and Wild Arms soon followed, and I waited for September to arrive.
That fall I started University. It was a very exciting time in my life, to say the least, and for the first time since I was 10 years old, my life as a gamer was somewhat overshadowed by something else. That is to say that I was following a bigger dream and experiencing bigger potentials than simply revelling in the latest greatest video games of the day. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but I was on the cusp of losing my identity as a gamer, and I would eventually enter a lapse of three or four years of not really caring much about video games at all.
There was a chain of gaming stores at the time called CompuCenter, and that was where I bought Final Fantasy VII, on release day, on my way home from class. When I think back on it now, it's amazing that I didn't have to pre-order the game; not pre-ordering for one of the biggest video game launches in history seems unfathomable. Nevertheless, I did stroll out of there with a copy of FF VII. When I got home, I knew that my younger brother wouldn't be able to eat supper in anticipation of the game--hell, I was having trouble myself--so I lied and told him that I didn't actually get it and would have to get it tomorrow. After supper he could see that I was excited, and that's when I pulled the game out of my backpack.
Final Fantasy VII was not a complete let-down, but it was a let-down. In retrospect, I can see that the game's storyline was pretty good (aside from the ending, perhaps), and the gameplay was definitely good. But the characters were lacking, and somehow the game just didn't reach me as deeply as FF VI did. I still believe that FF VI is a superior game, but I also recognize that a large part of why FF VII didn't take over my life is because it was overshadowed by my University career and my general withdrawal from the video game world.
I never finished FF VII in the end, although I did make it to the final area. My brother finished it long before I did and I watched the ending cinematics with him.
No amount of anticipation will ever top that year and a third of waiting for FF VII, but what I really wanted to talk about today was Final Fantasy XII, which comes out on Tuesday. EB Games has already phoned me to confirm that my copy will be waiting for me at the store when they open that morning. I've been watching trailers and I'm pretty stoked about the game (it's even part of the reason that I've been playing so much Valkyrie Profile 2--now up to 12 hours of play time), but I'm not particularly dying with anticipation. Still, I'm amazed at just how long I've been waiting for this game.
The last true Final Fantasy title was Final Fantasy X. Since then we've had Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Final Fantasy XI (the MMORPG), and Final Fantasy X-2. I may be forgetting something, but the fact of the matter is that not one of those games since FF X has been a worthy successor to the series. Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, and X were a non-stop parade of classic RPG titles, and although I myself was living in a cave at the time (or is it living outside of the cave that I've only now returned to?), I can look back and see that these games were some of Squaresoft's finest. The last one, Final Fantasy X, was back in 2001, I believe--six years ago!
For the last two years I've had a Final Fantasy XII desktop wallpaper on my laptop. It's even been a long time since even the Final Fantasy XII demo came out with Dragon Quest VIII, which I greedily snatched up even though I probably would have taken a pass if it was just Dragon Quest VIII in the box (I admit that with shame.) Final Fantasy XII hasn't been haunting my waking thoughts the way that FF VII did at all, and yet somehow I've still felt the draw of it--it has still managed to wriggle into the cracks of my mind and make a home for itself. The other day when I was watching the latest
story teaser for FF XII on GameTrailers.com, I felt myself choking up. I thought that I'd essentially left the lion's share of my love for Final Fantasy back in the 90s, where it seems to belong. In fact, maybe I have, but maybe there's still so much love left that I still can't help myself.
The longest wait for a Final Fantasy game in my life didn't start in 1997 when I bought that GameFan magazine with the exclusive FF VII preview. It started on the week following the release of Final Fantasy VII when I realised that I don't love Final Fantasy as much as I used to. It continued through 1998 and all the way to 2001, covering Final Fantasy VIII, IX, and X, all of which I've played (well, VIII only a little) and none of which got the kind of attention from me that was deserved (although I did at least play FF X all of the way through, once.) And then it continued some more through 2002 until present day. Part of me has been waiting for nine years for a Final Fantasy game to really grab my attention and hold it--for a Final Fantasy title to show me that the series doesn't merely live on in name only.
Could Final Fantasy XII be that game? Am I finally ready, after missing out on the bulk of what the Final Fantasy game universe has had to offer to the world so far, to tap in again and re-experience that awe and wonder? It could be that I'll be waiting the rest of my life for another Final Fantasy game to really impress me. Or it could be that I'll only be waiting for three more nights.
Gunstar Super Heroes
Lately I've been playing a bit of Gunstar Super Heroes, for GBA. It surprises me just how lasting the appeal of that game is, but what surprises me more is that I'm surprised. After all, Gunstar Super Heroes was developed by
Treasure--the creators of Ikaruga and various other hardcore masterpieces. Yet in spite of that, the main reasons that I bought the game were because it had rave critical reviews and because it was half price. Shameful!
You could argue that Treasure has a hit-and-miss track record. Ikaruga, Gradius V, and Guardian Heroes are all cult classics, but then there are games like Silpheed: The Lost Planet, Guardian Heroes Advance, and others that drew reactions ranging from luke-warm to ice cold. Personally, I wouldn't argue that; in fact, I believe that there is another, entirely separate reason why a game like Gunstar Super Heroes doesn't have such a raging draw even for most hardcore gamers (although, believe me, it
should have that draw.)
If you could take Gunstar Super Heroes back in time to around 1994 or 1995 and put it on the SNES, it would have been a rampant success. I can say this with confidence because I remember loving games like Darius Twin and Contra 3 on the SNES, which are both easily inferior to Gunstar Super Heroes. Of course, you could say that about most games these days: titles like F.E.A.R. and Valkyrie Profile 2 sure would have swept the market back in '94, what with their snazzy 2006 technology to show off. But the difference is that you couldn't take F.E.A.R. or Valkyrie Profile 2 back that far because the hardware required for regular home gamers to run these games wasn't available. There were no graphics accelerator cards (in fact, an entire $3000 PC back then would have had less RAM than a typical $60 graphics card today) or PlayStation 2 consoles at that time, but there was the SNES. And because the GBA is roughly as powerful as the SNES, I can easily imagine that it would have been possible to create Gunstar Super Heroes back in 1994.
