So, I just unsubscribed from Final Fantasy XI. Not because I didn't like it, or anything; on the contrary, I think it's a great game, and there exists the possibility that I will play it again at some point in the nebulous future. It's just that...(sorry, distracted by the West Wing. Such a great show)...I'm busy doing something else and I don't feel like paying for something I'm not currently using. This is the main problem, for me, with More-Pigs: I get bored. I get distracted. As many of my friends will tell you(one, in particular, has first-hand experience; the rest just have my word and his), I tend to play a game for a little while, and then one of two things happens: Either I get distracted by a new game, or I forget to save for a few hours and die and get discouraged. In either case, I don't pick up the game again for several months, minimum, which is why I have, and I'm not exaggerating here, 10 times more games that I haven't finished than that I have, and, being very stupid, that ratio will probably not change. So you can see where I shouldn't pay 14 bucks a month for a game that I'm not even playing.
If you aren't currently absorbed in a More-Pig or a Moff-Piss or, god forbid, the Sims, I would recommend Final Fantasy XI. It's heaps of fun, and for the most part people are not complete fucking wastes(can you tell that I for the most part don't have much of a good opinion of other people, especially on the internet?).
You know what, fuck it. I was interested in writing this when I started, but I'm too distracted. Maybe I'll write more later.
Ah, what shall I review today? I mean, I have stuff I want to talk about that is not necessarily to do with video games, but this is, after all, a collection of video game reviews. And it's not like I don't have about 200 more games that I could talk about that I haven't already. But I don't have anything ready. Well, I'll just talk about the other stuff and then tack some video games in when it seems least appropriate. Or maybe I'll try to put the two together somehow.
Have you ever found out something about a friend that made you stop and evaluate your relationship with that person? Specifically something involving two friends that you were unaware of but that had been going on quite some time? I did, just a bit ago, and after I thought about it a second, it really pissed me off. No, not what I had learned; my reaction to it. I mean, it's stupid. I haven't known all this time, and I haven't cared, and it's not something that actually affects me personally one way or the other, so why should it be more than a blip on my radar, stored for future reference but mostly forgotten as being not particularly any of my business? But, you know, it does bug me. Mostly, I think, because I am, and have always been very jealous of my friends. I don't like it when they have other friends, unless I'm also friends with their other friends, and even then, I usually feel like they like each other better than they like me, and this hurts and pisses me off, which is stupid. I mean, so what if they do like each other better than they like me? So what if I like them better than they like me? Who gives a shit? Friends are friends, relationships are relationships, and as long as there's no romantic involvement(and since the vast majority of my friends are male, you're damn right there's no romantic involvement, at least on my part), then it doesn't matter if one side is more into it than the other side. It pisses me off that I am this way, that I get jealous of my friends having other friends. I think this is mostly a holdover from when I was young, and the only person who shared any interests with me that I knew was my older brother, who of course did not care to hang around his kid brother very much, so I was alone a lot. Or when I did have a friend, then I had exactly that, *a* friend, and so if they were doing something with another friend that didn't involve me, then, again, I was alone. (Except, of course, that you're almost never alone in a household with 7 people in it. Believe me, I went to great lengths to achieve that status sometimes, because being with people you have to be with is nothing at all like being with people you want to be with.) I don't know if I made my point or not. If I made any point. Ah, well. Too lazy to scroll back. Onward!
This is basically exactly the opposite of the way I feel toward video games. When I like a game, I want everybody to like it. I want everybody to be able to speak enthusiastically about how much they enjoy it, and what their favorite part is, and it doesn't bother me when someone else likes it more than I do, or when they're better at playing it than I am. Watching someone play a game can be really entertaining, if they know what they're doing. Like, for instance, SSX Tricky. Mostly when I watch people play video games, I'm annoyed that I am not playing, because I am selfish. Just in case you hadn't figured this out already. But some games, you watch other people play them, and they're so good, and so obviously enjoying themselves, that you just can't help but be swept along. Like one of my friends and SSX Tricky. It's great to watch him; it's just impressive. When you can routinely get a "? ? ? ?" trick off, that's what I call skill.
