Katy's Island

Final Fantasy 13: FMV Jcrap

2010-03-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

I have been an avid Final Fantasy player, even though I wasn't playing it from the original. You may have read, in past blogs, about my distaste for FFX2. Unfortunately, a new, and even worse failpion has arrived: FFXIII.

Backtrack just a second here. FFXII wasn't exactly...amazing. It was easy, story wasn't too impressive, but it wasn't as bad as X2. However, the new installment is even worse. It makes the adventures of the bimbo trio seem like a work of art.

First of all, let me admit, I've only played three hours in. There is a reason for this. Many people have told me, well, you like FFXI, and that's Jcrap too! Jcrap is my new nickname for XIII, in case you hasn't noticed.

Let me set these people straight. To me, FFXI isn't "Final Fantasy." It's called FF, but in my mind it's an MMO that I enjoy playing with my friends. Yes, it has potions, mages, and chocobos, but for me, it's a separate entity from the FF franchise.

FF13 though...what more can I say but..it's linear. There is no sense of adventure. In the beginning, you are thrust into different character roles, the same general area, but slightly different stories. You have no control over the situation, nor can you control any other character except the leader.

Bo-ring.

To make it easier, they have added the "auto-attack" function, which lets lazy gamers become even LAZIER, by simply hitting the button and letting the game figure out the best things to do for that specific battle.

This linear bit is atrocious. Final Fantasy, although sometimes throwing you into situations you can't get out of, was always an adventure to me. You had a map, and it showed you where to go, but you didn't always have to go there. Sometimes weird, obscure little towns were on the far edges of the map, and you could go there for fun, to get new items or equipment, or just to see some silly cutscenes. XIII doesn't even have towns. No, you get a map, it shows you where to go, and sometimes, SOMETIMES, there is a single treasure ORB around, but it's in a very obvious place, and generally contains 50 gil. Wow.

Back to this, FFXIII doesn't have towns CRAP. What. The. Hell. Why didn't they have towns? Because it was too hard to do in HD. Too hard, on a game they spent years creating. Well, what were they working on?

I know the answer, and it isn't the game. It's...get ready for this..

...Cutscenes and FMVs!

In the three hours I have played, 85% of my time has been stuck in cutscenes or watching FMVs. When it isn't doing that, I am running a character through an obvious and linear map, avoiding enemies if I want to. Yeah, everyone bitched about random battles, but what would FF be without them?

Crap.

Let me introduce, FFXIII!

Most of the FF team is gone. Uematsu, who has done at least SOMETHING for every other FF, is GONE. The music in this game is atrocious. No prelude, no victory fanfare. I feel like the battle music throws me into a time-space continuum, with crappy music. To me, horrible score.

Around the two and a half hour mark, I fell into a cutscene. Then another. Then it asked to save my game. Then another CS. Oh, one more. THEN, I got to run my character down a slope. But..wait, what is that at the bottom?

Another cutscene! Twenty+ minutes of cutscene and three seconds of actually character movement.

It was after this instance that I put the controller down. I didn't save my game, I simply put it down and shut off the PS3. Never in my gaming career have I put down a Final Fantasy game. Not for X2, not for XII. Yes, I suppose I have put it down cause I had to sleep, or I was tired of trying a boss. Not for XIII. I put the controller down, and I haven't picked it up in 6 days.

I really don't have any intention of doing so, either.

FFXIII has made me dislike what FF has become. It marks the end of an era for me, in a way. The point at which Katy puts down a FF game out of pure dislike is the point at which it has died.

R.I.P., Final Fantasy. December 18, 1987-March 17, 2010.

Gamerscore: 1/10 (the one comes from the little chocobo in the afro. ridiculous idea, cute bird.)

Donkey Kong Country 12,3 and Rabbit Rampage Just For Me!

2010-02-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

(First of all, Rabbit Rampage is a game for the SNES that stars Bugs Bunny. I understand it wasn't that mainstream, yet I Know four people who owned it.)

This post is going to gush awesome, because it's all about the DKC games for the SNES. Yes, another blog about the SNES. Why? Come on, if the SNES doesn't deserve kudos, then what does? Certainly not the Dreamcast....

I know I've said before my first gaming experience was the Donkey Kong SNES pack, complete with palm tree decorated box (which I still have, at my mother's house). Since it was my first, it holds a special place in my heart, which is only shared with Zelda64.

What can I say about DKC? It was a challenge and it pissed you off. A lot of games now just lack that horrible, headache-inducing, teeth-gritting, goat-slaying challenge that old systems and games had. Nowadays, if you decide that the boss is too tough, chances are you can just randomly switch difficulties and finish him off on an easier mode. I will confess now to playing some games on easy mode, but this is generally so I get a feel for it if it is something I am unfamiliar with.