There are two points that I mean to illustrate by this story. The first is that technology isn't just about hardware. Even though the SNES was around back in 1994, the methods to create a game as elaborate and solid as Gunstar Super Heroes hadn't been developed yet. There's a reason why the early games out for a given console (Final Fantasy II/IV for SNES, Metal Gear Solid 2 for PS2) are typically outdone years later by more technologically advanced games running on the same hardware (Final Fantasy III/VI for SNES, Metal Gear Solid 3 for PS2.) Software takes time to develop and be refined, yes, and so does the entire game-making process that goes into creating kick-ass sequels.
The second point, which is the less obvious and more important one, is that the game market is a lot more competitive today than it used to be. Back in '94, if Gunstar Super Heroes had managed to get made, it would have been hailed as a revolutionary SNES game and would be remembered to this day as an all-time favourite. In 2005, the same game gets made--albeit faster and easier due to advances in technology--and only manages to turn a handful of heads. I found that it took me, personally, a while to realise just how good Gunstar Super Heroes is
as I was playing it because so many other games (Contra, Mega Man, Metal Slug) have blazed so much of the same territory. And when I realised that, I started to wonder just how much room is left for creativity and innovation in games.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to do something entirely new with video games today. What I am saying is that perhaps it's more difficult than it was a decade ago. It was around 1994 that id Software brought us Doom and spawned a revolution in PC gaming. Does the FPS genre still have the potency for change today that it did back then? FPS games have become so common as to be cliche; they are even one of the first game genres imagined by non-gamers when asked to think of what a typical video game is like. Similarly, Gunstar Super Heroes is a rock solid, spectacular game that is only mildly interesting because, tragically, the state of the art had overtaken it before it was even made.
To me, this is a hidden element of "The Sucking." Gamers today tend to pine for the glory days of the 80's or 90's when games were "real games" because the fantastic games of today have numbed their senses to the point where it's hard to be all that impressed anymore. It's difficult to see what the big deal was about Final Fantasy IV when you've been playing World of WarCraft for two years solid, because one's imagination only carries one so far in picturing that, at the time, FF IV was the most advanced RPG of its kind that had ever been created. The result is that we all have a tendancy to sit around and gripe about how games have lost their magic while regularly playing games that would have made us weep for joy back in the days of yore that we're nostalgic for.
Anyway, if you're a hardcore gamer (and I really mean that--not just some jackass who thinks of himself as hardcore because that's a hip thing to be) and you happen to have the chance to try Gunstar Super Heroes, I highly recommend that you take that opportunity. It might seem typical and unimpressive at first, but if you give it your full attention, I think you'll come to see in it the magical sheen of old-school gaming that we all yearn for from time to time.
The Burning Crusade, Delayed
NOOOOOooooooooo....!!
10/24/2006 08:00:25 AM UTC
"IRVINE, Calif. -- Blizzard Entertainment® today announced that the release date for World of Warcraft®: The Burning Crusade™, the highly anticipated expansion for World of Warcraft, will be in January 2007."
This comes from
an official Blizzard announcement that I found
via Joystiq.
Having given the initial disappointment a few moments to wear off, however, I realise that this delay simply gives me more space to enjoy upcoming releases like Final Fantasy XII and the Nintendo Wii. It also gives me more time to level up my Undead Priest, Xzi, in preparation for The Burning Crusade. The more I think about it, well... I could actually almost
thank Blizzard for this little reprieve. I just hope that none of my other favourite upcoming releases follow suit.
As for the
reports of
Lik-Sang going out of business because of Sony lawsuits, well, that's just tragic. Shed some tears and then watch parts
one and
two of GameTrailers.com's on-going "Zelda Retrospective" series to cheer yourself up.
RPG Difficulty & Challenge
One thing that I neglected to mention in my previous post about Valkyrie Profile 2 is that it is pretty tough by console RPG standards. You can't just half-heartedly bash your way through the game; you really do need to pay attention to how you develop your characters and spend some time levelling and upgrading in order to advance through certain areas. To me, this is a really good thing. Valkyrie Profile is pretty enough and has enough story to it that I'd probably finish it even if it was way too easy, but the fact that it isn't a foregone conclusion really makes me
desire to finish it.
RPG challenge factor lies on a scale where on one end you have RPGs such as Suikoden or Kingdom Hearts (more of an Action-RPG there) where you rarely have to make any sort of difficult decisions (either in combat or in character development) to pass the game, and on the other end you have RPGs such as Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne and Disgaea: Hour of Dakrness (more of a Tactical-RPG there) which require lots of grinding in order to make serious progress through the game. For my examples of games that lie on either end of the spectrum, I picked great games to illustrate a point: a game that's far on one end of the spectrum can still be great. But I do believe that there is a middle ground that should be aspired to.
World of WarCraft rides the difficulty curve better than any other RPG I've ever even heard of, and I think that that is a large part of the reason for its success. One thing to notice about WoW is that it offers interesting challenges at every level of play. And when I say "interesting" challenges, I mean both that the player needs to make smart decisions in order to advance, and that the player needs to work at least a little in order to advance. It is key that WoW offers up challenges that require thought and attention; true "grinding" occurs when a player has to perform repetitive actions that are time consuming but not truly challenging (except perhaps in-so-much as that they try one's patience.) Of course, WoW does dip into the territory of grinding sometimes, which helps for it to appeal to those players who get off on it, and I think that most people do from time to time. But what really makes WoW a hardcore page-turner of a game is that at virtually every point while you are playing it, there is a satisfying challenge that you want to tackle next, and that is true whether you are only looking for a light challenge or whether you really want to push yourself.
