Zune...gate?

So apparently using a Zune is a bad thing. Apparently President Elect Barak Obama was seen working out while listening to a Zune and not an iPod, a clear and present danger. After all, if our newest President cannot clearly see the evils and danger of a non-Apple product then well, he should be impeached before we even begin. Despite using a Mac, the use of a Zune is absolutely unforgivable.

I exaggerate of course. This kind of thing is absolutely rediculous. Really? It's that big of a deal? I guess technophiles could explain to me why this is so bad. But I can't really make myself care. The only reason I bring it up is to point out that yes, our countrymen are idiots. Most of the time.

Comment. Now. Please?

Hold Onto Your Memories: Lost Odyssey Review

Some video games reach the player through action, some artistry, and some characters. There are some games that connect with the player through raw emotion. Of all the JRPGs I've played, Lost Odyssey is the only that evoked sadness and feeling for the characters, even incidental ones. Through the memories of the main character Kaim, an immortal, we as the player see the fragility and beauty of the short life humans live.

Many reviewers you'll see on various reviewing websites like to announce the death of the Japanese styled Turn Based RPG (JRPG on a general basis). However this is simply not the case. Read any forums, talk to any fans and the newest generation of JRPGs (Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Persona 3/4, and to an extent Infinite Undiscovery and Last Remnant) and you'll almost always get a fairly positive reaction. That's because they are indeed fun. For some reason people tend to believe that Western styled real time moral choice RPGs (WRPGs) can 'fix' RPGs. Check this if you're interested in their arguments. I believe Lost Odyssey is the answer to this. Is it perfect? No. But it is one of the most meaningful gaming experiences I've had in a long time.

Graphics
First off is graphics. Wow is this game pretty. Even though the game suffers from pushing the player through a usual group of settings (woods, castles, sewers... which I don't really mind, but some people do), everything is very attractive. The models themselves are really attractive, with each character having their own little details. Probably my favorite looking character is Sed. Just look him up online somewhere, the simple detail in his face is remarkable.

In terms of settings, the Lost Odyssey is very detailed. I'm a big fan of the magical 'mist' that surrounds the magic machines that pepper the world. The enemies are varied and the bosses are mostly impressive (though the final boss does fail to impress. He's barely bigger than your characters). The frame rate can be a problem, and towards the end of the game I did have quite a bit of freezing during random battles before the actual fighting began. Again, I don't mind much but this is kind of an annoyance from a technical standpoint.



I mean, you see that in the opening scene of the game. How is that not awesome?

Sound
With Nobuo Uematsu (from Final Fantasy fame) as the lead composer, why wouldn't the sound be good? I'm a huge fan of the music in this game, and it had me whistling along towards the end. Of special note is the World Map theme and the Boss Music. I think I was desensitized to the normal battle music, and the 'Arena' song was pretty cool, but since you hear the World Map and Boss themes all the time, I have to admit I have a special place in my heart for them.

Sound effects do their job. However, I was a big fan of the voice acting. Jansen, while annoying, couldn't have done better for his character. Several times there would be no subtitle, and he would put little "woah" or "Hey, look out"s here and there. It was a nice touch. Every one else was fairly serviceable, with no... painful scenes like the laughing scene in Final Fantasy X. I liked the VA in that game but... geez.

Gameplay
Lost Odyssey is a turn based random battle RPG. If you don't like those, you probably won't like this one. For people who like their battles deliberate and turn based, this one does the trick. Battles typically don't show up too often, giving you plenty of time to run around between them. However, the areas you run around in aren't very... open. Like old-school RPGs, you are typically railroaded through each area with only a few branching paths if you're interested in picking up items. Otherwise it's point-a to point-b through most of the game. Towards the end this changes up, giving some fairly puzzle oriented areas, including one I just didn't go through (the Temple of Enlightenment is for hardcore people only, and while I'm a dedicated gamer, I'm not THAT hardcore).

