The Game Is On

So the second post of the reincarnation of the blog.  I guess this is a defining moment.  Who knows.

Please mind the fact that this entry might be a little short to the point and off.  I have been reformatting my wife's old net book to use as an auxiliary device.  The keyboard however is much smaller than I am used to so things are a little weird using it.  I shall conquer this!!

Things have been good this week with my advancing through the drudge that is my backlog.  I haven't beaten anything this week, just playing.  Lets go through things:

Pokemon Y:

I keep getting suckered back into the Pokemon series.  I loved Red.  I loved Silver and Gold and Yellow and Emerald.  I think they were great games because I was young and I could memorize all the damn Pokemon in the game and feel really cool.  Things weren't overly complicated.  That was the key.  Now though things are just crazy.

The story is similar as all the others.  If you have played one Pokemon game you have played them all.  8 gyms, 8 badges.  Elite 4.  Legendary Pokemon.  Some evil team trying to take over things/the world.  They add the element of a new region for each game and that helps to somewhat change things up if not just a bit.

I will say that "Y" is better than Diamond/Platinum (the last Pokemon games I played).  Mega Evolution is kind of fun during battles to get that instant boost of kickassness.  I like how the boring flow of the game from town to town is broken up at times with random little excursions.  And as always, the collecting of Pokemon is always entertaining.

I think that my problem with the game besides the sheer massive amount of Pokemon is all the little ways that you can level up your Pokemon so that you can battle against people online.  I haven't used the online element that much on here and I don't see myself becoming a huge collector and battler on it.  I will say that if you cut away all of that "fluff" that the game does do pretty well.

I find myself done with the power plant and back getting ready to take on the electric trainer's gym (can't remember the gym right now since I don't have my 3DS near me).  Besides having 5 badges, I have spent a lot of time just leveling different types of Pokemon to round out my team.  The problem though is that where I am I have't found a good spot to just level.  Its quite a pain in the ass.  I might just push through and beat this game this upcoming week.  Gotta a nice little trip for work I am doing, so lots of play time.  

It just blows my mind how many Pokemon I have seen/caught so far.  I think its when I look at this that I begin to realize the crazy amount in the game.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch:

I first heard of Ni No Kuni while listening to the Official Playstation Blogcast podcast.  At first I wasn't too impressed with what they were saying about things.  Just wasn't drawing me into the game.  They made the comments that it was a great JRPG that was very different from others and it had a great sense of humor and story to it.  I just didn't pay too much attention to things.

Then after a couple of months I saw that there was a demo for it and I decided "Why the hell not.  Lets give this a try".  Downloaded, explored the forest, defeated the monster, and still was not too horribly impressed by things.  Sometimes demos hit me really well but sometimes they don't.

After even more time had passed I was looking for a good game for my birthday and I just thought that maybe I would toss it on a list and if I got it I would try it out.  Maybe a new RPG to my routine would spice things up.

Damn.  I am really happy that I got the game and have been playing it.

Ni No Kuni is a title that seems to get a lot of things right, with some things wrong (more things right though).  The animation and drawing is amazing, but nothing less can be expected from Studio Ghibli.  The voice acting is perfect.  Using British actors was the perfect choice.  American voice actors I think wouldn't have been able to tell the story as well because there ain't anything special about our voices.  Please don't get me started on what the hell a Boston accent is from.

The story though takes the cake.  There are typical J/RPG elements with magic and rescuing and exploring.  There is a world to save.  There is leveling to do and friends to make along Oliver's journey.  You even have a quirky Lord High Lord of the fairies that helps you out.  What takes the cake is the reason behind the journey.

MILD SPOILER AHEAD.  INTRO SPOILER!!!!



All good adventures have a starting point.  A reason for you to cross that mountain and see what is on the other side.  Without this you are just on a stroll with no purpose.  Oliver doesn't start his adventure because he wants to free the world from tyranny.  He doesn't want to save crystals.

He wants to save his mum.  His mother dies and he discovers that by going on this journey he will be able to bring her back.

BAM!!  Thats it!!  Saving the world is secondary to his mother.  Through the journey he keeps saying that he needs to accomplish what he set out to do.  This is something that will pull at anyone that loves their mother.  I would have done anything for my mother when I was young, and heck I still would now.  That is the beauty of this.  I plan on playing this game when I have kids and have it as an interactive story.  There is nothing offensive in it (except for fantasy violence) and its something that they will really enjoy.