To consider another great RPG, look at Final Fantasy X. One of my chief complaints about this game is that, although the characters and story are epic and amazing, and although the exploration is very satisfying and the gameplay is excellent, FF X didn't really challenge me until the end of the game. Sure, I had to make some interesting decisions with regards to character development, and yes, I did get stumped on some of the dungeon puzzles that I had to solve, but in terms of the random encounters, I remember it being a fairly straight-forward affair. "Oh, a flier--I'd better call in Wakka to kill it in one hit. Now I'll get Auron to slash that gnome guy and Lulu to cast Fire 2 on that spider." And that the same strategy worked for the next battle, and the next one, and so forth at least until the next area. I didn't even have to try hard to figure these strategies out--usually whatever first occured to me was a good enough strategy to get by, and if I managed to improve my tactics somewhat it was a mild convenience. Over the long run, for things to be that easy is not a satisfying RPG combat experience. (Disclaimer: I'm hoping to replay FF X at some point and find out whether it really is or isn't the way that I remember it.)
On the other hand, I tend to burn out easily on Digital Devil Saga and Disgaea because, although the combat system in those respective games is challenging and interesting, a lot of the time there's no way to pass through an area without stopping and grinding first. Grinding and levelling up represents a different "flow state" from exploring and progressing through a console RPG. When I'm making good progress through an area in DDS or Disgaea and suddenly find that the enemies are too dangerous and that I need to stop and do some levelling, that's a major interruption--one that is likely to make me think "well, this is a good place to leave off until next time" and then end up procrastinating in terms of starting up the game again. At least with FF X when you were on a roll you could rely on not having to stop until you were actually tired.
The brilliance of World of WarCraft is that you aren't
forced to switch between grinding mobs, questing, battlegrounds, instance dungeons, skilling, or whatever you're doing. You focus on one activity for as long as it sustains your interest, and then you can switch to something different. That's why I can play WoW for days on end, yet with Disgaea (which I love) I can typically only handle a couple of hours at a time. Disgaea also offers a lot of different approaches to the game (the Dark Assembly and Item World, in addition to the game's main storyline), although not as many as WoW, but the simple fact is that your progress in any one area is severely limited if you neglect the other two. Unlike in WoW, with Disgaea you might feel like working on one area (eg. progressing through the story) but need to spend time doing something less fun first (eg. slogging it out in the Item World.)
I was also talking about something else (both in this rant and before in others), and that was having the gameplay decisions that you make be interesting and important. How you develop your characters in terms of choosing skills, equipment, classes, and the like should not be so complicated that it's easy to screw up, but it should have enough of an impact on the game that your skill in making these decisions will make an obvious difference in how well you perform during combat. WoW is, of course, brilliant for this: it's a simple matter to build a moderately strong character at any level, but you can obsess for a long time over squeezing more and more power out of your character with items, talents, and ability strategies. I've mentioned before that there's a big difference between a good WoW player and a bad one, even if they have the same character. To me, this is an important hallmark for a great RPG to have.
I acknowledge that RPG difficulty is incredibly difficult to get "just right," particularly since there are so many different breeds of RPG fan out there. One of the reasons that you have great games on either end of the difficulty spectrum is because some players really enjoy mindlessly slashing through an overly simple Action-RPG (or Suikoden) and appreciating the exploration and story elements, while other players really enjoy absurdly challenging RPG dungeons or stubborn skill trees that require dozens of hours of grinding to advance through. Both of these styles of play have merit, and even with all of the ground inbetween, one's personal perference will always play a huge part in determining where the "sweet spot" of the perfect level of RPG challenge lies.
As for Valkyrie Profile 2, from where I stand right now it's been really good, but if it gets much more difficult than this it will likely stray into the territory of too difficult for my taste. Still, that's a less serious fault than not being difficult enough for my taste, although there's a risk that I'll get to the final dungeon and not have the energy to tackle it (this is currently Digital Devil Saga's fate.)
Valkyrie Profile 2
I played a whole bunch of Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria yesterday. You could correctly say that I am, in fact, quite addicted to it at the moment. Right now I've played just over eight hours of the game, and have cleared the Serdberg Mountain Ruins area. I'm going to do a sort of informal review of the game, which is subject to change of course, since I'm only about 25%-30% finished the game.
The graphics, storyline, and battle system in VP2 all share a common theme: they are all very good, but significantly flawed. The artwork for this game is spectacular, and the models and environments obviously push the PS2 to its limits, but the prevalence of nasty jaggies certainly reminds you that you are playing a PS2 game. As for the storyline, it's very good--perhaps even the best RPG storyline that I've experienced since Final Fantasy X (or maybe Disgaea). It is, however, riddled with RPG cliches. And finally, the battle system is somewhat novel and fairly well put together, but it has a tendancy to degenerate into wild button mashing over the long haul, and certain aspects of it (like how the passage of time is modelled when you split your party into two groups) are frustrating and nonsensical.
There is another common theme that all of these elements of VP2 possess: if you're able to suspend your disbelief and simply become lost in the RPG experience, none of the faults that I've listed above matters much. Yes, the jaggies are ugly, but the game on par is still gorgeous. Yes, the storyline isn't terribly original, but it's still fun and exciting. And yes, the battle system has annoying quirks and can be repetitive, but overall it's still better than what most RPGs have to offer. Generally speaking, these are all aspects of the game that I've really enjoyed in spite of their faults.