The battles are not too tough, though if you don't pay attention to the enemy type you can make it a lot harder for yourself. Here's where an interesting part of the game comes in: Ring creation. See you can equip your character with rings that give them various abilities such as fire damage, or extra damage against beasts. With the items you find in chests and off enemies you can build new and more powerful rings. Also you can change them in battle, so if you're okay with taking that extra time, you can make sure your characters are ready for any challenge. Boss battle ratchet up the difficulty significantly, with me losing against the first boss pretty handily at least twice. However if you have the right abilities and you level up right, you can plow right through your opponents no problem. The final boss was cake for me.

The aforementioned abilities are an awesome addition. You see, as your mortal characters level up, they learn new abilities like magic or physical attacks. However, your immortals (four in all) do not. Instead they learn abilities through interaction with the mortals. This translates into receiving SP from battles while 'linked' with mortal characters. Say you want Queen Ming to learn level 6 black magic? Link her with Jansen and fight a bunch. Eventually she'll learn level 6 black magic that you can equip on her at any time. The same with any of the other immortals. They also learn abilities through accessories, and by the end of the game all of my immortals had "Nullify All Elements" and "Resist Ailments" which pretty much meant the final boss was a pansy compared to me.

Side quests don't really show up until the fourth disc, and if you want each character's best weapon you need to do them. I did them because I'm OCD about not having them (except for Mack... I had to beat the Temple of Enlightenment to get his. He's useless at the end anyway...). Its up to you if you care, but its integral to getting the "Treasure Hunter" achievement, which involves getting every item in the game.

Story
Since this is an RPG, I need to talk about the story. While the main story itself fails to be terribly interesting, there are some key points the game hits to keep it memorable for me. First is the characters.

The characters in this story are:


From left to right: Mack, Cooke, Sarah, Kaim, Seth, Sed, Jansen, Ming, Tolten, and Gongora.

Of them Sarah, Kaim, Seth, and Ming are immortals. Gongora is also an immortal, but he's the bad guy so he doesn't count. Something that matters a great deal to me in terms of characters is charm. If the story sucks (I guess it kinda does) but the characters are interesting, I'll play through it. This is the case here. Like I said, Jansen is annoying, but fun. Kaim is mostly mean but is a big softy around his grandchildren Cooke and Mack. His wife Sarah is sweet and Cooke and Mack are cute at best, annoying at worst. Ming is very noble, and works well in conjunction with Jansen, while Seth and Sed (mother and son respectively) are probably the most fun. Tolten is a good character in battle, but man is he a wuss... However, all the characters work well in respect to each other.

The second point of the story I enjoyed are Kaim, Seth, and Ming's dreams. Through the story you can unlock several dreams that are missing memories of the immortals. These stories are the most emotional, well-written pieces of literature I've ever read in a video game. Several times I got choked up, and one story about an old woman who's mind reverted to that of a child made me up and cry. I'll admit it, I cried. But... that's the cool part. However, they are all text which is something you should remember. Nobody's going to read them to you, so if you don't like reading... tough.

However, not everything is so peachy. The game fails in explaining each of their characters well. Three of the five immortals are well done. What happened to Sarah and Gongora? Sarah doesn't get a dream at all, and stands around being demurely attractive, while Gongora is the "muwahahaha!" villain. While I like Sarah a great deal, it is a great disservice to the character that she was so ignored. Also, we get a good bit of past... or at least a little past of everyone except Jansen. How old is he? Where's he from? Did he grow up in Uhra? As one of the three main-main characters, I don't know a thing about him. Unacceptable. Lastly, the nature, purpose, and world of the immortals is not sufficiently explained, if at all. It's really important towards the end, as to why they came to the world... but they never tell us. I was really disappointed.

Verdict
Do you like Japanese styled RPGs? Then play Lost Odyssey. Seriously though, this game does have flaws, but the characters and dreams make up for the deficiencies of the main story and the sometimes boring and easy random battles. The rings and abilities are perfect for the collection-crazy player, and the boss battles are challenging enough for the strategic minded. However, with some lack in character development and some serious gaps in the main story, the game is held back. I'd certainly recommend this game by the sheer virtue that I completed it. That doesn't happen all that often, so take that how you will. Lost Odyssey is an emotional, personal game that deserves your time.

B-

My Bad. For Real.

