Holy ginormous chocobos!

The chocobos in Final Fantasy XIII are huuuuuuuuuuuge! Much bigger than they’ve ever been, if memory serves me correctly. Don’t believe me? Check out these scans below:

…

DO WANT.

New trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is quietly coming up to its release date (December 7) and not much is known about the second Zelda game for the DS other than it involves trains and phantoms and many of the same elements from The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. But check out the new trailer below, which hints at Princess Zelda’s importance to both plot and gameplay:

I’ve yet to beat The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, mostly because I’m tired of digging deeper into the same ol’ tomb, but it’s still a great, colorful time that I pick up now and again, and The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is looking to improve on that formula in every way possible. It’ll probably make my Christmas list…

The Top Five Sequels I’m Not Interested In

What? My second list already?

Yes, people. This is what chaos looks like. Enjoy this list of game titles with the number 2 at the end…

5. Left 4 Dead 2

I’m no good at shooters. I’m just as no good at horror games where the littlest of things make me jump. Hence, I was never meant to excel at shooting frenetic zombies, and this sequel looks to be more of the same.

4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Oh hey, look! Another shooter where you shoot things…just like you did in that first game where you shot things!

3. Bioshock 2

I’m still late to the party when it concerns Bioshock, which is a story-driven adventure, a solo game, all about immersion. Seems like the sequel is adding in multiplayer…why? Because that’s what people demand now in every game? Seems forced.

2. Mass Effect 2

I’ll admit that I greatly enjoyed Mass Effect though I’ve only been able to play through it once despite its design for multiple run-throughs. Truthfully, the storyline isn’t that captivating nor does it differ terribly based on who I play as and how I play them. That’s pretty much going to be the same with Mass Effect 2 and rumor has it Shepherd is biting it in this murky middle. Meh.

1. Assassin’s Creed 2

Repetition, repetition, repetition. Good for learning a new language, horrible for a videogame. And this is something that Assassin’s Creed suffered from greatly. Switching scenery might fool me at first, and giving Altair the power to, y’know, swim is nice, but I get the feeling that this one will not have learned from its mistakes and will just be more climbing, more running, and more stealth kills. Plus, I’m still totally bitter about the first game’s “ending”…

And there you have it. Feel free to argue, but it’s pointless. These are games I’m not interested in; your wants and desires will surely vary.

Grinding is Good and Bad and All We Really Ever Had

There’s been a lot of talk lately about grinding, some for it, some against it, and some just not sure how to define where it shows up. Here’s some links, all of which are worth a read and/or listen:

• Adam Sessler’s Soapbox says that grinding is good
• An interest article by Daniel Feit follows up on this
• And then there’s this direct response to Feit’s article by Gerren Fisher, which argues that if someone enjoys the gameplay mechanic attached to grinding then it isn’t a grind at all

Having named my blog Grinding Down for a reason, I feel equally mixed about this subject.

It’s a staple of RPGs, sometimes more prevalent than not, and I much prefer it to be an optional sort of thing. Cases where it has not been optional are Eternal Sonata and Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. In both these games, I found myself stuck at a boss fight that I was clearly not ready for…which meant wasting an hour or two grinding, fighting the same monsters over and over, sleeping at the same inn to heal for cheap over and over, and so on. This is depressing. There might as well have been a scratch on the game’s disc because this kind of grinding is basically stating, “You can not play this game any more. Not until you kill X more slimes/whatever. Ha ha, fooled you.”

I’m surprised I haven’t had to grind yet in Fallout 3. Or maybe I have and I just haven’t noticed. Playing as a sneaky thief, I don’t necessary have to be super strong to kill a room of ghouls. I can instead just sneak past them. All experience that I’ve gained along the way (now a Level 21) has felt natural and just enough to get me through the next section. Whereas in Oblivion, a game that levels you up so long as you constantly use the same skills over and over, grinding there is visibly obvious. Want to excel in blunt weapons? Better start smacking some mudcrabs around.

Truthfully, I’m fine with grinding so long as I don’t know it is happening, so long as it is an enjoyable aspect of the game and not jarring, so long as the reward is worth the work. I have fought and defeated Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII, and this was during the days of “no Internet guides”; all I had was my thumbs and the knowledge that I needed to have Cloud and the gang at incredibly high levels. So I spent a weekend grinding. This involved fighting, fighting, fighting, take a potty break, fighting, lunch, fighting, fighting, fighting, dinner, fighting, fighting, potty break, possibly a shower (I can’t remember anymore), fighting, fighting, and then bed. Once I felt battle-ready, I saved and then took Emerald Weapon down after much stress and sweating. The question remains…was grinding to gain XP to be strong enough to beat a boss to gain even more XP worth it? Not really. In addition to experience, you get the Earth Harp item, which is tradable for the remaining master materias. Meh. I could’ve been outside reading or something. That part of my youth is gone, and I have nothing to show for it.

Oh well.

Fable II is Full of Fowl Players

Having put Fable II down at the end of June 2009, I decided on a whim last night to drop the disc back into my Xbox 360 and see if there were any mildly easy Achievements that I’d missed. And lo, there were. Within an hour, I’d manage to unlock three, specifically:

The Property Magnate (10G): A property was sold for twice its original value. Now that’s good business.

The Hoarder (25G): You, or a friend, found every single silver key in Albion. Some would call you obsessive. Not us.

The Fowl Player (10G): A Hero dressed as a chicken and proceeded to kick many of its own kind. We’re sickened.

That last one was pretty fun, I gotta admit. There’s a couple more to go for that just require time and patience, both of which I have every now and then, just not at the moment.