Not Donkey Kong. My cousins and I logged some serious hours trying to beat certain levels in that game. We didn't even use the 99 lives cheat, because the closest thing we had to Internet then was WebTV (that should be its own blog someday). Months of childhood went to trying to beat such levels as "Platform Perils" and "Elevator Antics". However, as challenging as it was, the blood, sweat and tears brought me closer to my cousins than a lot of people are to their own siblings. Together, the 3 (sometimes 4) of us went through frustrations that only gamers can truly understand.

Who has ever thrown a controller in frustration? Yes, I saw everyone's hand go up in the air. It was always the game's fault, or the system's fault, or perhaps the controller was not "working properly". Mostly likely, in the case of DKC, your timing wasn't perfect to the second and you missed a vine, or you slid down a snowy hill because even in video game land, there is no traction in a blizzard.

Pets. You got to have animal allies in a few levels. This is an awesome concept, and for the most part it was useful and let you fly, ram into, or stab enemies by the dozens. As cool as the stabbing may sound after a rough day, the animal ally who was capable of it was not so.

Yes, Engarde, I am talking about your wide-eyed, swordfish buns.

Engarde was an awesome blue swordfish with a huge..sword...fish..nose. Perfect to skewer underwater kremlins with, right? Too bad it's an example of idea and practice not being on the same page. This ally was just a pain in the butt, because you could charge up his sword attack and definitely get some baddies in the process, but he was set up to maneuvering was difficult and the charge attack was near unstoppable, which meant if the baddies moved, the fish got flushed down the porcelain bowl.

DKC 1 for the SNES: 9/10 (Engarde, you bastard, you ruined it)

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. I was SO excited when I heard this was coming out! I loved playing as Diddy in the first one, and now he had a sidekick all his own, a girl monkey named Dixie! Actually, she didn't have a tail so I am thinking she was an ape...but I digress.

I actually picked up this game the day it came out. It was so cool, not only did I have two awesome characters, but the environment and theme for this game was PIRATES. The first level took place on a pirate ship! If I thought DKC had me hooked, I was wrong. DKC2 nabbed me and practically puppeteered*** my existence for a few months, at least.

Dixie had a helicopter spin, and Diddy did cartwheels! AWESOME.

Not only was this game entertaining, it was also even more frustrating than the first title. How is that possible? Bramble levels. Bramble levels with an animal ally who was not only hard to control, but who spit eggs or rocks at enemies, but had to be rightnexttothem to have any effect whatsoever.

You, Squawks. The Macaw-type bird who was somehow strong enough to carry two monkies (possibly one ape) through a maze of brambles and still manage to be alive afterward. Don't get me wrong, I love birds, and Squawks even made one appearance in DKC1; however, the mechanics of this ally were horrible. Brambles all over meant you couldn't touch ANYTHING, yet you still had to maneuver not only through that environment, but also around enemies, some of which you couldn't kill with the macaw rock-egg attack.

This game had some of the most difficult levels I have experienced in my whole gaming career, and to this day they give me trouble.

DKC2: 9/10. I just can't give perfect 10s.

I don't even want to talk about DKC3, but for the sake of the blog I will. To me, DKC3 was a game I played with high hopes, and only because it was a DK title. More recent version of this would be playing FFX2 because it's an FF game, or FF13 for the same reason.

I got DKC3 and started playing. Dixie was back but...oh no, Diddy was gone! In his place was Dixie's lumbering idiot of a cousin, Kiddy. Who, although similar to Donkey in his weight and actions, was one of the most annoying video game characters I have encountered to date, save for Rinoa from FF8.

He's a big, fat ape baby in a onesie, and when he dies he cries this horrible cry. The only good thing he can do is break things and throw Dixie up in the air. Awful.

The other fault I have with this game is not the difficulty, because it was plenty horrible (Lightning Look-Out strike fear in the hearts of anyone?) and posed enough of a challenge to keep that part of me sated. However, the cutesy, almost bumbling, aura given off of this game was displeasing. Yes, DK games are meant to be silly and cartoon-like, but this one almost pushed the limits. I am not sure if it was because of the changing graphics of games (by this point, both the N64 and the PS1 had launched) but something about the game was no longer crisp. Crisp is the best word I can use to describe how I feel about it.

DKC3: 6/10. Challenging, but that didn't make up for the fail. Banana birds? Come on....

Thus concludes my DKC discussion.

***puppeteered: analogy that something controls your life so much, it is as if the thing has its imaginary (usually) hand up your ass and is keeping tabs on your every move.

New Additions Bring New Addictions

2010-02-04T09:41:00.001-08:00

Since my last post was a long time ago, I feel an update is necessary. No, I did not fall off the face of the planet, I've just been caught up in that whirlwind of life. Lucky for me, that whirlwind contains many new video games, which I feel compelled to discuss.

First of all, I want to talk about Dragon Age: Origins. Although I have not yet finished this one, I've definitely done a lot with it. The game contains a LOT of content, including a lot of nooks, crannies, and suspiciously empty rooms that fill with enemies in a split second.