What I'm trying to say is that Valkyrie Profile 2 is one of the better PS2 RPGs that I've played. It is not a shining beacon of perfect RPG design (Final Fantasy X and Dragon Quest VIII come much closer to that ideal), but nevertheless it has come together as a strong enough whole to keep me engaged. It's possible that any one of the game's faults would really grate on another player, and that would tip the balance from fun and addicting over to awkward and frustrating. Personally, however, I am having a great time with it.
Exploration in VP2 is fun and fast-paced. The game has a platformer style action RPG dungeon interface that harkens somewhat to Castlevania. The control scheme is a little clumsy, but overall this part of the game is really fun. The battle system is such that things are paused whenever action isn't being taken, but movement unfolds in real-time otherwise. Attacks play out such that AP is spent for your characters to hammer away on enemies, and a full AP bar goes a long way. Whenever an enemy is killed it grants a massive AP bonus, so when fighting weak opponents, your party plows through them without allowing so much as a word in edge-wise. As for actually issuing the orders, basically each of four characters is assigned to a button and performs their attack when prompted. Both the order in which the attacks are issued as well as the timing of attacks matters--an attack can actually miss if the enemy is lying on the ground or being juggled too high in the air when you hit the button. In this respect, the combat system almost resembles a fighting game, except that the enemies only hit back when it's their turn.
It helps a lot that VP2 is short enough to assure me that I'll be able to finish it. At roughly 30 hours in length, I would even have time to finish it before FF XII is released if I neglected WoW entirely (which I did this weekend but am not planning to continue doing.) Because the immediate appeal of VP2 is so great, Okami has been pre-empted for the time being, although I will play some Okami on the side when I burn out on VP2.
As for a quick look at where other RPGs are sitting, I'm still actively interested in Suikoden V, Disgaea 2, and Digital Devil Saga, although none of them has seen any attention in a long while. I'm close to the end of DDS and it's been months since I've played. It hasn't been nearly that long since I last played Disgaea 2 or Suikoden V, but these games are having a hard time competing with WoW, and in many respects Valkyrie Profile 2 just ate their lunch--especially when it comes to Suikoden V. If Final Fantasy XII scoops up my attention when it comes out, well, Suikoden V may be permanently stalled, which is tragic because it hasn't even gotten very good yet.
As an aside, I also picked up Dawn of War: Dark Crusade and played a bit of that on Thursday/Friday. The new races--Tau and Necrons--are pretty cool, aesthetically at least. I haven't played them a whole lot, but the Necron economy is really different in that they've done away with the commission resource entirley, and capturing control points simply increases the Necron population and shortens their respawn time (since they never permanently die, supposedly), or something like that. Kudoes to Relic for not requiring the DVD to be in the drive in order to start the game, and it's also nice that even if you don't have Dawn of War or Winter Assault, you can play as any one of the races in the single player campaign. It turns out that in order to play multiplayer as Space Marines, Orcs, Eldar, and Chaos, you need to have Dawn of War (and your CD key), and in order to play Imperial Guard you need to have Winter Assault (and your CD key). Still, Dark Crusade is really worthwhile.
Wii Pre-order
7:50 am - I pull myself out of bed and grab a light lunch before heading out to the nearest EB Games. I live near downtown, so that's where I go.
8:25 am - $4 for two hours of parking
8:30 am - I arrive at "the line-up" and my heart immediately sinks. There are already roughly 25 people in line, and when I called on Friday, the EB Games manager said that they were only taking 15 Wii pre-orders. But I start asking people about the line-up and quickly discover that a lot of them are there for the PS3.
There are 8 people at the front of the line who have been there since about 6 am and want the PS3. Of the remainder, about half say they want a Wii--I ask for a show of hands, and about ten of them go up. So supposing that, say, twelve people order the Wii, I can still get one. The real question is how many PS3 spots there are, since if those sell out right away, a lot of the remaining line-up people will likely order a Wii as a consolation prize. I know that I'm on the cusp, but I decide to line-up anyway.
9:00 am - I have a nice conversation with a few of the people around me in line about various console games and who will win the next gen console war. The general consensus is that the XBox 360 is basically screwed, and while the Nintendo Wii is definitely going to come out to an early lead this holiday season, the PS3 will likely take-over the market in the long run--ie. the two or three years from now picture. The general reasoning behind this is that while the Wii is nice and cheap with a lot of buzz about it and no supply problems, the superior hardware capabilities of the PS3 will become a major factor, and more importantly than that, Sony still has the backing of a lot of the most important third-party developers. I agree that unless Nintendo can manage to steal serious development attention from the hardcore game publishers out there (Square-Enix, Capcom, Konami, Atlus, etc.), they can't maintain a dominant position over the market. There's also a guy who shares my opinion that Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne kicks ass.
At this point I was about 3/4ths back in line. Much to my surprise, not many people are playing on either PSPs or DSes.
9:20 am - EB Games employees show up and start to open the store.
9:25 am - The manager of the EB Games store distributes playing cards with "PS3" or "Wii" written on them so people know whether or not they have a spot. This is the moment of truth.
Within seconds the PS3 spots are gone. Only 8 were given out (or maybe it was 7?) and the people who showed up at 6 am got all of those. The announcement goes out,
"All of the PS3 spots are gone! I'm sorry, but there are no more PS3 spots!"
...and right there about a third of what remains in line leaves. Then the Wii spots start going. The EB Games guy gets closer, and closer, and closer, all the time saying "Wii. Wii. Wii. Wii. Wii" as he hands out cards. I am mortified.
He finally gets to me and I get a joker card with "Wii" written on it. Then the guy behind me gets
the last one. Holy crap!
"Sorry people, but all of the pre-order spots are gone!"
