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-   -   What are you playing right now? (http://i-mockery.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69697399)

Phoenix Gamma Mar 12th, 2010 10:15 PM

Started up Final Fantasy XIII today. I've been real pumped ever since I got to try the demo way back last year.

They did a fantastic job localizing. Lots of subtleties in the dialog, lips have been reanimated, etc. Vanille's voice is really fucking weird, though. I mean, I guess it suits her super bubbly personality, but the choice of accent is beyond me. Everyone else is stellar, though.

Love the cast. I didn't think I'd like Sazh, but he's turning out to be pretty cool. Sometimes he's a little too "smart alec black man", but for the most part, he's alright. Even Lightning shows hints of likableness during the game's flashbacks, prior to when she cranked the emo level up to "Cloud Strife". Snow's the man, though. Total bro, totally pumped to beat the shit out of dudes and protect everyone. I like go-getter heroes. Hope's a fucking loser, though. Seriously.

Combat's pretty rad, but confusing as hell, and once you get used to it, it takes a long time for them to introduce something else. I wish they would highlight targets a little better, since spacing out area attacks is pretty important. No complaints about linearity; every jRPG is linear as fuck, this game just takes out the bullshit wandering.

So yea, really cool, bit of a slow start, but fun once you get used to juggling all the different systems.

Fathom Zero Mar 14th, 2010 05:09 AM

NEW COMPUTER.
PLAYS GAMES.
GOES FAST.

OxBlood Mar 14th, 2010 10:12 AM

40hrs into Final Fantasy 13 and by now it feels more like a FF-Game. Riding around on my Chocobo, collecting treasure, beating the shit out of Monsters while getting stronger by the minute and forging my pathetic little butterknifes into tools of global destruction...THATS what I want, not whiny self-reflection that leads to nowhere while standing around in a forest made out of wires and linear paths.

Phoenix Gamma Mar 14th, 2010 04:16 PM

FF10 was nothing but linear paths. The whole time. And that game had Meg Ryan for a protagonist.

Actually, compared to most FF's, 13 is pretty tame in the bitchiness department too. Mostly cause Snow is always fucking psyched ad brushes off any doubt, and Sazh is always telling people they're whining more than they should be.

Kitsunexus Mar 14th, 2010 05:14 PM

I'm playing Neopet Puzzle Adventure, because I was tricked into thinking it was DEVELOPED by Capcom. >_< It's actually not that bad, though. Pretty good multiplayer.

OxBlood Mar 14th, 2010 07:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phoenix Gamma (Post 676008)
FF10 was nothing but linear paths. The whole time. And that game had Meg Ryan for a protagonist.

Actually, compared to most FF's, 13 is pretty tame in the bitchiness department too. Mostly cause Snow is always fucking psyched ad brushes off any doubt, and Sazh is always telling people they're whining more than they should be.

Someoneīs watched Spoonyīs Review, eh? :lol

Awesome as usual, thatīs for sure.



Concerning the linearity of 10...10 had decent pacing, something that 13 completely lacks. Whoever wrote the story had no idea how or no intention to use proper structure in the setup and the execution of the plot...which is pretty sad since itīs not a hard thing to do and itīs even more sad because 13īs plot IS good, itīs just executed very poorly. 10 had this structure, it had the proper rhythm a story must have, at least thatīs my opinion.

10 was structured really normally while having 100% linear Dungeons, Towns and tertiary places. Something EVERY Final Fantasy has. Problem is: 13 is nothing BUT dungeons, thereīs nothing to break up the monotony in the first 30 hours, something 10 and every other FF since 1 have.
Thatīs something no one would care about in an action-game but when it happens in a JRPG (which are all pretty linear), it just gives you the feeling that something is kind of off or wrong.

Is a litte hard for me to explain in english and at this time of the night (00:47 here) but I hope you understand what Iīm trying to say.

Oh and concerning the bitchiness: No one can compete with Squall on that one, we all know that :lol

Off to bed I go...

Phoenix Gamma Mar 14th, 2010 09:30 PM

Huh? I just hate Tidus and his whiny voice, retarded clothes, gay hair, and everything else about that character.

And the whole point of FFXIII, from what I've played so far, is "oh fuck, government is gonna get us. Haul ass, you guys". I don't know any fugitive on the run who has time to play chocobo minigames or roam around doing nothing. If you look at any jRPG, they just do whatever the fuck. Aeris just died? brb snowboarding. Sin's gonna destroy everyone at any point? Water Polo!

Narratively speaking, I think FFXIII is spot on. It opens up right away with a big event and shows everyone who gets dragged into it. Then the setup with the fal'cie, then it's time to get the fuck out because it's us against the whole world. Gameplay-wise? Yea, the game could introduce mechanics sooner, but it's a nuanced system, and everything is built around the story and each situation. It's pretty thoughtfully designed around the characters and the context. I think it holds everything together a lot better than 10, which just kinda did whatever the fuck it wanted.

