everyday gamer

These past two weeks in Whatcha Been Playin’ (I apologize for not having one last week) were spent playing my two of my favorite games from my favorite jrpg series: Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy IV DS.  No new games…just good old games.  Yeah, yeah FFIV DS is technically new, but c’mon now.  It’s an old game.

Final Fantasy XII is a very special game to me as it’s the only Final Fantasy that I’ve played through completely only once and actually enjoyed.  FFVIII I barely played through the first time and swore never to draw a damned curaga again.  I appreciated the scope and presentation of FFX, but for the most part found the story (summarized by “I hate you dad!”) and the voice acting obnoxious enough to merit a “no thanks” on the second go-around.  On the other hand, I just loved XII.  Between the deep fusion of traditional jRPG and MMO styled gameplay to the made-for-adult (read: not 4 ragtag teens out to save the world) storyline to the Gambit system that tweaked the programmer inside of me, the game just clicked for me and I loved every minute of it.

Last week I felt a nostalgic obligation to continue playing my PS3 save that I started when I first bought the system.  Unsurprisingly, I found that the game play and story really does hold up, though perhaps I was just itching for an RPG to play without having to spend money.  FFXII is a really good game.  However, I do wish this game was given the high-def treatment.  It looked beautiful on standard def; less so on high.

Final Fantasy IV DS was the other game I spent a significant amount of time playing.  Good lord, this game is tough.  Similar to how old NES games did little more than drill you on muscle memory by subjecting you to learn by dying, FFIV DS seems to do the same thing.  Minus the muscle memory.  And many times more dying.  During one play session in the final dungeon, my level 65ish or so party was running around collecting the final armor sets for the better part of an hour only to get demolished by the Red Dragon guarding the Crystal Gloves.  I wanted to scream.  When I cooled off a few days later, I decided to skip that chest and head to the save point a handful of screens later.

“Ok, I have a save point.  Time to try that chest again!”

Three rounds later, I was met with another death.  Wonderful.  “How about I just skip this one for now?”

Two rooms down, I accept the challenge from the Lunasaur guarding a pair of Ribbons for Rosa and Rydia.  Five rounds of damage dealing and no problems!  Home free!  And then all of my guys get breathed for a billion status effects and are confused and uncontrollable.  Ok, no problem: use a remedy and fix the party turn by turn.  Next round, breathed again.  And again.  And again.  And then I turn the system off.  Damn.  This game is hard.

I did wind up finishing the game a few nights ago.  Don’t get me wrong, the storyline is still in my top 3 in the series.  But wow, was this game frustrating.

What’s this?  I’ve been playing a game that’s not Soul Calibur IV?

Ok, not quite true as I’ve still been playing a hell of a lot of Soul Calibur (win percentage up to 43%…woot!). Instead, the highlight this week for me was Team Fortress 2 and the new content update featuring the the Heavy weapons guy.

Team Fortress 2 is my Counterstrike.  That is, it’s the game where I start up on a whim and play for bite-sized sessions at a time.  Whether it be a quick game before dinner or in between other activities, it’s a very low commitment game for me that I don’t need to devote a lot of time to like WoW and most console games.  In the past few months, my playtime has been following the pattern of weeks of only a handful of games followed by an exceedingly larger spike coinciding with every TF2 class update:  It happened with the Medic update back in April, again in June with the Pyro update, and finally this week with the update to the Heavy class.  While I wouldn’t go so far to say that I’m tired of playing, it’s almost as if each new patch is a new lease on life for my interest in the game.  Valve is able to do this by introducing new, different, and sometimes hilarious weapons for the classes unlockable by manageable-yet-often-absurd achievements introduced in each patch.  While I’m generally not too fond of using achievements to lock away new content (it often forces you to play the game in a way that it’s not meant to be played), Valve has found a good balance in making the quest for new weaponry challenging but not overbearing.  Twenty-two out of thirty-six achievements for all of the weapons is a far better solution than the full 36 required for medic pack achievements.  Which I did successfully but only with the help of some games in purely “achievement farming” maps.  Thankfully, the Pyro and Heavy pack did not follow the same philosophy and force me into those sort of games: all of those achievements were achieved legitimately.  Even the taunt-kill ones, which were honestly hilarious to pull off in a real game environment.

The Heavy pack was particularly enjoyable because this patch more than any previous one showcased TF2′s great sense of humor.  Case in point: the first unlockable in the Heavy pack is the Sandvich.  Which is, well, just a sandwich that replaces your normal shotgun.

The best funnies seem to be centered around the Heavy since he’s sort of the stereotypical lovable eastern European big oaf that speaks in broken English.  But he’s such an integral part of giving Team Fortress 2 its unique feel.  Point 2: the “Meet the Sandvich” video.

Anyway, I am thorougly enjoying this update.  Great stuff, Valve.  Keep up the great work!

P.S.  I’m not yet finished Bionic Commando: Rearmed, but I assure you the review is coming along with some other bonus stuff.

This week in WBP has been delayed a bit due for two reasons:

1. The unexpected amount of time that was spent on the previous blog entry, and
2. The release of Bionic Commando Rearmed on PSN late last week

Seeing as one of these points is rather integral to this week’s WBP, I felt it was appropriate to delay the entry a few days so I could talk about it.  In any case, this week’s WBP consisted almost exclusively of more Soul Calibur IV and the retro remake of Bionic Commando.