Everyone behind us leaves save for one hold-out engineering student who says that he is going to hang on and hope against all odds that somebody didn't bring enough money for the pre-order or some such thing.
9:30 am - The EB Games staff starts letting people in a few at a time to fill out their pre-orders. Every ten minutes or so, somebody would show up and join the line, and us guys at the back would explain that all of the spots have already been given out while flashing our "Wii" cards around. That was enough to convince people not to waste their time, but the engineering guy stayed. I don't know whether or not he got anything for his efforts in the end.
There's some talk about Okami while we're waiting. One guy I'm with says he finished it and it took him about 35 hours. I tell him that I'll probably only make it to the 20 hour mark at best. I don't do well with console games that are any longer than Resident Evil 4.
10:10 am - I'm finally let into the store to make my pre-order. The phone is off the hook and a phone in the background is ringing constantly. The store manager says,
"I'm not taking any calls until I'm done dealing with all of the people who waited in line."
I can tell that he's going to have a fun day telling people "no" every five minutes when they ask about pre-ordering a PS3 or a Wii. :(
The Wii deposit comes to a whopping $200, and I pre-order Zelda: Twilight Princess to go with it. On top of that, I pre-order Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Final Fantasy III DS, and Children of Mana. Combined with The Burning Crusade, that should be enough to keep me busy until Christmas.
"OMG teh heals!!!"
I just had the most awesome experience in Warsong Gulch. Let me prefix this by saying that I don't play a whole lot of battlegrounds because right now I'm mostly into questing and levelling, although I'll gladly take some time out to help somebody out, especially a guildie. I found myself in the battle for Warsong Gulch because that's what the Hellfire Assassins--the guild that I'm in (on Kargath, primarily undead levels 30 to 45--found themselves doing tonight.
I also have to acknowledge here that the BGs for levels 30-39 are, I'm pretty sure, generally not as competitive as what you find at level 60; maybe not even by a long shot. But I thought it was general knowledge that you should
always take out clothies first. It's not just that they're so squishy and crumple to the ground so quickly--it makes tactical sense too.
It may be satisfying, but sometimes it sucks bashing an Undead Priest in the face with a mace or sword or whatever. You never know what kind of nasty diseases that walking corpse has brought from the Undercity. You may get Touch of Weakness on you and/or Shadow Word: Pain, you may get feared, and the annoying bastard will certainly shield himself before the end. But whatever that cursed Priest throws at you, it'll be better than bashing on a Shaman or a Warrior who
just won't die because of those damned heals!
The scene: Warsong Gulch. I'm at the Alliance flag with three other Horde after scuffle in which two defenders have already been dispatched. We're taking the direct route out of there when suddenly everthing goes sideways; at least four or five Alliance charge in from all directions and within seconds it's just me and the flag carrier--that is, one 36 Priest and one 39 Shaman, respectively. It's a good thing that
Shamans no longer take damage, because we would have been fucked otherwise.
Actually, what really saved our asses is the fact that all of the Alliance defenders keep bashing on the flag carrier and--incredibly--didn't bother to take me out as I kept running just ahead of him. Any
one of them would have been able to dispatch me or at least drive me away almost immediately, but instead I'm allowed to keep dishing out shields and Flash Heals on the flag carrier while scrambling for other options such Psychic Scream. In spite of being slowed and moving at a snail's pace, with absolutely no backup showing up until we've made it out of the Alliance base and into the middle ground, we did make it. The flag carrier had basically nothing left for health and my mana was totally tapped out, but
we did make it.
So you can imagine my feelings as the Battlegrounds Group channel errupts into messages like "OMG DID YOU SEE THAT?!!?" "dat was awseome" etc. It was a big deal: this was, after all, the third cap for the Horde--the goal that won the game. I did a lot of healing and dished out a lot of Fortitude buffs and SWPs that round, but that one play really made me felt like I'd made a difference. Wow.
For people living in the US, Friday morning was the big line-up day to pre-order your Wii at the local EB Games or Gamestop. For me, a Canadian, the pre-order day is tomorrow. I phoned the closest EB Games on Friday afternoon and they told me that they will be accepting exactly 15 pre-orders on a first-come, first-served basis. I haven't entirely made up my mind to go, but there's a pretty damned good chance that I'll find the willpower to drag myself out of bed early and line up at least an hour before the store opens. And if there are already 15 people there waiting in line, well, I'll be early for work.
And on another arbitrary and much more random note, I want one of these DVD sets:
http://www.evo2k.com/2005/dvd/
Drooooool... (watch the trailer, but my wife thinks I'm crazy)
My Dream Arcade
Certainly you must have asked yourself on occasion, "if I could have my own arcade with games selected personally by me, which games would I pick?" It's sort of a variation on the age-old "Desert Albums" list (what music would you take with you if you knew you were going to be stranded on a desert island with a CD player and a lifetime supply of batteries?) but the question with arcade games takes on a certain twist. The thing about the desert music is that I have access to all of the music that I'm likely to pick, but I can easily think up great arcade games that I can't easily find, so this question takes on an additional aspect of games that I wish I could play right now in a proper arcade setting.
One of the most important arcade genres is certainly the tournament fighting game--both the 2-D and 3-D varities, although I'm a strong fan of the 2-D sort myself. I can think of many such games that I'd love to see included, such as King of Fighters 2002, Street Fighter III: The Third Strike, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 . The list goes on and on... and, in fact, only choosing one of these games is too painful, so I'm going to allow myself three choices here.
The first one that I'd take is
Capcom vs SNK 2, simply because it is so modern and comprehensive, while also being a great game of course. Secondly, I would take
Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the unabashed reason that it's a personal favourite of mine; I really felt that it pushed the genre forward in its day, and it still has a certain old-school appeal to me. Finally, I would have to take
Samurai Shodown IV because, well, I'd have to. If that wasn't available, I would settle for
The Last Blade II. In the long run, I'd probably regret not taking Street Fighter III: The Third Strike instead, but I think I can live with that. As for 3-D fighting games, I'll take a
Soul Calibur, thanks, and maybe
Tekken 2 if there's room left over (which there won't be.)