So, this has been an extremely strange review, all full of personal shit, and very little video game shit. But I did warn you, originally, that it might be this way. I think I'm off reading other people's blogs for a while, though. Because my shit is depressing enough. I'm not one of those people who are comforted by knowing there are other people out there who have shit going on in their lives; it makes me feel worse, because it increases my sense of helplessness, because I can't even do anything about my shit, so what could I possibly do for them?
Darkened Skye is probably the best marketing tie-in game I've ever seen. I mean, from the box cover, it's pretty difficult to tell that it even is a marketing tie-in. Darkened Skye is a game about Skittles, see. Yeah, the little fruit-flavored candy, "Taste the Rainbow," that stuff. If you can get past the fact that you're using Skittles to cast magic spells, though, it's actually not that bad a game. I mean, it's not that good a game, either, but it's not that bad. For one thing, the main character, Skye, is a sarcastic, witty little thing with great voice acting supplied by someone whose name I can't be bothered to look up right now. Really good, though. Plus there's...um...well...okay, that's really the only good thing about the game. The rest is pretty mediocre third-person action-adventure fare. But with Skittles. I'm waiting for the sequel, featuring Tropical Skittles. With the bad guys using Sour Skittles, or something.
So, I mentioned before that I play a lot of RPGs. Mostly I play console RPGs, 'cause there's a lot less bullshit to put up with, and the combat is usually of the "two groups on opposite sides of the screen hitting each other on the head 'til one group falls down" variety, rather than the more frenetic up-close-and-personal kind you get in most computer RPGs. And for some reason, American game producers seem to have trouble making good console RPGs. I don't know why this should be, but the Japanese have them beat cold. More and more, recently, games are including full voice, and RPGs, where story is usually paramount, are the best examples of this. FMV sequences are getting more and more elaborate, and there's usually a good chunk of talking going on. Which is why it pisses me off that when these games get imported from Japan, the usually very good voice acting from the Japanese cast is stripped out and replaced with what can be barely called acting performed by the guy who was standing next to the water cooler with nothing better to do and some chick who wandered into the studio by mistake. Even when they get "name" actors to do voices, like Haley Joel Osment in Kingdom Hearts, they usually do a crappy job. Why, why, why don't more game publishers either do like Atlus does and provide bilingual voice, or, if your claim is that there's not enough space on the disk to have both*cough*bullshit*cough*, release a dubbed version and a subbed version? There's a market for it. I, and pretty much everyone else I know who plays Japanese CRPGs, would gladly shell out a few extra bucks(if necessary) to get a game with the Japanese voices intact. This especially makes no sense in the case of, say, Final Fantasy X and X-2, and Xenosaga, all of which have subtitles *anyway*. So it's not like it's some extra expense for them to go and put in subtitles. I mean, in Xenosaga, the FMV sequences are up to 45 minutes long and have three places to save in the middle of them. Me, personally, I love that. That just makes me happy. What doesn't make me happy is having to listen to Wendee Lee the whole time, because she's awful. Her voice is terrible, she's got no acting ability, and she's apparently tone deaf, because she speaks in a monotone. And no, she's not playing KOS-MOS, who's supposed to sound wooden and unnatural; she's playing Shion, who gets most of the dialogue. You know, some people say that it doesn't matter how good a voice actor someone is if they're speaking a language you don't understand, but that's just not true. Emotions come through, no matter what language you're speaking. Delivery is everything, and timing is everything else. The major problem is that when you're making an animated project, you can take the time to make sure that the sound track matches up with the amount of time the onscreen characters are seen to be speaking; you can re-draw the animation if necessary to extend or shorten it, if need be. But when you're translating something, well, each character has their length of screen time, and that's it, and you have to cram their dialogue into that. So usually the actors will have to deliver their lines very quickly, to be able to get the same idea across in the same amount of time in the different language. And sometimes there's the opposite problem, there'll be a 5-word idiom in English that perfectly sums up a three-sentence concept in Japanese, and you have to add extra dialogue to fill the time. But really, I just wish they'd release more games with the original voice track left in. The voices in Final Fantasy X were *so* good(you know, I know that there are options for italics, underlining and bolding at the top of my little edit window, but I'm so used to using asterisks for emphasis...) in Japanese(I have several friends who have the import) and *so* bad in English. *So* bad.