I began this adventure with a mage, as is my custom, and I was kind of put off at first. The battle system seemed awkward compared to what I was used to with the other games I have played, and it seemed too fast-paced to even survive. This was before I discovered the spacebar "pause" option. Pausing the battle to make tactical decisions was a good idea for this particular game, just because it can be overwhelming with the amount of enemies and traps you are forced to contend with.

As far as looks, the game isn't too bad. Bioware, makers of other games such as KOTOR and Mass Effect, kind of rushed the gun and yes, it has glitches, but overall it's decent. Plus, the hideous amount of things to do and decisions to make makes up for what it may lack.

I'm still running through Hurlocks and spiders, so this will have to be continued...

On to the biggie 2010 Game of the Year contender: Mass Effect 2. I'm going to be completely honest here and say right out I didn't play far into the first one--in fact, I found it to be unsatisfying for all of the crap you had to put up with. However, I decided to give ME2 a chance, and lo, I was kind of addicted.

Kind of might not be the best way to put it...I /was/ addicted, and I sat on my arse for a few days, playing through everything.

Now, I'm going to try and make this as spoiler free as possible, but even though I didn't play the first title, I was engaged and able to understand what was going on throughout. This second installments gives players the option to import the character they beat the first game with, and continue with the decisions they made, carrying into the second. Luckily, you CAN change appearance of characters from game one, which is probably a good idea, since the character creator has undergone some positive changes (although Male Shepard still resembles Vin Diesel no matter how hard you try).

One thing I will say is this game is epic, and perhaps more discussion can be had on the topic in a month, when most people will have beaten it.

The last game I want to talk about here today is Fallout 3. Now, I realize the game has been out for a while, but I am apparently behind the times. I actually didn't know what Fallout was until a few months ago--well, I'd heard of it but I kind of assumed it was like Call of Duty or Splinter Cell, and that it wouldn't hold my interest at all.

So.Not.True.

After a few people gushed and seemed shocked that I hadn't played it, I decided to give it a whirl. The fact that it was described to me as Oblivion with Guns made me interested...and yes, it IS Oblivion with Guns. Big guns.

For all of the glitches and horrors Bethesda crams into their games, and even though I spent hours puzzling over the random shutdowns and "fallout 3 has stopped working" popups, I was determined to fix the problem. Eventually, with the help of google and human ingenuity, this was possible. I was now able to commence playing without wondering if the History Museum would freeze my system. Damn you, history. Damn you <3.

This game really hit a home run with me. I love the cold war propaganda mixed in with the post apocalyptic environment, and the crazy feral ghouls. This game is HUGE and there is SO MUCH TO DO. Unfortunately, like Oblivion, it's way glitchy, and even doing everything right could cause something in the main storyline to just stop working. Despite that little tidbit, the game is quite enjoyable.

The realistic environments and the strange quests kept me riveted (I haven't beaten this game yet, either) and I spent many evenings glued to my monitor, blasting through mutants with more rounds of ammo than should ever exist in a post apocalyptic wasteland.

These were only intros to some of the games I've been exploring while on blog hiatus, and as soon as I get more sleep, I'm going to add more!

Castlevania64 and Crunchy Pits of Death

2009-08-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Castlevania64 is by no means the best Castlevania around. It may, in fact, be very close to the bottom of the ladder. However, I have a history with the game, so I would like to explain a little more about the things that pissed me off about it.

Ten years ago, the N64 was one of the most important things to my cousins, my friends, and me. We spent many days playing various games on this system, which is probably how we managed to escape Hurley unscathed.

My friend Heather and I decided that Castlevania64 looked interesting one day at Family Video, so we rented it. Choosing the character of Carrie, we set off into the forest to begin the adventure. I am pretty sure we chose Carrie over Reinhardt because she had ranged magic attack and it was easier to pwn baddies from far away. She was also a lot quicker than the Belmont heir, so that was a plus for running away from armies of skeletons (sans Bruce Campbell).

There was a theme with my friends and me, and that was if a game had difficulty settings, we would almost always choose Easy the first time around, just to get a feel for it. So, with Castlevania we did just that.

This game was a pain in the ass. Either you jumped too far or not far enough, and bazillions of skeletons would pop out of the ground and attempt to eat you. Yes, it was awesome to be in this 3-D world, but also incredibly annoying.

Remember how we picked Easy mode? Yeah, it's a big disappointment. Things were going well when suddenly you get to a boss: Carrie's slightly deranged and totally dead cousin. Well, she was easy to kill with the super magic ball attack, but the downfall came post battle.

Congratulations! You've beaten Castlevania on Easy mode! Now try Normal mode for the full game!

....Well hell. We just spent a few hours of our time fending off motorcycle-riding skeletons with flaming heads only to be called out on our easy choice. Fine. We restarted the game on normal mode and went through the crunchy pits of death once more.

The part in this game that pissed me off the most wasn't the obnoxiously fast vampires or the knights that came out of stained glass windows (more on that discovery later) but it was the part in the game where you need to bring the nitro across the entire castle. Since nitro is highly explosive, you are unable to jump or run. Well, that's really fun and effective when you must make your way back through an entire castle filled with bad guys and excessive traps.