Tournament fighters are all well and good, but sometimes you gotta go back to the roots of it all in street brawlers such as Double Dragon, The Simpsons, and those awesome D&D Arcade Games. The one street brawler that my dream arcade simply has to have is
Final Fight, which is arguably the best game of its kind ever made. You just can't go wrong with that one.
Another important game genre for arcades are puzzle games like Tetris, Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust-a-Move), and Magical Drop. You would think that Tetris would be a shoe-in here, but personally I've never found Tetris to be all that much of an arcade style experience. Assuming I still had access to console games and can therefore still play Tetris outside of my fantasy arcade, I honestly think I'd rather have
Puzzle Bobble. That one just "feels right" on an arcade cabinet.
One of my all-time favourite arcade genres are the light-gun shooters, like Time Crisis, House of the Dead, Lethal Enforcers, and even Silent Scope. For me personally, there are two in particular that stand out above the rest and that I must include in my fantasy arcade:
Point Blank, and
Virtua Cop 2. 'Nuff said.
Something that I'm lacking so far are games where you sit in some kind of closed-in cabinet. There aren't a whole lot of those that have really run away with my imagination over the years, but two that I think are worthy of inclusion are
Afterburner 2 (ooh, that tilt!) and the original Atari
Star Wars arcade game from the 70s, which featured vector graphics and audio clips from the movie.
Also missing so far are the classic arcade games--the sort of old-school titles that started it all. If I think too hard about it, I'll never be able to settle on only a handful of titles, so just to toss off a few of the most important ones, I would need to have
Robotron 2084,
Donkey Kong,
Bubble Bobble,
Ms. Pac Man, and
Galaga. There are
so many others that I would take too, but I can't dive full-bore into that right now or I'll never have time to finish the rest of this rant.
It may not be strictly necessary, but I do think that this arcade would be a lot more fun if it included
Dance Dance Revolution. I'd also settle for Percussion Freaks, although I'm less inclined towards Guitar Hero... but really, it's gotta be DDR.
This will be heresy to some and gospel to others, but for me the single most important video game genre that makes an arcade a true
arcade are the straight-forward shoot-em-ups. I have many favourites in this genre and limiting myself to only a few titles in this genre is the toughest of any of the decisions that I'll have to make for my dream arcade.
Galaga was already covered above, and the other shoot-em-up I simply cannot live without is
1943 (or maybe 1943 Kai). Two others that are very important to me are
Ikaruga and
Metal Slug 2. And, finally, I would have to make room for one of my more exotic favourites,
Salamander--the Gradius "gaiden" game that was adapted for the NES in the form of Life Force. These are, seriously, the kinds of games that move me to tears.
I definitely have omitted some stuff here, such as pinball games and racing games, but for the most part my personal arcade experience has revolved around the ground already covered here. If I walk into any given arcade and they have even a three or four of the games that I've mentioned above, I'm generally quite happy to kill time there. If there even is such a thing as an arcade out there that includes all of the games I've put in bold, then somebody
please tell me about it.
Tetris DS
In the past week I've been playing a fair bit of Tetris DS online using Nintendo WiFi. My Wi-Fi Rating tends to hover around 6200-6500, which I'm fairly proud of. I've had it up past 6700 and yesterday it dipped down to under 6100, but 6500 is maintainable so far. According to my Wi-Fi Records, I've played 67 games, with 21 first place finishes and 28 second place finishes. All of this applies strictly to the 4-Player battles with items; I haven't played any of the standard 2-Player or Push matches online yet.
Right now my ambition is to reach a rating 7000+, which should be pretty tough. I've only encountered a handfull of 7000+ players so far, and the highest ever ranking that I've seen in my 67 games to date was just over 7700. Still, I figure that if I can improve my Tetris skills and get into a deep winning streak, I should be able to crack the 7000 barrier. Maybe.
So far my Marathon high score (not on Endless) is 534,596. I don't consider that to be especially competitive, and I'm slowly working on improving it.
I've said befre that all of the non-standard play modes in Tetris DS are surprisingly worthwhile, and that the online play is exciting. Both of these things are still very much true, but I'd like to say a little more about the game here.
Let me start by saying that Tetris DS is worth getting for the WiFi play alone. Playing Tetris DS versus kids from Japan online is one of the best Tetris experiences that I've ever had. The WiFi play does have some very annoying quirks, however; in particular, you usually have to wait far too long to actually get into a game, and people drop from matches (voluntarily, I assume) far too frequently. I rarely ever drop out from a game before it ends because somebody else did, and sometimes I'll do stuff like check the Auction House in World of WarCraft while I'm waiting for a WiFi match to start. In spite of these drawbacks, I still feel that WiFi functionality is a huge win for Tetris DS, and I haven't even used the Friends feature yet.
What really matters to me the most about any given Tetris implementation is how well it conforms to what I believe the canonical Tetris experience to be. Other Tetris games that I've played, such as "The Next Tetris" and Tetris Worlds often mess around with the Tetris formula in ways that I find unsavoury. No matter how good or bad the extra play modes of a given Tetris implementation are, what it absolutely needs for me to take it seriously is a "standard" play mode where you continuously advance through levels of increasing speed at a rate of one level for every ten lines cleared, and a scoring system where the number of points awarded for clearing lines increases exponentially between singles, doubles, triples, and tetrises, as well as increases heavily as levels increase. Tetris DS's Marathon mode is that "standard" play mode that so many other versions of Tetris screw up, and it is--simply put--the single most appealing Tetris implementation that I've ever played, or at least equal to my other all time favourites, including the original Tetris versions for NES and GameBoy.