I dunno, maybe it's just me. I admit that I do really love the sound of the Japanese language, spoken or sung(as opposed to German, which sounds great when sung, and terrible when spoken), so maybe that colors my opinion of their actors. But voice actors in Japan are big deals. Many of them are huge stars, with singing and regular acting careers, and video games are a big deal, so whereas here if you're an actor or singer or whatever and you do the voice in a videogame and you suck, hardly anyone will even know about it, in Japan if you do a videogame and you suck, it's like having a movie or an album bomb, and could significantly hurt your career.
If you want another for instance, look at games like the Legacy of Kain series. I mean, sure, the dialogue was purple as all get-out, but the acting was great. Pacing, delivery, emotion, all top-notch. Because they hired good actors(like Willem DaFoe. Willem DaFoe should do more voice work. He's a great actor, but man, he is so frickin' ugly. Ugh, I can barely stand to watch movies he's in. And that one where he was having sex with Madonna all the time? *shudder* Still gives me nightmares. Great voice, though. Good actor.), and because the movie sequences were created with the actors on-hand, so they could be tailored to the voices. So it's not like it's just that American game studios are bad at doing voice in games.
I may expound on this subject more at a later date, but right now I have to get ready for work.
Well, someone mentioned it here, and so I figure, what the hell, while I'm thinking about it: Tetris. Now, I don't agree with Brooks that it's worse than Minesweeper, at least for me, because I know that I'm good enough at Tetris that the average game will take me up to half an hour to play, and it is therefore not nearly as time-wasting, because I won't be dumb enough to think that I can get a quick game in before work or sleep or what have you. And I've never been distracted by anything while kissing someone, because I've never kissed anyone, at least not romantically. Yes, I am a total stereotype. Fat, lazy slob, into comics, video games, and f/sf, with a slacker job and no prospects, almost-30-year-old virgin. Been on one date in my entire life, and that was, while not quite an actual disaster, certainly not what one could call successful. Sometimes(okay, most times) I really hate my life and myself. Sigh. Great, now, see what you've done? I'm all depressed and stuff. Which is actually good, because sometimes when I get depressed, it makes me so bored that I actually go out and do something productive. Like, right now I'm going to go get a haircut, which I've needed for weeks.
Oh, but first I should finish talking about Tetris. Tetris has just never really held me in thrall the way it does some people(like my dad). I mean, I played it obsessively when it first came out for the GameBoy, back in, what, '90? '91? But then as soon as I got to the point where it wasn't even a challenge to get the Space Shuttle to lift off, I mostly stopped. I've played it a few times here and there since then, most notably Tetris Plus, which has a sort of a story to it, but generally, it's just a fun little puzzle game that's too easy for me. It's all about pattern recognition, and that's the thing that my mind does best.
Well, today I think I'll talk about a subject near and dear to my heart. ProgressQuest. Well, okay, it's not really all that near or dear. It's funny, though. And I can spend literally hours sitting there watching the progress bars and having nearly as much fun as I do level grinding in any other RPG. More, in fact, because I can leave ProgressQuest to do its own thing and, say, go to sleep, without worrying about dying horribly and having to restore and replay the last however many hours of mind-numbingly dull combat.
See, that's the thing. I really like RPGs, but almost entirely for the story and the visual effects. The combat, which most other people I know seem to regard as the high point, is really just an obstacle in the way of getting to the next story part, and I generally don't find it enjoyable in the slightest, except when you get, like, a new spell or power or whatever, and you get to look at the new effects. 'cause really, now that I think about it, I'm not a real fan of RPGs, I'm a fan of adventure games, and except for a couple of real standouts in the last couple years, adventure games are mostly dead. And RPGs are just the next best thing.
So, anyway, ProgressQuest is a great game, if you take it on its own merits. It doesn't really have any, see. It's just making fun of More-Pigs.
Like now! Thief: The Dark Project is one of the best games *ever*. If you own it already, congratulations on your good taste. If you don't, and you own a computer that can run it, what the hell is wrong with you? Go pick up a copy, it's cheap. If you don't own a computer that can run it, well, what's wrong with you can probably not be explained by medical science, but anyway you should buy one and then buy Thief. You won't regret it. I mean, you might, but that would just prove your lack of character.