Okay, once again sorry I've been taking a bit to update. I've been really busy lately with finals last week, papers due, and the new trimester starting. So now I have a bit more breathing room so I'll try to update more often. I at the moment don't have much time so I'll just put up a list of new things.

1) Barak Obama is the new president. I don't mind so much: the Bible clearly communicates that God is always in control. Not only did this not surprise God, it was His will. So those fundamentalists who are frustrated that we actually have a Democrat in office, remember this is what God wants, for better or worse. So get over it. For the record, I didn't vote for him.

2) I've almost beat Lost Odyssey. I want to write up a review, but as it's a turn-based RPG, I'd like to beat the game before giving you my final impressions. I haven't beat Mega Man 9, but because of the type of game I was able to provide you my thoughts. Lost Odyssey is a different matter.

3) Fallout 3 is awesome. My initial impressions are really good, especially since my fiance is playing it more than I am. And she's not much of a gamer or anything.

4) I think I'm taking 4, count them 4 writing intensive classes. Pray for me, for really.

The Hammer of War!

It's been a few days since I posted, so I'm sorry about all that. But you've got me back, so dry your tears and listen up.

In the last year or so I've encountered a phenomenon. To explain, I'll start from the beginning.

I'm a gamer.

If you didn't know, you do now. I've played video games for quite some time, and I feel I'm rather talented at it. Sure, I'm not terribly competitive, and when I am I'm usually middle of the road decent. But I'm a gamer, and playing video games is my hobby. It's what I do. But recently (as in the last few years or so) I began getting interested in other expressions of my gaming hobby. Video games aren't quite enough.

So I got into tabletop gaming. D&D (Dungeons and Dragons for the uninformed) caught my eye, and my fiance and I (along with our old pal Justin) started playing on Tuesday nights. It's been a year, and while we've lost characters and Justin stopped playing, we're still going strong trying to figure out the mystery that is 4th edition. But even then, its still a "sit and see what happens" style to gaming. I still wanted more.

At the old gaming store here in Hattiesburg, the Gamer Sanctuary, I used to see people playing war with little plastic painted men. Lo and behold, they were playing a game called Warhammer Fantasy Battle and another version called Warhammer 40,000 (40k for short). For a quick and easy description, it's exactly as I said: a war game with little plastic painted me. It's much more deep than that: it involves assembling and painting them yourself, and has a fairly (arguably) complete set of rules. Well, there's something about the dedication of purchasing, assembling, and painting all those figures and taking them out to fight for justice (or death, whichever).

Through various setbacks, I've finally got a fair assemblage of figures. My army size is middle range, and I'm still learning. You, my loyal readers, will likely be hearing a lot about it in the time to come. I'll put up pictures of my figures and do little tactical articles here and there.

Also, these two hobbies have mixed in the form of the relatively fantastic Warhammer Online, based on Warhammer Fantasy.

So... interested? Don't care? Comment!

Infantilism

While I'm thinking of Mega Man 9, I thought I'd share this with you. There's not much of a better way to describe how that games makes me feel than this. Thank you Penny Arcade, thank you very much.

Oh, and I'm trying to figure out Flickr... silly me.

Anniversary

Sorry about the lack of content today. I figured I would take a break as today is my 3 year anniversary with my fiance, Elizabeth. We hung out all day and ended the day by eating a delicious dinner at the Crescent City Grill here in Hattiesburg. I really recommend it if you haven't gone there, it's absolutely worth it. It's really reasonably priced as well. So anyway, I'm getting married in a year from today! Hopefully since we're getting married on the same day as our dating anniversary I can remember our wedding anniversary!

Cheers!

Game Review: Mega Man 9 (Wii Version)

Remember back when video games were hard? Back when games were designed to make people who thought they could do anything cry to their mommies? Sure you do. That was back when the NES reigned supreme and there were no contenders to the throne. The Sega Genesis would come later to challenge them, but for now, Nintendo ruled the day. Back then, games were so mind-numbingly difficult, it was as if they created jumps with such a small margin of error... well needless to say it was frustrating.