There are many features of Tetris DS that I would consider "new school." The look-ahead on upcoming blocks is a queue that shows the next
five blocks you'll be getting. An old school implementation shows you one. Tetris blocks are "slippery" in Tetris DS, meaning that as long as you keep rotating them, you can stop them from settling into place. An old school implementation has "sticky" blocks that give you less slack in terms of getting the right placement before they hit the ground. Tetris DS has a one-block "bank" where you can sub-out your current block for a banked block using the R shoulder button. An old school implementation would not have such a feature. Each of these new school details is something that makes the game easier and allows skilled players to tackle higher levels than are normally possible. But I don't feel that these are features that dumb the game down or in any way detract from it.
It's kind of like looking at the evolution of Olympic sports and the technology used in them. A lot of Olympic records over the history of the tournament were broken simply because of advances in technology--things like slippery sprinter uniforms coated in Teflon, shoes with plutonium soles, or whatever. Some advances in techology are questioned by sports officials as threatening the character of the game, and they may even be banned for reducing the game to a less worthy competition. Other advances in technology are seen as changing the game in a neutral or even positive way. To me, the features implemented in Tetris DS are of this latter type. They change Tetris and enhance a player's skill, but I don't feel that they make the game any less interesting; in fact, I think that these features add a bit of fun complexity to the game. To put it another way, when I play Tetris with all of these new school features enabled, I still very much feel that I'm playing real Tetris and not some variant of it.
What would have been super swell is if Tetris DS had included a mode (not just settings, but a whole separate mode) where you could select "classic" play with all of the newer features turned off. Similarly, it would have been fantastic if the WiFi functionality had been solid enough that I didn't have to wait upwards of two whole minutes to get into a game a lot of the time. However, these are short-comings that do not ruin Tetris DS, and it is still very much worth any Tetris fan's attention.
If you see some guy playing online as "Parappa" and you kick his ass, feel free to brag about it in the comments.
My Gaming Habits
I received some fairly disparaging comments about my blog from a good friend of mine yesterday, although it should be understood that the comments were
taken as disparaging and not necessarily
intended as such. Today, I'm going to address them.
First off, I've been telling everyone that I know about Company of Heroes and how great it is. Obviously, Sunny isn't into it--she doesn't even play WarCraft III in spite of her 500+ hours of World of WarCraft game time, and if she was going to play any RTS at all, WarCraft III would certainly be it. You can add to that the fact that she is known to actively be disinterested in all things regarding World War II, including (but not limited to) documentaries, movies, books, and games. As for two of my buddies who actually do enjoy war games--Matt with whom I play The Operational Art of War, and Bumby with whom I used to play Korsun Pocket--I told them about how much I was loving Company of Heroes and they both picked it up immediately. They now love it as much as I do.
Anyway, so this one guy I told about Company of Heroes waved it off saying something to the effect that "but you say that about every game." Whaaaaat? Since when?
It is true that I rant about a lot of games that don't appeal to many of my friends. I'm in love with Street Fighter Anthology, for instance, and not many of my friends are. I love Tourist Trophy and the only other friend of mine who plays it is Matt. And my love for Disgaea and Digital Devil Saga is really only shared by Fritzkrieg. By and large, however, I don't think that I hype up that many games. Perhaps I sound more positive than I intend to, but when I talk about Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney or Suikoden V, I mean to give the distinct impression that these are interesting games rather than great ones. They are worth checking out if you have the time and there is a distinct possibility that you would make a personal connection with them and they would become favourites of yours, but I don't mean to say that they're instant classics or anything.
Perhaps that doesn't cover exactly what makes it sound like I say that "every" game is great. The only other explanation I can come up with is that most of the games I bother to mention to people happen to be the really worthwhile ones. Here on the blog, I make an effort to cover a wider base--to talk about most of the games that I'm playing whether they're very good or not (hey, that reminds me, I should write about SiN: Episodes)--but I'm a far cry from a professional game critic. I tend to talk about the games that I like the most because those are the ones that I spend the most time playing.
This brings me to point #2 that my good friend brought up, which has to do with RPG games. Console RPGs are pretty much my all-time favourite game genre, but it is true that I don't have the kind of single-minded dedication to them as I once had. I draw your attention to exhibit A:
Joystiq's "Picture It": The First Paradox of GamingLike the above article suggests, when I was a kid I had tons of time for gaming and relatively little money. Now I'm 26 with a solid career, a wife, and no kids. I have tons of money for gaming and relatively little time.
When I was 14 or so, I played Mario Kart for hundreds of hours. The reasoning behind this is two-fold: Mario Kart was the only new game that I was able to afford for the better part of a year, and I had at least 20 hours per week to spare on video games.
Last year I picked up Mario Kart DS and immediately loved it; I even went so far as to call it the best Mario Kart game ever made. To this day I don't think I've played the game for more than 10 hours total. The reasoning behind that is similarly two-fold: since getting Mario Kart DS, I've easily purchased two dozen other gaming titles, many of which are as deserving of my attention, and I no longer have hours and hours every week to spare for gaming. I have to fight hard to make time for gaming, and the games that I own fight similarly hard to get attention from me.
Now I have to ask the question, did I necessarily love video games more as a kid than I do now? In some ways, perhaps I did. But I don't think that it's entirely reasonable to argue that the fact that I was more fanatically devoted to a smaller subset of games back then is proof that I was a more hardcore gamer. If I had had access to as many video games as a kid as I do now, I would certainly have spread my time too thin on them in much the same way that I currently do (except that I would have had more time to go around at least.) An important thing to realise is that no reasonable amount of time could cover all of the new games that I've tried my hand at in the last few years.