Thief is, I think, the only game where I set the difficulty to its highest level and left it there the entire time and didn't bother playing the lower difficulty levels. Normally I play the easy mode if a game has one, because I have too many games to waste my time struggling through one in the name of "challenge". Thief, though, it's totally worth it. Playing on Master Thief mode is just more fun. You can't kill anyone(on some levels you're limited in the number of people you can knock out), for the most part you can't be seen, you have to get pretty much all the available loot, and you have to be really careful what you buy. I also gave myself the added challenges of picking every pocket there was to be picked, picking every lock there was to be picked, and actually getting all the loot there was to be got. It was just...I don't know. It was great. It was a sad day for the computer gaming world(not the magazine) when Looking Glass Studios closed. I remain hopeful for Thief 3, due out Any Day Now.
Don't get used to this sort of output. I probably will drop to more normal like 1 entry every week or something starting, I don't know, tomorrow. But for now, I'll talk about a game I've never even played, and yet have tons of experience with, due to my roommate playing it obsessively for months, to the exclusion of basically all else except work.
PlanetSide. This is a massively-multiplayer online first person shooter, or Moff-Piss. This differs from Counter-Strike in that in Counter-Strike, you generally only had to put up with a maximum of 15 fucktards at a time. PlanetSide throws that limit right out the window, allowing you to interact with potentially thousands of complete fucking wastes of human life at a time. Now, I may be exaggerating here just a bit; there may be one or two decent human being who have been sucked into playing this game, but they'll quickly adapt by becoming worthless pieces of shit, or maybe by quitting. One or the other.
Oh, yeah. In case it isn't clear, I'm not real fond of PvP(the game style, not the comic. Although the comic never really did all that much for me, either). Or, well, people. Especially people on the internet, because of whatsisname's Greater Theory of Internet Fuckwads, as laid out over at Penny Arcade. I mean, I don't really even like multiplayer co-op games. Other players fall into one of several categories: better than me, in which case I hope they get leprosy and their fingers fall off and they can never play games again, regardless of how nice they are, although usually people that are better than you at video games are assholes about it. I know I am. Or they're complete idiots and watching them play is just painful and you wish they'd go away and let someone who knows what the hell they're doing play. Or they're reasonably competent, but they're dickwads. Or they're me, in which case they're entertaining to watch, always polite, and never wrong. Or they own the game, the console, the TV, the couch, and more-or-less the apartment, and they feed you to boot, in which case they're really cool and way too nice for their own good and you hope they don't ever wise up. Although now that I think about it, I fit those last criteria. But I wasn't talking about me. And I don't have a couch.
What the hell was I talking about? What game is this even a review of? Scroll back...Oh yeah, PlanetSide. Anyway. It sucks. And the one gun makes what could just possibly be the second-most annoying sound in the entire world. (The most annoying sound in the world is the power meter outside my bedroom window, which keeps me awake and threatens to drive me insane. If you ever see in the news that I went insane and killed myself destroying a power meter, you'll know why.) FPS's in general are just not fun, although they should be. Like Half-Life. Half-Life was fun. Or, oh, you know what was a really good FPS? Thief. Although the S in Thief's FPS didn't stand for Shooter. I mean, sure, you could shoot your bow and all, but that wasn't the point. But that's a review for another time.
Okay, so Soul Calibur II. If you're into video games and not here just because you're a friend of mine and more supportive of me than I am of you(it's not like I read anyone else's blogs...I'm too busy playing video games. Does it help that I feel bad about it?), then chances are good that you already know all about Soul Calibur II. It only had a huge media blitz and was covered to death by pretty much every gaming site in existence. If you're not into video games, well, good on you, don't start, they'll eat you alive. I have no money, like, ever, and the reason is video games. But anyway, Soul Calibur II is very, very pretty. And really, that's about all I can say in its favor. I mean, the visual effects are cool and all, and watching other people play it is kind of cool, but mostly I'm pretty upset that I bought it. Because, you know, it's really cool, and I feel like I *should* like it, because all my friends really like it. But, really, like all fighting games, I really suck at it, and my inability to improve my skills really frustrates me. I tend to pick up games very quickly, reach a minimal level of skill, and never improve from there. I'm, like, forced to be a dilettante, because I grasp most concepts very quickly and easily, but then have trouble applying them. So, like, I know that <-+G will Guard Interrupt a low attack, and that doing it successfully is very, very useful(for instance, the computer will often use this move to ass-rape me), I have done maybe one successful Guard Interrupt the entire time I've been playing the game.