Yes its a game that still requires 40-50 hours to play through, and the familiar system is daunting and confusing.  Sometimes the combat system is off as well.  The thing is that that doesn't really matter.  I want more when I play it.  I want to hold Oliver's hand and get him to the end and see what happens.  I want him to save his mother because its not just his mother.  Its mine as well.  Its your's.

I strongly recommend that people pick this title up and give it a try.  It may be a little slow at the beginning but keep with it.  Its worth it I promise.  I find myself currently in Hamelin and you will laugh when you get there.

I only suggest that you think like a child when you play.  Relax and let yourself be young.

Demo Time Baby!

As I have gotten older I have found myself playing more demos for games.  I cannot recall playing a lot of them when I was younger, but now I look at my PS3 and Steam and there are at least 15 waiting for me.  I will most likely purchase maybe one if any, but it is my downloading of them that startles me.

I was talking with We$$ the other night and we were talking about some demos that I had.  I told him that I had written up a quick draft of this post and we had a nice conversation about how things have changed since we were young in the world of demos.

I don't know why in the past I did not partake in them.  Maybe it was because I was young and did not want to waste time on something that was not the full product.  Thinking that if I liked it great, and if not I wasted my time.

I hate wasting my time.

I think another part was I felt games that were not going to make it big went out on demos.  These were inferior products.

I think about it and I also realize that availability played a big role in things as well.  When we were young the internet was only a small fledgling of what it is now.  Downloading grainy porn pictures was a 30 minutes process for just getting one.  Dial up was king.  The idea of sending music, or even videos, over the internet to someone else was there, but most of us didn't pay too much to the notion.  We were happy with our fuzzy, low resolution pictures.

We$$ reminded me that it used to be that demos only came in gaming magazines.  You would get your issue for that month, and in the middle of the magazine, or in the sealed bag that contained the issue, there would be a disc (I cannot remember any demos for cartridge games, correct me if I am wrong) that you could put in your PC/PS and that was that month's demo.  I didn't really buy any of the gaming magazines.  I got my info through word of mouth and made my gaming purchase decisions based on company that made it, series it was in, genre, and the box art.

It was hard to get demos this way at home.  Yeah you could go to the store and play the game when it was at the kiosk, yet you always ran the risk of some little jackass hogging all the time in this mortal realm playing the game on an infinite loop.  I do remember FFVII being on a full game play at a MediaPlay back in the day that I played at.  In fact, I now remember a lot of full games that one could play.

Anyways, back to the point at hand.  All of this has lead me to talk about just finishing the Journey demo.  Yeah, I am quite late to the Journey game (DON'T START SINGING!!).  The game is absolutely beautiful. Simply amazing.

From thatgamecompany.com

I mean really, look at that screenshot.  That just blows me away.

The wordless story as you adventure alone with the seldom help of a mute stranger, who is someone in real life, is such an appealing, grand idea.  You get to interact with others without having to worry about being shy or taken aback by talking with them.  There is no judging in this realm.

Maybe because of money or some other reason I did not pick this game up.  I have heard about it a lot even before the release.  Even then it seemed appealing to me.  I just did not take the bait of it.  Part of me wants to now.  Amazing how a short, maybe 20 minute demo will do that.

I have other demos on my queue waiting for me to get to them.  Some I will, some I will not.  I think my outlook on them now is that I hope demos really start to kick some ass.  Start bringing in a lot more people to games.  Maybe I was distracted by one amazing one in a haystack filled with crap, but it only takes one to make you want to experience more of them.

It only takes one of make you use it as a viable way to purchase new games.

So here is to good demos.  May they bring good companies more sales.

Look at the picture to get an idea

Can anyone guess what is on the discussion block for today???


Anyone?????


Hmmmm

Maybe its what I consider one of the best platforms to experience games.

Its Steam (made possible by Valve, who also owns the above image.  Thank you)

I have a closeness to Valve and therefore Steam because of my early days of gaming on the PC.  The first First Person Shooters (FPS) that I ever played all the way through and completely obsessed about was Half-Life.  Made possible by Valve.

Honestly, Half-Life is up there as once of the greatest along side some of the grandfathers of the PC FPS genre (Doom, Duke Nukem, etc.)