Anyone who doesn't have patience for such things needn't bother playing Castlevania64 on anything but easy mode.

The stained glass knights were an interesting development. I walked into a hallway and was assaulted by an assailant I couldn't see. Then, I screamed bloody murder because I discovered that the cause of my diminishing life bar was a set of knights who matched the background perfectly.

This was the one and only time my mother ever questioned me while I was gaming. She yelled up the stairs to my friend and me: "Did someone die?" She was serious.

No mom, I just got a little scared by a few polygonal stained glass window knights.

In the game, there is also a part where you're being chased by a huge guy with a chainsaw and some horribly mean dogs. If you panic easily, I'd avoid that one as well.

Castlevania gets a 4/10 because it is an evil game that is mostly frustration.

Why Ultimecia is a pain in the ass

2009-08-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

Ultimecia, the end boss for FFVIII, is a pain in the ass for a few reasons, the most important one being that she has about six forms for you to slaughter. Not only is that a problem, but she levels up with you; for example, in my crazy gamer scramblings, I decided to level all of my characters in FFVIII to 100 (or close) in the hope that I could just one-shot the final boss.

Ultimecia's castle of crunchy death pits looms on my screen, and I enter the battlefield pretty confident that I can Angelo Cannon my way to victory within minutes.

Hmm. How very wrong and assy of me to think this, I discover, as Ultimecia randomly selects three of my party members to annihilate first. A few minutes in, I am wondering why my beefcaked characters are hardly doing damage to the slutty pixel witch---wait...I bet she levels up with you.

Well, now that more disappointment has set in, one of my characters dies. It's probably Zell, so I continue trying to use my uber fast summons to pwn some sorceress.

Uh oh!

What the hell? Zell has been dead for about two rounds and I am about to phoenix down him when a cherub swoops onto my screen and takes his corpse away. In his place is someone else, probably Irvine, who is another useless character.

They took ZELL? Oh come on, he wasn't so useless that I wanted him gone forever. Sadly, Square made it so that if you don't tend to your dead almost immediately, they are taken away for good, and your numbers dwindle.

So, let's recap.

Ultimecia randomly chooses characters to start off with, she levels up as you do, she has too many forms, and once a character has died for more than thirty seconds, you lose them forever.

But wait--guardian forces (summons) are your most powerful tools besides Invincible Moon and Squall's gunblade techniques. What else could they do to make this a bitch of a fight? That's right, make it so that all forms past two poof kill guardian forces the second you call them.

Eventually, I killed her. It took over an hour, I think, and a lot of crazy decisions.

Final Fantasy XIV: A preliminary review

2009-08-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

(http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/)

I was still playing FFXI Online when FFXIV was discussed at E3. In fact, I was standing in Whitegate at the time, because I remember about thirty people all started shouting about FFXIV and how amazing it is going to be.

Immediately my spirits dropped. This new MMO would most certainly replace XI for almost everyone on Midgard, and it was then that I realized FFXI wasn't as fun anymore. All people could talk about was FFXIV and how awesome the graphics were.

To me, graphics are most certainly not everything. Some of my favorite games have horrible graphics, but their stories are way better than some of the fancy stuff you see around today. Sure, FFXI was really in need of some revamping, but for me it wasn't the look of the game but how it brought people together. How many times did my mithra glitch out in Jeuno or meld into a Galka? Too many times to remember, but it didn't make the game any less enjoyable.

Now, upon hearing about this new FF, I was immediately turned off by the idea. Why? It isn't going to be out until 2010 sometime, and I have hopes that I'll be on track in life by that time. For me, FFXI started as a coping mechanism for a sick breakup; it served it's purpose well, and I didn't need it anymore. I am hoping that by the time FFXIV comes out, I won't need it.

It wasn't until a friend of mine linked me to the new character concept art and names that I finally took a look at this enhanced version of XI.

Way to go SE, you made the graphics pretty and used the SAME races as FFXI, but with new and harder to pronounce names. So far, I am not impressed. Everyone is drawn to the new look at fresh feel of this game, but it's really FFXI with a shiny coat of paint and sparkles (to me, that is).

Friends from FFXI continue to ask me if I will try this new one, and I always tell them no. I already know I do not want to invest as much time as I did in FFXI to level a character all the way up and waste more money on it. I have quit the FF online community for good, I think. Most of my FFXI time was spent having decent conversations with people and playing casually. For me, it was never about the graphics or the style.

So far, I am unimpressed with SE's new toy. I think a lot of people will hop onto the bandwagon because it's pretty, but, until I get more information that will sway me, I'm still saying no to FFXIV.

Bad graphics and Mexican pizza.