OxBlood Mar 15th, 2010 05:51 AM

Oh okay, I thought you might have seen his hate-tirade about the game, that´s all. I can´t say that I liked Tidus that much but he was way less annoying as Squall, since he had a positive disposition, I like such characters like him or Zidane. There´s enough pseudo-thinky types around as it is, we need more "fuck that, let´s stick to the task at hand instead of overthinking things the whole day"-types :D

Wall-o-text again I guess...

Can´t say I see any advantage in handling things the way 13 does. It´s just tedious and boring to me. The whole thing is centered around the plot and the characters, sure. And it´s done in a more focussed way than many other JRPGs do it...but I don´t think that it´s a good idea since neither the story nor the characters are that special or unique IMO.

And then again the game goes on about that "whaaa, flee from the goverment"-thing way too long for my taste. 10 hours would have done it and they could have spared us two or three of the more useless regions like the first forest part with Light and Hope, that was totally pointless.

What the game does well though is, as you said, centering the gameplay around the characters at hand. It introduces different class-combos, sure, but again, it takes way too much time to do that.
Almost all the time in those first 30 hours before the game leaves you alone so you can finally start doing something sensefull (i.e. leveling your Characters and filling your wallet to improve your equipment), I had the impression the designers made a game for retards that needed to be taken by the hand.

I know what they were trying to do by focussing on these specific combos of characters but I (and everybody else) got it the first time, there´s no need to have these artificial slowdowns in gameplay for more than maybe 5, 10 hours max. Do they really think we need 28 hours to understand the battlesystem?

Yes, it´s very tight in terms of narration but it´s also way too restrictive in terms of gameplay (which is the more important aspect of a game to me).

10 on the other hand...let´s see if I remember it...it also had artificial stops in Character progression, just like 13 (the Spherestops they were called I think) but it never felt as forced as 13 does in the beginning.

I wouldn´t make such a fuss about it if they kept that phase of the game within reasonable limits but come on...30 hours on rails is more than enough to piss off even the most dedicated JRPG-Fan, at least one that wants to do, what JRPGs do best: Let you become the most powerful group of people on the whole planet and beat the shit out of everything.

Take the despicable Final Fantasy 8 for example. It´s story and cast was the most annoying and fucked up piece of crap in any FF-Game to date (apart from 12 maybe) but it was so much fun to play because you could just build your party from really early on. You could just say "shut the fuck up Squall, no one wants to hear your bickering, go onehit some bosses!" And he did. It was awesome.



To get back to 13:

I´m in about 46 hours now and NOW it is fun. Why? Because I can focus on building my party the way I want to, I can actively aquire Gil (not possible before you have access to chocobo-riding) to spend on my upgrading and I can watch Lightning become fucking powerful and air-juggling King-Behemoths without them getting any chance of acting. THAT´s how I like my JRPGs, not endless Render-Sequences interrupted by boring running from A to B...

Supafly345 Mar 15th, 2010 06:40 AM

I'm glad they've gotten to more sane and less shitty narratives. I was pleasantly surprised by 12 amazingly relatable and break away story. Leaving behind the traditional antagonist being sorcery, the end of the world, super beasts, ultimate evil, or unhappy thoughts, and taking on the refreshing and simple goal as preventing war was the biggest step in the right direction square made in that game of many good steps. The biggest step being a solid goal through the entire game, without a hundred plot twists and story derails that every game before it had a huge problem with. A solid consistent quest keeps the narrative grounded.
Another was making the hero as minor as he started, it was always irritating that some dumb kid somehow became the boring superhero of the game. Every other character was more important than he was, but he was the ultimate perspective, so the mission felt bigger than the hero and that made it feel more epic. In addition to every character being more important, every other character was more interesting- and just like a good book for young adults should be, the bland main character made it easier for the player to put themselves in place of them and focus on everything happening around them. At least this appeared to be their goal, despite it not being pulled off very well. But it was also in the right direction.

What I am getting at is that all my favorite parts of 12 that I thought saved the entire series and regained my interest in them appear to be passed on and improved in 13 from what I have been reading. I won't know for sure until I play it, and I probably won't play it for a while since there are a billion other games I'd rather play, but hopefully square is on its way to being a developer to care about again someday soon.

OxBlood Mar 15th, 2010 07:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supafly345 (Post 676053)
I'm glad they've gotten to more sane and less shitty narratives. I was pleasantly surprised by 12 amazingly relatable and break away story. Leaving behind the traditional antagonist being sorcery, the end of the world, super beasts, ultimate evil, or unhappy thoughts, and taking on the refreshing and simple goal as preventing war was the biggest step in the right direction square made in that game of many good steps.

Iīm really suprised to read something like this, because what you said there is the whole reason I hate 12.
Itīs boring, unepic, with a totally forgettable war-story that could have been told in a minor JRPG. Using a Final Fantasy for such a bland and uninteresting story always felt like a total waste to me. Honestly, to me, even FF1īs Story is more interesting.

FF12: "There is a war coming and we have these totally unoriginal Empire-guys that fly around in warships that are named after Summons that donīt appear in this game. Only an extremely bland and boring cast of people you donīt care about can save the uninteresting world of Ivalice that was already uninteresting when we used it in 3 FF-Tactics games! Get to it!"

Me: "...no."