This week spent with Soul Calibur IV was a bit different from the previous couple.   Up till this weekend, my main character has been Hilde.  The logic for sticking to Hilde boiled down to the fact that the character was new (meaning less characters would know how to defend against her) and the character design just looked awesome.  One-hundred wins and two-hundredish losses later, I realized that my lack of skill couldn’t be the sole reason I wasn’t winning ranked matches.  Rather, it was a combination of that and character imbalance and internet latency.  Online basically consists of a lot of players who essentially power-leveled their ratings by abusing internet lag and the spam-skill characters (read:Kilik, Raphael, Amy).  My Hilde playstyle primarily consisted of capitalizing on my opponent’s unsafe moves and then unloading a moderately damaging combo and keeping them on the defensive by mixing it up.  The main caveat comes at the start of the match: Hilde does not have too many panic buttons if the opponent gets too close.  As a result, most of my losses come from not being able to get away from the fast attacks of the mentioned characters.  At that 140 loss mark, I figured it was a good enough time to start learning how to play a secondary character.

So I gave Sophitia a try.  I don’t have anything to add except that I have a record of about 50 and 8 with Sophitia after spending a brief session in the training mode.  She’s completely broken; safe attacks and high priority moves.  I’m not going to say that I didn’t have fun winning all weekend, but c’mon Namco.  Could you balance this game a little better?

The other game that consumed a bit of my time over the weekend was Grin’s remake of Capcom’s classic arcade and NES game Bionic Commando for PSN/XBLA/PC.  Although I’ve never played the NES version, I did play the death out of the futuristic quasi-anime Gameboy remake back in the mid 90′s.  My initial thoughts on playing Rearmed were of how my swing-grappling skills have atrophied so much: I did not remember the Gameboy version being so difficult.  The physics of the swing mechanic are more or less the same as the version I played; even so I found myself in a pit of spikes very often.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing…after all, Rearmed is a remake of a classic Nintendo game.  Meaning that it’s not obligated to coddle the player with modern gaming amenities like dumbed-down casual-friendly difficulty levels.  Instead, the game chooses to kick you in the nuts swiftly and viciously from the get-go with the deviously-tricky ceiling grappling all the way to the purely S&M mobile platform grappling in later stages.  And yes, this is a good thing.

I’ll probably wind up finishing the game this week sometime and maybe a couple of the interesting bonus challenges.  And perhaps write a review, hmm?

My WBP plate this week has been filled by hearty servings of two games with a little dollop of third.

The first game on the menu is Soul Calibur IV, which I’m still finding completely addicting to play despite the fact that I’m still pretty bad at it.  My previous PSN account has a masterful record of 30 wins and 128 losses, of which at least 70 of said losses came from players spamming one button with Kilik/Mitsurugi/Siegfried and me failing to defend against that spam with my Hilde character.  The other 60 I would probably attribute to misplays and other general noobishness.  Despite this, I don’t consider losing matches a bad thing as practice against better opponents is the only way to get better.  My new PSN account in about 50 games is at about a 28% win percentage, markedly better now that I’ve learned to play a little bit.  And no, I didn’t change my PSN account because of my previous bad record in SCIV

While we’re on the subject of PSN accounts, I’m going to take a little bit of time and agree with Garnett Lee on last week’s 1up Yours podcast about not being able to change the online handle of the account.  I should not have to register a new email address to get a new handle.  Period.  This is pretty trivial database work.  Seriously Sony, you need this option here.

The second game on the plate is the remake of Final Fantasy IV for the DS, a game that holds a very special place in my heart as the RPG that got me into the genre.  This is the third release of the game I’ve played and the second time I’ve purchased it (I picked up the GBA version a few years ago as well).  And the game is still awesome, though admittedly I am still a part of the problem for purchasing yet another Final Fantasy remake.  This incarnation of the SNES classic features a full 2.5D reinterpretation of the old game, voice acting (which is ok, I suppose), and in-engine cut scenes that are pretty decent despite the hardware limitations.  What I like most about FFIV this time is how the game manages to take the memories I have of the old 2D environments and rendering them in such a way that allows them to keep the charm of the old game yet at the same time look modernized.  The game also features a solid retranslation, though I suspect some things were kept in (You spoony bard!) for the older fans of the game.  Jeremy Parish of 1up supports this assessment, stating in his review that the game is mainly marketed at the older fans of FFIV.  As such, the game is also a bit harder than I remembered: I’ve already lost my party a few times to former pushover bosses.  Regardless, I’m enjoying myself.

Pixeljunk Eden has been my post dinner snack game.  As expected, once I got past the initial control barrier the game got a lot more interesting.  I wound up spinning and jumping through the first garden collecting all six spectra and starting the second and third gardens.  Honestly I haven’t played much more of this to say anything more than it seems to be one of those games that you play for short bursts in spare moments.  That’s not to say that Eden isn’t a good game, but rather I wanted to savor the flavor of this dessert for a long time.  Perhaps I’ll find some more time to play this week before Bionic Commando gets released.

I find it a little bit funny that it was only a few months ago that Garnett Lee on 1up Yours declared that the summer of ’08 was one that was devoid in software releases after the release of Metal Gear Solid 4.  He later retracted that statement in a later episode; it’s pretty remarkable how many new games were to be coming down the pipeline, particularly in the form of downloadable titles.  Between Geometry Wars 2, Pixeljunk Eden, Galaga Legions, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Castle Crashers (seriously!), is some serious downloadable love in the upcoming weeks.  And Megaman 9 is on the horizon too!

This week’s gaming regiment has consisted of a little bit of MGS4 just to finish my second playthrough no-kill style, my daily dosage of WiiFit exercise, more WoW endgame raiding, a couple of little stumblings through my Pixeljunk Eden garden to L2P, and a lot of stumbling through Soul Calibur IV, my entry into the series.

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