So, I've been playing Weapon Master mode, which is mostly the point of the game if you're going to be playing it by yourself, since the Arcade Mode is a joke. It's insanely frustrating. I nearly threw my controller through my television screen just before I started this review, because I've been trying the same mission for the last hour. Currently I'm 0/30 on this mission, which involves fighting five opponents in a row with a very short time limit, which is shared through all five fights, unlike most fights, which have their own separate time limits. You get an extra 15 seconds for each win, and you lose if at any time the timer reaches 0, no matter what life totals you and your opponent have. This is, to put it bluntly, fucking impossible. Unless, unlike me, you are capable of learning from experience and getting better at games by playing them a lot.
Anyway. I suppose if you like being horribly frustrated while looking at very pretty pictures, you might think of picking up this game. The Xbox version looks the best, and has Spawn in it, whoop-de-fucking-doo. The PS2 version plays the best, due to the absolutely wonderful controllers Sony provides you with, and has Heihachi in it. Which is stupid. It's a weapons-fighting game. Heihachi has no weapons. Stupid. The GameCube version looks almost as good as the Xbox version, but the controller doesn't really lend itself all that well to fighting games. It does, however, have Link in it, which is why I bought it, being a dorky Legend of Zelda fanboy. I don't use Link for WMM, though. I use Charade. Which, come to think of it, may be why I'm finding the game so hard, since I keep switching styles. Maybe I am getting better, but since my efforts are spread out among a bunch of different weapon styles, it's less noticeable. Hmmm. Nah, more likely I just suck. I'm going to play something else. I'll get back to SC2 in another 3 months, once I forget how much I hate it again.
Okay, so, now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to something more positive.
Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. Which is of course actually Dark Forces 3. The name of this game annoys me nearly as much as Rambo III did. It wasn't Rambo III, it was First Blood III. It went First Blood, First Blood Part II: Rambo, and then it should have been First Blood Part III. But instead, they decided to call it Rambo III, despite there never having been a Rambo II, and and Rambo having been a subtitle. The same with Jedi Knight. First was Dark Forces, then Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. Now suddenly it's Jedi Knight II. It should be Dark Forces III: Jedi Outcast. But that's just my pet peeve. And not even to mention that there was another Jedi Knight game in between. Although I heard that one(Obi-Wan) sucked.
Anyway, on to the actual game. Well, except for the first couple levels, this game is pretty fun. You get to play around with a lightsaber, you have some decently cool powers, and level design is only kind of annoying. The first couple of levels are insanely difficult, though. Although maybe if I were better at saving, I'd get more skilled and then the levels wouldn't be so hard. See, one of my major problems when playing games is that I forget to save unless the game prompts me to, so I'll be playing, and things will go wrong, and I'll die, and I'll lose the last three hours of play time, and I'll just get frustrated, and quit and not play the game again for like a year.
The truth is, despite the fact that it's nearly all I ever do, I'm really not very good at video games. On stuff that has simple patterns, I can usually do fairly well, it's just a matter of timing, and I'm pretty good at timing. Any kind of AI, though, generally the only way I can win is through luck. And god forbid I should go up against a human opponent. I am apparently completely transparent and predictable, while being caught completely by surprise by pretty much anything my opponent does. And I don't ever seem to improve, no matter how much I play. Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah.
Once you get your lightsaber(in what is by far the most entertaining level in the game, if you ask me; no combat at all, all puzzle-solving), the game gets considerably easier. Well, except for the first fight in the next level after you get the saber. That one's a bitch. For me. Your mileage may vary. The game is also a lot more fun from this point forward, although for the life of me, I can't see that there's any actual strategy to use in lightsaber duels. You just turn on speed and run around like a headless chicken while swinging your lightsaber around like crazy, and reload every time you die.
The game is gorgeous, I'll definitely give it that. Although don't use volumetric shadows. Maybe it's just my video card, but mostly volumetric shadows just made everything really ugly.