This brings me right back to my friend's comment, which was something along the lines of how ridiculous it is that I buy so many RPGs that I know I don't have the time to play. He said that I remind him of a shop-a-holic who repeatedly buys clothes that never get worn. Ouch!
I will say this: my impulse spending problem is well known, and it is linked to my stressful career. It's generally been the case that I've been the most vulnerable to impulse purchases during the times that I've been under the most pressure at work and have had the least amount of time and energy to myself, and at times the problem has definitely gotten out of hand. This means that, paradoxially, I often end up doing the most game shopping during times in my life when I have the least amount of time to spend actually playing games. I realise that this is a problem for me, and it has been difficult to cope with.
(pictured above is a subset of my rampant game collection)
I understand perfectly that one could easily get the impression of me as being somebody who buys a lot of games and calls himself "hardcore" without actually taking the time to play games a whole lot. I have to argue against that accusation most strongly. My time may be spread around such that many of the games that I own don't get the kind of attention that they should, and I really could benefit from making a habit out of renting most games before I make a frenzied decision to buy them, but I do play a
lot of games, and not just in passing.
For example, yes I did purchase Dragon Quest VIII a while back and have come nowhere near finishing that game (barely even scratching the surface of it, in fact), but I would easily have finished it if it weren't for the following:
(from a screencap taken this morning)
Five days on WoW! That 120 hours right there. I probably could have finished Dragon Quest VIII
and Disgaea 2 in that amount of time--or pretty darned close. The vast majority of that time, by the way, was within the last month. So my good friend who seems to question my love for RPGs may be able to hold the fact that he finished Dragon Quest VIII recently and I didn't, but consider that he doesn't even
have a World of WarCraft account. Given that, I don't think it's reasonable to say that I'm not an RPG lover... or at the very least, it's not reasonable for him to say it.
I spend quite a bit of doing "extra-curricular" gaming. Counter-Strike is an old staple that I still partake of with Matt, and I also fire up Day of Defeat once in a while too. Just last night, Matt and I were playing Instagib CTF on Unreal Tournament 2004.
(screen cap of "slutbucket" Matt making the winning cap on CTF-ElecFields)
And yet in spite of the amount of time that I put into games like the aforementioned FPSes, RTSes, fighting games, etc., I still manage to finish some very major titles. In the 18 months or so, I did polish off Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 3, Katamari Damashi, and Shadow of the Colossus very rapidly. I also very slowly slogged my way through Disgaea, and I'm very close to the end of the first Digital Devil Saga. I won't deny that there are many games that I stall on and will seemingly never manage to finish (I'm _still_ waiting on Zelda 64 and Xenogears), but there are plenty of examples of games that I whip straight through in spite of stress from work and the wild distractions of always having so many games on the side.
I know that I'm being awfully over-sensitive to this topic, but it's something that has come up before and something that I feel will continue to come up if I don't speak out against it. And if you're going to criticize me for buying too many games and subtly suggest that I'm not as hardcore of a gamer as I make claims to be, then maybe you should at least brush up on your Tetris skills before bringing that on. Boo-yah!
Okami - First Impression
So I've played a couple of hours of Okami and just gotten to the point in the game where it starts to get good. I definitely haven't seen enough of the game to pass final judgement on it, but so far I've gotta say that it's much more of a mixed bag than I expected. I was hoping for another Shadow of the Colossus, and I ended up with something more like Zelda: Wind Waker meets Viewtiful Joe. Okami does deliver a lot of what it promises, but it doesn't live up to the impressive Metacritic score of 93 that it currently enjoys. Let's quickly cover some of the pros and cons.
One thing I definitely didn't like is that Okami is slow to wind up. It is fairly nifty right from moment one, which makes the slog through the slow first portion of the game fairly easy to sit through, but the game just isn't all that exciting for the first hour or so. I can see how the slow pace of the game might have been intended to help less "hardcore" gamers than myself ease into the game, but I didn't find the opening bits of the game to be particularly enlightening; it just felt limiting, slow paced, and confusing. A gaming noob could easily get completely stuck near the very beginning of the game in spite of its attempt at a gentle introduction, and experienced gamers are likely to be frustrated by the lack of action.
Mind you, the graphics and artwork for Okami are spectacular. During the early portion of the game, this aspect of the game actually had me worried that game critics had showered Okami with praise primarily because of the amazing visuals. The flip side to this part of the game is that I was left feeling that I'd seen it all before, which isn't surprising considering that Okami is a
mere PS2 game. Still, if you're buying this game mainly for the eye candy, you'd be an idiot to be let down by it.
On top of that, of course, there are some really nifty gameplay mechanics--primarily the "brush stroke" thing which is the front-and-center gimmick that makes the game so attention worthy. When I call that a gimmick, I don't mean to make light of it, because it is a very fun thing to play around with. I would, however, stop short of calling it an advance in video game technology, since it isn't so nearly innovative as to change the genre or anything. The overall effect of it is like playing a Zelda game where instead of playing an ocarina or using a conductor's baton to invoke magic, you draw shapes with a Japanese calligraphy brush. It's a neat technological stunt, but that's about the depth of it. Where the rest of the game is concerned, the gameplay is solid, but not particularly new or original.
At this early stage of the game, Okami seems like a solid sort of quest game with some great visuals. It has good exploration elements, fun combat mechanics, and a few gameplay twists that are impressive. However, in order for me to really be blown away by it, it'll have to pick up significantly from this point onward. It's still possible that I'll come to see in Okami what all of the critics are raving about, but right now I strongly feel that Shadow of the Colossus is a far greater gaming experience.
Kaboom!
Company of Heroes sure is pretty.