2009-08-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

I have recently picked up Silent Hill for the PlayStation again. I remember sitting around a small TV with my friend, getting some super chills and thrills from this game, because, well, the creepy undead alien babies are trying to eat your flesh and you're running through a creepy and foggy town.
That was then. After picking up the game again after a ten-year hiatus, I must say that the fear factor has greatly diminished (and I am a scaredy cat) because I managed to get only as far as my giggles would take me. This game is really quite horrible, not only because it has the super nasty square people graphics, but the environment that once made me wrap up in a blanket and try to hide just frustrated me because the map was hardly legible.
You begin the game as Harry Mason, confused and stuck in a foggy nightmare town. Upon playing for the second time, I am grateful for the fog because it hides the rest of the town which, I am guessing, would be horribly misshapen and perhaps the worst part of the game. As if the fact that Mr. Mason looks like a child's crayon drawing isn't bad enough, moving him around is even harder. You've got to jam the joystick in an erratic pattern to get him to move in a circle, and this takes about ten seconds per ninety degree pivot, which, when you are being dive-bombed by two or three large bird creatures, usually results in death.
This is especially true if you run out of bullets, of which they give you fifteen. After that, you're stuck with a kitchen knife which you can wave around like a torch. HULK SMASH BABY ALIENS! *poof* Dead, because while you're trying to aim a small kitchen knife at one enemy, four more are behind you, and in Silent Hill time, it would take you an hour to effectively dispose of all of them.
My point here is that the fear that this game once struck into my heart has long since passed, only to be replaced with disappointment and tears. This is a game that I will gladly return to its case and bury. Perhaps someday some kids will stumble upon it and, just like Jumanji, get taken on a horrible adventure, only to find out that this one wasn't a nightmare...

I suppose you're wondering where Mexican pizza falls into this story. Well, it has nothing to do with Silent Hill, but it's a side story involving the release of FFX. Yes, my friend Heather and I picked up FFX the day it came out and proceeded to stay awake for another thirteen-ish hours playing as far into it as we could. The only reasons we stopped were: A.) Her stepdad was going to be getting up for work soon, and we didn't want him to know we had stayed up all night, and B.) the Mexican pizza caused lethargy to set in, from being mixed with uber hours of gaming.
Mexican pizza itself sounds pretty gross, right? Well, right. It was the only pizza they had in the house, and, since I used to live out in the boonies with no hope of pizza delivery, that was the option.
Partially through our FFgasm, hunger set in. What else will gamers eat but pizza and lots of caffeiene. I think at this point we were so hyped up on caffeiene, the fact that the pizza in question was a combination of taco meat and cheap spices didn't faze us.
Well, between the two of us, the pizza disappeared rather quickly. It wasn't until about an hour later the realization of what we had actually eaten had set in. I would just like to say that cheap Mexican pizza is not the friend of anyone who wants to keep their innards intact.

The suck of FFX-2

2009-07-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

This gaiden game to FFX was released to supplement the hungers of nerds all around, who were super curious as to where Tidus fell to at the end of FFX (oh, right. Spoiler). Tidus disappeared and Yuna cried, yada yada.
Don't get me wrong, FFX is one of the best FF games in my own opinion, but the vomit that Square-Enix produced as a follow-up wasn't necessary. Yes, I did buy it, and yes, I did beat it, but that doesn't make it any less awful.
First of all, the game boasted its all female lead cast, with whiny Yuna and supersexed Rikku from the original, along with the new, darker balance, Paine, who looked like she really did bring the pain---in German, lesbian shizer-films. This female lead character cast was supposed to be SE's idea of feminism, and it failed miserably. What's the point of strong female leads if they're fairly useless? Come on, take a feather out of Eidos's book and make them hot and badass, like Lara Croft. Yuna with her guns (lol) named Tiny Bees is less intimidating and more fanboygasm.
Once you get past the characters, the game itself is a trainwreck. Your progress is based on percentages, which is fine, it's worked before, but the gameplay is horrifying. It's like the developers had an idea for a shit-storm one morning over a bowl of cereal and decided to waste lots of money on it.
You actually get graded on how well you can dance. Dance. Half of the game is the pseudo-Nazi Brother hitting on his half-cousin Yuna in broken English, and it's implied that he jizzes in his pants whenever she's around. Way to go, SE, you've turned FF into a back-alley blowjob.
As Yuna, you've set off with Team Titties to find spheres that may give you clues as to where Tidus went to, since she saw one that was apparently him struggling in a cage.
I did enjoy how you could play different jobs, but the spherechange idea was pretty weak. If you wanted to go from Samurai to White Mage, unless you had it coordinated perfectly (amongst one of about fifty pointless spheregrids), you had to wait about four turns, which usually ended up in your own annilation.
This game lacked substance and any sense of adventure, really. Even the FFVII spin-offs worked better than this, so, I ask you, SE, please, don't ever make another side-story as crappy as this.

Ode to stupid video game moments...

2009-07-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

I am sure anyone who has ever played a video game has done something completely stupid while playing. Perhaps it was an epic death where the character just kind of zoomed off a ledge, or planting a bomb too close to home, we've all done it. I want to sit here tonight and discuss some of the finer moments of video game stupidity that I (and my friends) have done.