I donīt know how many times I tried to play 12...I always quit out of sheer boredom or because the cast annoys the hell out of me. Of course the presentation is good, I like the settings you visit, like the jail or Rabanastre itself but...they donīt do anything interesting with it. Thereīs no "Fantasy" to it.

10,000 Volt Ghost Mar 15th, 2010 11:19 AM

I think I'm going to pick up xiii today :(

TheCoolinator Mar 15th, 2010 11:20 AM

Just got done with the PC adventure game Post Mortem

Was very difficult to obtain the good ending.

OxBlood Mar 15th, 2010 12:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 10,000 Volt Ghost (Post 676073)
I think I'm going to pick up xiii today :(

Why the sad face? Despite my complaining, I think itīs a good game, considering the times we live in ;)

Quite some flaws, sure but a good game. I wouldnīt be playing it for 4-8 hours every day if it wasnīt :lol

Dimnos Mar 15th, 2010 12:59 PM

Anyone played this Yakuza 3?

OxBlood Mar 15th, 2010 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dimnos (Post 676093)
Anyone played this Yakuza 3?

I gave up on that game as soon as I read that they cut around...what 15% of of the game - around 30 Sidemissions or something like that along with some Timepasser-activities like the hostess-bar.

We germans are used to take a lot of cut-crap in videogaming but that´s TOO much. Won´t play it, the way they took stuff out for the west.

Kitsunexus Mar 15th, 2010 04:13 PM

I'm playing Castlevania Rondo Of Blood for I guess the third time (PC emulator, PSP, now Wii) and IT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER! ^_____^

Konami for life man, Konami for LIFE.

TheCoolinator Mar 15th, 2010 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dimnos (Post 676093)
Anyone played this Yakuza 3?

I still haven't played Yakuza 1 yet....>: I heard it's a more violent Shenmue.

OxBlood Mar 16th, 2010 08:50 AM

56 hours into FF13 and almost content with my equipment and party-status.

Being able to farm the giant Adamantoises with the Death-Spell is a nice if a little tedious thing but it can net you two of the most useful items in the game, Trapezohedrons (to upgrade your weapons to ultimate-status) and Platinum ingots (to sell for 150k Gil)

Also I FINALLY beat Neochu (which is called "Küsschen" in the german version which in turn translates simply to "little kiss") for the ONE item in the game that doubles my CP after battle. Awesome.

The game really gets a lot better after Chapter 10 (or around 28 to 30 hours)...

10,000 Volt Ghost Mar 16th, 2010 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OxBlood (Post 676082)
Why the sad face? Despite my complaining, I think itīs a good game, considering the times we live in ;)

Quite some flaws, sure but a good game. I wouldnīt be playing it for 4-8 hours every day if it wasnīt :lol

I'm on chapter 2 and I really like it so far. The sad face was for realizing the amount of time I just locked myself into. Vanille runs ridiculously though.

Phoenix Gamma Mar 16th, 2010 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 10,000 Volt Ghost (Post 676263)
I'm on chapter 2 and I really like it so far. The sad face was for realizing the amount of time I just locked myself into. Vanille runs ridiculously though.

IF BY "RIDICULOUSLY" YOU MEAN "RIDICULOUSLY CUTE", I AGREE.

ALSO, SNOW IS THE MAN. DUDE DOESN'T SULK ABOUT SHIT, SAVES THE DAY, AND RIDES A MOTORCYCLE MADE OF BITCHES. THEN SOME PUSSY PRETTY BOY TRIES TO KILL HIM AND HE'S ALL "HEH WHATEVER I'M GONNA BE AWESOME AND YOU CAN TRY TO KILL ME IF I'M NOT AWESOME ENOUGH FOR YA...AND I WILL BE AWESOME ENOUGH FOR YA SO PUT THAT KNIFE AWAY".

I love this game so much. Halfway through Chapter 9. Shit's getting intense. Vanille with a machine gun?! Oh fuck. Wait, no, she's switching back to the staff now. Goddammit.

10,000 Volt Ghost Mar 16th, 2010 01:44 PM

I also thought her weapon was a nerf slingshot when she broke it out:
Instead its like a fishing pole combined with a dream catcher. Snow reminds me a lot of Zell which is a good thing.

BatmanJohnson Mar 16th, 2010 03:42 PM

I am currently playing Pokemon SoulSilver. It is really odd, because I played the first silver when I was 12. Now ten years later I'm playing through it again. Gotta love timeless appeal.

Phoenix Gamma Mar 16th, 2010 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 10,000 Volt Ghost (Post 676324)
I also thought her weapon was a nerf slingshot when she broke it out:
Instead its like a fishing pole combined with a dream catcher. Snow reminds me a lot of Zell which is a good thing.

She uses it as a fishing pole near the end of chapter 9. Her and her lesbo partner reel in this giant robot bird thing. Shit's bangin'.

And Snow is way cooler than that cunt Zell. You take that back right now >:

10,000 Volt Ghost Mar 16th, 2010 05:17 PM

:lol never

darkvare Mar 16th, 2010 07:09 PM

i finally got my gow 3 ultimate edition i'm loving it


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