Half-Life helped to spawn Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, and other directly.  I can't really think of anyone that plays FPS on PC that has not played Half-Life and its offspring.

I remember back in college I would play Half-Life 2 on my PC as my roommate watched.  It was seriously like watching a movie.  Soo many wasted nights doing that.

Back to Steam though.  I think it appeals to me so much because it allows you to manage your games on PC in one location.  I can buy games off the Steam network if I want to and they will automatically download to my PC.  I can then access them from my Steam client without having to dig around through my HD to find the games.  I can add games to Steam that are not in it's store but I have on my computer so I can load them from Steam, but also take advantage of their cross game chat feature they have for when you want to talk with your friend while playing a game.  Hell, I think its a feature that is the standard and is much better than what the PS3 and Xbox360 have.

There are trophies and achievements as well with Steam, but those don't interest me as much as on the PS3 for some reason.

I think that it comes down to this.  I can keep it running in the background when I am working on the internet, typing a blog ;), or just listening to music.  Then when I am feeling gamey (insert laugh) I just right click on the icon, select my game, and I am off.

Its quite addicting.  Once my new PC is built it will work wonders on that for sure since my current system is quite old (over 10 years) and is chugging along like a Centenarian with organ failure running the Boston Marathon (poor dude ain't even going to make it).

This leads me to another good thing about Steam, which is I can instantly install all my games on another PC to my new one by just installing the client.  It does only support the Steam Store games, but still its amazing.



I know all of that sounded like I am trying to sell a product.  I promise I am not.  I am just happy with my experience with it.

So many choices to choose

I have been working continuously on Fallout 3 and FFV yet things just keep getting in the way.  I get distracted with Netflix, or can't decide if I want to watch TV (which is an issue because most of my games are on the PS3 platform so I have to usually use a TV.  I do have a computer monitor hooked up through a Jam box but the monitor is not that large so the display sucks big time for games that require a much larger screen).

Fallout 3 is a great game.  It just takes a lot of work to get into things and then want to continue the storyline quests for it.  I just wish to explore everything and complete all the quests, while at the same time get all the damn trophies that the game offers.  And when you deal with a game that's main content with no DLC content takes a 600 page game guide to cover in detail, sometimes too much is not a good thing.

I think that is a downfall of Fallout 3 in some cases.  It is big.  It is huge.  And that's not just what she said.

The game has a massive world to it where almost anything is possible.  I know that many games say that anything is possible, yet when Fallout 3 says it, it is true.

It is so overwhelming at the immense data that is available in the game that I found myself getting lead astray by external factors, being TV, Netflix, FFXI, etc.  Things that would normally not drag me away from the screen since I would be sooooo into this playable universe.  Maybe its the choices.  Maybe having way to many choices is not always a good thing.

Think about it.  Sometimes it can be so stressful in real life to have to make a decision on what to do and when to do it and then if that was the right thing.  So why bring that into a video game.  Yes we all want them to be as close to reality as possible however we don't want all that reality and life has to offer.  Give me an open world game that sucks me in.  Something that I am given choices however the limits are still there I just can't see them.

Then I turn to FFXI.  With the new level cap increase to 95 I have been working on getting my character stronger, yet I also want to work on my lower level stuff and I find problems with what to do and when.  In FFXI there are a lot of choices, however not as many as you would think.  That is because the user population has shifted things over to a world in which you have to do this to succeed.  Yes there is a demographic in the game that gets by lvling in other areas, however the missions and quests which draw people to the game I feel are almost ignored by the major populace which frustrates me.  My best friend is now playing more which is great cause I had a buddy to adventure with.  However I wish the choices were not as limited with that.

Hmmmm  what to do what to do.

I find myself resorting to Gran Turismo 5.  Its a good game, however I never understand why I keep buying GT games.  I am just not a big car person.  Nor do I know a damn thing about tuning them and racing.  Its nice to drone out to some mind numbing racing requiring me to hold down the X button and steer.  Yes, its realistic physics.  Yes the graphics are in my opinion some of the best for a car racing game out there.  Yes, there are hours upon hours of playtime and its a great game.  I just don't see it as a fit for me.  Maybe that will change as I continue on with my list.  I might use it as a reliever game of some sort between titles that I complete.