The one that really stands out for me is an episode involving Squaresoft's Final Fantasy VIII. My friend Heather and I had been plowing through the game since beating XATM092 **no, I didn't have to look that up, I remembered it...** and we were super excited to find out more about the story.
There comes a point where you must navigate the far northern part of the continent and look for Trabia Garden, where the character Selphie had transferred from. Now, finding a pretty big landmark on a barren, white map seems as if it would be quite easy, right? Well, that would be wrong, at least in our case.
We spent about an hour zooming above the map, trying to find this alleged place, only to have to pause the game to run into town. Topic of discussion for the ride was this garden and whether or not the game was playing US.
Upon returning to my house, we unpaused the game and I turned around.
I suppose you can guess what I saw there, right? Trabia Garden, in all of its f*ckbombed glory.

~~

Donkey Kong Country is the game that got me started in the gaming world when I was eight. My cousins had the SNES and I got one for Christmas; it was the DKC SNES PACK! I think I still have the box, actually. It has palm trees on it, AWESOME. Well, SNES video games (for you crazies who have played them) are actually pretty hard in comparison to some of the fluff kids have today. DKC is no exception.
I guess what I am trying to say is, in the fifteen years since I've been playing games, I would say about 45% of the deaths accumulated under my name have been due to completely ridiculous deaths in DKC. In case you're wondering, 50% are the hundreds of deaths I racked up in FFXI online in a year. The remaining 5% is...everything else.
I think one of the funniest deaths you can have in DKC is running while on one of the pets. You're cruising a hell of a lot faster than you would be on ape or monkey feet, the air is cool, the enemies are bowing beneath you....then...