Overall, I really like this game, despite being terrible at it and never having finished it.
I thought I'd start off with a review of the game that's been on everyone's minds lately, at least in my circle of friends, acquaintances, and customers: Minesweeper. I mean, City of Heroes. No, okay, City of Heroes is done to death, it's currently eating my soul and all, but I think I will actually review Minesweeper instead.
This game(hey, a paragraph break. Who'd'a thought?) is quite possibly the worst game ever made. It has had a deleterious effect on American society as a whole since its inception, with the only worse offender being computerized Klondike Solitaire. It's not very fun, even. But it sucks you in, because it's so easy to play, and there's that whole false element of danger, and if you're any good a whole game will only take you three minutes or so. So you think, "Well, that was easy, one more." Or maybe, "Hey, I almost beat my best time, I'll give it another go." Or you think, "Sweet monkey Jesus, I'm tired. I should go to bed. Well, but just a quick game of Minesweeper before I go." And then you lose on the second click. "Well, that didn't count, I didn't even really get started. I'll play until I get at least half the board clear." And then you get down to the point where there's no way to logic out where the clear spaces are, and you guess, and you're wrong. Or you make a stupid mistake because you're so tired that you can barely keep your eyes open. So you go, "Oh, I was so close, I'll just play 'til I win one." And now it's 5 o'clock in the morning and you have to get up in 5 hours(of course I have a slacker job. Please.), but you're still playing the damn game because you just can't fucking stop, just one more, oh, I almost beat my best time, it only takes a couple minutes, argh! MUST! SLEEP! So you turn off the computer and go to bed, only to have fucking *dreams* about Minesweeper, I'm not kidding, you think this is funny, dreams, for God's sake, and then your alarm goes off and you get up and you're so tired that standing is too much effort so you go sit in the only chair available, the one in front of your computer, and you think, "Well, I'll read a couple webcomics while I wait to wake up," and then you're done with that, and you don't even want to, but somehow the mouse goes to Start, then Programs, then Games, and finally selects Minesweeper, and so despite the fact that you were just up for 4 hour past your bedtime playing the damn thing, you're now playing it again, "just for one quick game," and suddenly you only have ten minutes left to get to work, and you haven't even showered, much less got dressed or eaten anything, and not to mention that work is fifteen minutes away. So you call your boss and pretend to be sorry that you overslept, when in fact you're sorry that you're so stupid that you can't even resist playing this stupid fucking game long enough to get your sorry ass to work on time. I hate Minesweeper. I hate it so much that my best time on Expert is 137 seconds. And if your best time is better, fuck you. I don't want to hear it. Bastards.
Minsweeper gets Minus 14 hillion jillion zillion quadrillion trillion billion out of 10. It's evil and should be stopped.
And this isn't it. This is merely soon to be another in the long string of ill-considered, half-finished projects I undertake as a way to make me feel worse about myself. Or maybe I'll actually stick with it, who knows? Anyway, what this will be, eventually, is some sort of reviews of various video games, mostly consisting of, "Well, I liked this game," or "I didn't like this game," and occasionally I may get really ambitious and try to articulate a why for either one. Also, this may end up being a general blog, 'cause lord knows my favorite subject is myself, but on the other hand, I really don't have that much to say. I just use a lot of words to say it. For the three of you who stumbled in here accidentally, my name is...Well, unimportant. You can call me Stirge, though. I don't mind, in fact I sort of prefer it for online dealings. Except when it starts to bother me. I like to pretend that my major obsession is comic books, when anyone with any sense at all can see that it's clearly video games. Also, I don't care much for paragraph breaks, you may have noticed. I don't know that I'll give any sort of ratings for the games I review, but hopefully I'll convey a sense of how much I liked or disliked it. Also, just a note, I will mostly be reviewing games that are a little older. I don't have shit-tons of money just laying around to keep up with the latest games, although occasionally something will come out that fits one of my uber-obsessions and I'll buy it despite already being short on the rent that month. If I had any brain at all I'd subscribe to Gamefly. So, uh, anyway, I forgot what else I was going to say, and this is just supposed to be a test entry, so...Oh yeah. Comments will be welcomed, but retards and assholes will not be tolerated. I'm already plenty asshole enough for this site.