The original Mega Man games were like this. With a rock/paper/scissors style gameplay and some of the most difficult platforming around, Mega Man epitomized the state of gaming. However, these games did something that other games would find it hard to do: it made hard gameplay fun. I was little when Mega Man came out. In fact, the original came out the year I was born. Therefore, I grew up with the games. Every couple of years or so, a new iteration would come out, improving (arguably) the formula, and adding newer, weirder Robot Masters. Towards the end, the series kind of petered out, stretching creativity with the boss robots and the powers they gave until things just seemed... unnecessary. Since then there have been spin-off series such as X, Zero, and games that don't even resemble the original like the .net series games.

So with games getting better graphics, becoming more surreal and vicereal in their depiction of violence, wouldn't the newest iteration of the classic Mega Man series do the same?

No bloodly likely.

Mega Man 9 returns to the age of the arguably best game in the series: Mega Man 2. No buster charge, no slide, and no mercy. Everything you would expect of a game in the later 80s/early 90s is here: 8-bit graphics, MIDI music, and simple but difficult and fun gameplay. This is a classic Mega Man game in every way, except nobody's played this exact version until 2008. Let's start from the beginning.

Graphics
8-bit all the way. This is the Mega Man I remember and boy does it make a retro gamer squee (squee: silly noise of joy). The enemies have a limited amount of animations and Mega Man looks just like he did on all the NES games. There can be a bit of slow-down when there is a lot going on on the screen, but this doesn't really harm the gameplay much. In every situation where it matters, the game runs smooth as ice. If you're a recent graphics hog, this game will probably make you vomit a little, however. Mega Man 9 is unapologetically old-school. There are no, and I mean zero new graphical additions to this game. And that's just the way I like it.


Sound
Boy oh boy do I love the MIDI soundtrack. I'm the kind of guy who actually has Mega Man music on my iPod, so you can see how this would tickle my fancy. Just like with the graphics, this is NES style all the way. Heck, on the opening screen the music will lessen when you select something, with one sound effect cancelling out the other. Its jarring for the uninitiated but, again, I'm a retro gamer at heart.

Gameplay
Ah the meat of the game, eh? The core Mega Man experience is all here. You open up with this:



From here you pick one of the 8 Robot Masters. Then you're subjected to what amounts to a 'obstacle course of DEATH' where the boss you chose sits at the end. Then you go toe to mechanical toe with the foe (I rhymed!) where the prize for victory is your opponent's weapon, and the price for failure is death (and rebirth if you have extra lives). Then you rinse and repeat, but this time you'll have the last boss's power to help you out. Then you experience the rock/paper/scissor gameplay I mentioned earlier: every Robot Master has a weakness to another's weapon. Therefore, a big part of the game is figuring out who to fight and in what order.

In each stage, you have to run, jump, shoot, and avoid pitfall/spikes. Each stage presents different obstacles, such as the rain and wind in Tornado Man's stage or the instant-kill magma beams in Magma Man's stage.



Each jump is tentative, and each stage feels like it was designed to make you fail. This isn't a flaw in design (which would be frustrating) but a deliciously devilish idea that makes you feel truly talented to succeed. The biggest problem for me and likely most gamers is the amount of times you will fail. If you don't die a zillion (exact number) times, then you are what I like to call, a super-gamer. Sometimes it IS arbitrary. You'll get hit, which knocks you back a bit, and fall off a ledge. You'll jump just a little too late, plummeting into the dark abyss. There is hope though: if you notice at the bottom of the stage select is a little house icon. There, you can use the screws you pick up throughout each stage to purchase things such as Beat, a bird that will lift you out of a pit once per purchase, or a spike guard that will keep you alive if you touch spikes, again once per purchase. This is very helpful, but ultimately won't help as in my personal experience, they never help when they need to. Only if you stock up will it truly make a difference.

Verdict
If you're a fan of retro games, buy this game right now. Stop reading (comment first, of course) and go buy it. If you don't like old games, stay away. This game is difficult, dated looking, and old sounding. I've read comments by people on forums that say things like "I refuse to play a NES game in this day and age." This game isn't for you, unfortunately. Not a judgment on character or anything. It's just a game made for people who do want to play NES games in this day and age. Heck, I own the anniversary collection on PS2, so I DO play NES games on occasion. Classic in every way, I give this game a personal

A

Agree, disagree? Comment!