~BAM~

Since you got caught up in the moment, you ran right off a cliff. Good job, asshole.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Echo Night is a rather silly game for the PS1. You are on a haunted ship, and the main point, beyond getting items and solving puzzles, is to keep the lights on; if they lights aren't on, chances are you will be nosh noshed to death by some ghostly crew member.
Well, Heather and I used to have this system when it came to scary games, because I proudly admit to being a pansy. I would do the running around and puzzle-solving, but when the nasties came out, I'd throw the controller at Heather so she could finish the job. It was a good system, to me.
Anyway, I was putzing around in Echo Night, ready to hit the kitchen area. Naturally, when I went in said kitchen, the lights were not on. First clue. I started towards the other side of the room to look for a light switch, but halfway through there was a rumbling and probably a woot woot; me, being the panicker I am, didn't throw the controller, but paused it.
Let me make a side note here. Most games, when you pause them, come up with an opaque menu screen. Echo Night does not.
Well, I paused right on the mangled and dead face of some sort of king person. Ps1 graphics are not generally scary, but this was enough to make me a sadkaty. Not only did I pause on him, but he had glowing red eyes and was about to--you guessed it-- nosh nosh my face.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of my more recent moments came in FFXI while I was helping a friend do a quest. First of all, this quest is in Xarcabard, a barren wasteland. Second, I was on my paladin just putzing around til we got to the place, and was decked out in opaline wear with sword and shield.
I got to the first cave where we fight one of three notorious monsters; without realizing it, I had meandered my way right into the monster. Suddenly, my paladin was getting hit and I was still dressed like a two-cent whore with a sword and shield.
Turns out, even a level 75 character can sight aggro these NMs.
Luckily, our dragoon friend showed up when my paladin had almost exhausted all of her defense.
Word of caution: don't putz around in caves.

~~~~~~~~~~~

This next moment comes from Final Fantasy IX. There is a point in the game where you must split up your entire character list into two parties and take one group to an evil castle in bum-fuck nowhere. Well, if you're like me, you generally use certain characters more than others, so you have four pimped-out people and the rest are so-so, basically used in emergencies ONRY.
I figured that I would send most of my magic users away, maybe give them one melee. I didn't use much magic in FFIX unless I needed to. Princess Garnet was a waste of space, Eiko was the only one I really used, though I am not ripping on Vivi; he just didn't have the capacity to do the damage I wanted.
So, I sent my mageries and a melee out to this desert palace, thinking that the more brutal stuff would be coming back home.
There are times when you just want to kick yourself, especially when the desert palace you sent your mages to has a magic ban.
You know, you can't use magic. If you've ever tried to melee with a mage, it doesn't really have much of an effect....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fin. (for now...)

Homage to the Nintendo64

2009-07-21T07:36:00.000-07:00

The Nintendo64 was a gaming system that really did bring games to a different level, leaving behind the sad attempts at 3-D that had come before; the Sony PlayStation, however, may have pushed the excellence of the 64 back, with the use of disc-based games instead of the rather clunky cartridges that the 64 was boasting.
I did indeed own both the PS1 and the N64, but after all of these years, if I want some nostalgia in the gaming department, I pick up my frosty purple controller and proceed to wander in the realms of oddly-shaped characters on my trusty, dusty N64.
I remember coming home every afternoon in 5th and 6th grade and turning on the 64, playing it for about three hours a day with my cousin. It didn't take long before we became Diddy Kong Racing PROS. We'd sit there with our PB&J's, staring at the TV and trying to get every stinking thing in that game.
Oddly, the graphics weren't too terrible on DKR. I still play it to this day, and it brings me the same joy it used to. I can always tell when I haven't played for a while, because I don't lap the CPU chars a few times.../cough
Talking about bad graphics, but excellent games, let's take a step over to Goldeneye. I enjoy a good game, really, I do, and if it's that good, the graphics won't have much impact on me....still, there's something to be said about Goldeneye, because they tried to make it too real-looking without realizing that the 64-bit system didn't have the capacity to actually make humans look like humans, instead turning Bond and all of those famous characters into mushy-faced pointy and unfortunate polygons.
This game is still amazing though. Shadowgate64 /shudder/ made the same mistake in trying to make people look real. Seeress, you looked like a melted, overgrown red...beast. That aside, being a halfling is probably the most boring lead ever. Then the ending....don't get me started.
Moving on to my prized possession: Ocarina of Time.
This little beauty really make me appreciate the 64 and exercised caution when presenting characters. Yes, they were pointy polygonal freaks, but the story was incredibly engaging. I remember the summer of 1998, when my cousins and I hooked up the N64 and a tiny TV in our grandma's garage. Every day, we'd gather at grandma's house and the four of us would sit around the little TV and play some Zelda. That was one of the happiest times in my life, I think. The mystery and adventure of the game and hanging out with the people I loved. :)
Enough about games for now; the joystick on the N64 controller was something to be hated. In my own personal experience, I have gone through quite a few controllers, either from the wild antics of Mario Party or just the mad rage to push my characters faster than they'd ever be able to go. Now, I don't know how many of you reading this have ever busted the joystick on those, but it's pretty funny. It just kind of sits there, lifeless, and when you turn a game on, the cursors are going mad. For me, it's been only the crystal purple controllers I've broken, because those are my babies, but, I have been known to break controllers that my friends had, in almost every color of the rainbow...
The flimsy joystick is my only complaint from the 64 controller. I really liked the layout, and it was comfortable in the hands. The Z-trigger is one of my favorite video game buttons, cause it felt like you were unleashing a sickening amount of lasers on your opponent, regardless of the game you were using it in.
This is the first section of homage to the N64.

Fin.

The trouble with being nerdy...(Convention Edition)

2009-07-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

I've crossed over to the other side of the line; I've toed the boundary between being a nerd and being geeky beyond repair. Currently, I am way beyond any real hope of being fixed--which is completely okay. If there's one thing that is completely ridiculous, it's nerds who feel they need to hide their true form.
Anime conventions (or really any convention) are well beyond the "I am a nerd' stage. In fact, they're practically the guts stuck deep inside the circle of geek. I have gone to these, but, not only gone and meandered...no, I cosplayed. Not once, not twice, but four times. I have cosplayed at all four anime conventions I have attended since 2004, and, if you'd ever been to one dressed in regular clothes, you'd understand.
The convention is a silly place, really. Generally a three day weekened where nerds from all over come to marinate in each other's nerdiness (which has, not surprisingly, led to convention staff enforcing the rule that everyone must shower regularily, and people who stink must be reported and will then be kicked out of the con...) and enjoy a few days where it is acceptible to wear capes and gaudy clothing.
My first anime convention experience came in 2004, when I went to Anime Reactor in its first year down in Chicago. AR has, since, been shut down due to the fact that no hotels will deal with their shit and wild parties. Hm.
Reactor was amusing. I managed to hang out with the loudest group of drunk people around in an elevator, and got hit on by them! For my first con experience, I cosplayed as Princess Zelda, a costume I had made in about two nights with whatever I had at my disposal. It turned out shockingly well, but I still look completely lame with long blonde hair. My friend wore the Summoner Yuna costume I had made out of boredom, and it worked pretty well. I'm still impressed with my ability to whip up costumes on the high end of mediocre in short amounts of time.
That somewhat dismal experience left me wanting more, naturally, so this little con called ACen was approaching in 2005...ACen (Anime Central) is the largest convention in the Midwest, and I had the chance to hitch a ride with a girl I knew vaguely and a few of her friends. Well, I had anime in common with them, but that was it. The seven hour car ride there was fairly uncomfortable, and left me with a lot of time to rock out to music or read (though reading in the car usually makes me sick).
The convention itself was amazing, but there were way too many people there. We waited in line for nearly four hours to get badges, four hours of listening to unshowered Lupin the Third fans singing songs that never end and making jokes that I neither cared about nor wanted to hear. Luckily, a group of my friends from the Chi city were there when I finally got out of the blasted line to greet me, and my con experience #2 was well under way.
This convention left me with even less time to prepare a costume, seeing as finals were happening and I preferred to focus on those. I ended up just wearing a hastily put-together Battle Royale student uniform, which looked absolutely appalling with my then-blonde hair. Still, I had a lot of fun, despite the sardine-packed nerd bodies around me.
Then I hit a lull. For about three years (when I was at UMD) I didn't attend any conventions, although Anime Detour in the cities usually landed on or around my birthday every year, there was always an excuse for why I couldn't attend.
Then, my name was dropped in conversation as being someone who is geeky enough to want to use the extra ticket that Andrea had gotten for her ex. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity. This convention was called KakkoiCon, and it was a brand-new one, in its first year. Better yet, it was geared more towards female nerds! That alone should've put me off to the experience.
The night before the con, I stayed at Andrea's house with the her and the guys. I, Katy, put myself in a situation with people I didn't know very well and went to the cities with these people; I am very glad I now have them as friends.
KakkoiCon was poorly put-together from the start. Yes, it was in its first year and all, but there were so many design flaws, I felt like I was just a dork standing in a hotel with a slew of other dorks. Then there was the horrible idea to make it a convention directed more towards the female nerds. In all seriousness, female nerds are practically the same as male nerds, but with boobs and no penis. Just because a girl is a geek doesn't mean she's a completely different breed than the guys who attend cons.
Well, for this convention, my friends dressed up in FF1 apparel, and I had to break the tradition by being a red mage from FFXI, with the artifact armor. It turned out DAMN well, thanks, but people somehow didn't understand what I was, since the BLATANTLY OBVIOUS WHITE FEATHER was sticking out of my red pimp hat.
Now onto the juicy bits of Kakkoi. This convention was run by a woman who pretends she is Japanese and calls herself Samantha Rei. This woman is NOT Japanese, and she is a hypocritical flake. My main problem with her is that she managed to slight me by denying me access to her super special tea party.
Apparently, S.Rei's tea party was to be attended by persons who were dressed up in Gothic Lolita attire...well, seeing as I was a latecomer to the tickets, I wasn't informed of this, and Miss Rei herself managed to embarass me and kick me out of her elitist party because I was dressed like a slutty pimp mage.
Fine. I heard it was pretty boring anyway. The real kicker: some whining boy came by and wanted to be let in, and S.Rei bowed down to this boy's mother's pleas. THAT is what makes me mad--and I was sure to state that clearly in the KakkoiCon forum complaint thread. Best part? S.Rei personally apologized to me. Hah.
Kakkoi was kind of a flop, but the company I kept was good.
Next up was my latest con experience: Anime Detour. Finally, I got to go to AD! My FF1 group and I (this time dressed as white mage) went and rocked it hardcore. I think AD was actually my favorite convention thus far, because we were photographed a lot, praised on the costumes (many of which I helped with!) and I felt as if I had done something right.
This about wraps up my convention experience, at least for now.

A farewell to Final Fantasy XI

2009-07-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

I began playing Final Fantasy XI Online in March of 2008. After years of pleading, my friend finally had the ultimate reason to get me into yet another game that would pull me away from reality. I had never really played an MMO before, my only real experience in the online fantasy world was java-based RPG chats from my awkward teen years.
Installation took much longer than I anticipated, and I eventually fell asleep. I'd mostly decided to play to A: keep said friend at bay, and B: because the first month of play was free. A few hours later, I logged into the world of Vana'diel for the first time.
I chose to play a Mithra character, which are mostly played by unfortunate gamer guys who like to watch female rears on their screens; that is, however, besides the point. Upon logging in, I was introduced to a world where I could interact with people...without really having to put forth much effort. When you're as socially awkward as I am, being immersed in a virtual world with people just as awkward as you is almost soothing.
I began to play. I played, and played. I logged sick hours on that game within the first month. Sadly, I had become hooked.
Throughout my months, I met many new and interesting people in this virtual world, and it brought me closer to a lot of cultures and gave me experiences I never would've had. I met one of my best guy friends, Jon, on FF, and we even got to hang out for a week! Sure, my interest waxed and waned, as it usually does with almost anything; that is to be expected, however, when one of your main side acts is playing an MMO. FFXI had gotten me through some times that would've been incredibly shitty if I hadn't had something to keep my mind off of the rotten hole I was stuck in.
In the past few months my attention has been drifting even further. I still enjoy the conversation and amusement I get from everyone in MLP, but my kitty char has been standing in one spot for almost a month, with my only online to make a funny comment or two. I figured now, since I am also rather low on funds, I should maybe take a break.
Perhaps it will be my last time playing, perhaps not. My interest in actually playing may return sometime, and if that is the case (and my monetary situation improves) I will reactivate Zbag and return to the world of slash-n-burn pixel monsters while doing jigs. Many of my friends were saddened to see me go, and some of the assholes wanted all my gil (NO). I've managed to get emails and facebooks of anyone who wanted to keep in touch, so in that way I can still socialize with all of the amazing people I've met.
By the way, if anyone is having a hard time beating Maat (that decrepid old manslut...) I suggest bolting in with Smack My Bitch Up playing and just go slice his geriatric ass.
Paladin Kitty, over.