But if gaming updates about ol’ smelly Fable II doesn’t interest you, then check out some brand new concept art for Fable III. Looks…industrial. Kind of excited for this to come out, but I might have to go about and put together a list of things Lionhead needs to fix/change for their next iteration. I’ll say this much though: they can keep the chicken suit.

Rocking the Weezer hat in Magician’s Quest Mysterious Times

You know what’s really hard to do? Photograph your Nintendo DS screen:

I basically just wanted to show the world that I’ve been totally rocking a Weezer hat in Magician’s Quest Mysterious Times these past few weeks. See? Okay, okay…it’s really a “baseball cap,” but a guy can pretend.

Fallout 3: Status Report (Level 20)

I’m now ten levels deeper than my previous update on Fallout 3, and I’m still totally loving this game. If this was vanilla Fallout 3, I’d be at the end of my rope, no longer able to gain experience past level 20, but thankfully, with the Broken Steel DLC, there’s still room to grow.

So, what have I been up to these past ten levels?

Well, I researched further into my father’s past, freed him from the madness that was Tranquility Lane, helped him get Project Purity going only to have that fall apart, befriended a vernacularly loyal Super Mutant, stole a G.E.C.K., got underminded, convinced a AI prez to do himself in, and readied myself in preparations to “take it back”…only to not.

And that point, I kind of sensed that the big finale was coming up (and by finale, I mean the original end-all, be-all vanilla Fallout 3 finale; I’m completely aware that the game continues on now after the fact) and I just wanted…to explore. There’s so much to see (and miss) in this game, it really is quite astounding. Imagine me, just venturing around the wasteland when I spot a rinky dink house in the distance. Off I go…only to find myself distracted by something else before I even reach it. Ah, ADD and the Capital Wasteland–causing havoc since 1954!

Anyways, I took on a few more quests (The Superhuman Gambit was especially fun, but I felt too much pressure during Blood Ties to do the right thing and so I let the “cannibals” slide for the time being), and then when I was ready for some more gameplay-driven adventure I searched out the downed spacecraft. That’s right, I tackled my second piece of DLC: Mothership Zeta.

Much like Operation: Anchorage, Mothership Zeta is a very linear experience. Your character is captured in a beam of light and transported onto the big ol’ spaceship to be plucked and prodded. Then, with the help of some other prisoners, you will have to escape the ship (e.g., reach the bridge and kill Captain A. Lien). It’s hard to get lost, and you’ll basically be plowing forward, shooting aliens with their own awesome weaponry while collecting tons of weightless food and energy cells. I didn’t worry about finding all the radio logs, and on whole the DLC took about three to four hours to complete. It was a good time, and it definitely helped me earn XP with little to no trouble. But again, while the plot and worldbuilding in Fallout 3’s quests are deep and well-told, the two DLC so far that I’ve experienced are not. Some of the logs reveal a few bits of story, but otherwise it is just “see alien, shoot alien”…except for the workers. Had to keep my karma in check.

But that’s it for now. I suspect I’ll head back and wrap up the Take It Back quest and then head elsewhere. The Pitt or Point Lookout, dear readers? Both worry me that my stealthy ninja might not be a great match for them.

And I still haven’t found Dogmeat…

Halloween-themed art from Scribblenauts

Two days late with this, but check out this awesome Halloween-themed art from Scribblenauts artist Edison Yan:

Now, I just need to figure out how to summon a pirate kitty cat of death, as well as the candy corn man. Not that I like candy corn. But a Maxwell armed to the teeth with an uzi and laser pistol riding a pirate kitty cat of death could surely take care of that problem…

JUST BEAT: Prince of Persia

Developer/Publisher: Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft
Platform: Xbox 360
Genre(s): Action Adventure
Mode(s): Singe player
Rating: Teen
Time clocked: Definitely less than 12 hours according to the Speed Demon achievement

To start, I had mixed feelings over 2003’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (for the Playstation 2). For one, I absolutely loved running around and bouncing off walls and performing some serious parkour. But the fighting/battle system was terribly unforgiving despite the time mechanic which allowed players to rewind scenarios if they didn’t play out like they wanted. When I’d enter a room full of baddies, I’d groan, and the only way to hear happy noises from me was to get out of said room so that I could run around. But these memories were enough for me to steer clear of the next iterations in the series, which I’m glad I did because I’ve only ever seen them described as gothy and emo. Hmm…

But then the series got a reboot. A colorful one, at that! Prince of Persia for the Xbox 360 tells a typical story: boy meets girl, girl needs saving from overpowering god of darkness, boy saves girl but not without sacrifice. More specifically, the Prince and Elika must travel to a bunch of lands within her kingdom and heal them to keep Ahriman trapped within a giant tree.

While the plot itself is fairly yawn-yawn, the dialogue is a treat, as is Prince of Persia‘s utter lack of interest in spoon-feeding the player. At any point during gameplay, a player can push a button to have the Prince speak with Elika. What spews from their mouths depends on where they are and/or what just happened, and it helps to make both characters fun and engaging. You’ll really feel like they have a tag-team relationship going on by the game’s end.

Graphically, the game is gorgeous. The corrupted lands are bleak and dirty, ragged with oozes and chipped stone, but once they have been healed a wash of color spreads and we’re treated to a lush, vibrant playground. Some might not like cel-shading in this day and age, but I think it has the potential to be even more amazing than photo-realistic games like, say, Final Fantasy XIII or Gears of War.

Unfortunately, not all is bells and whistles. If Prince of Persia is to have a fault, it is in its repetition. The balance of acrobatics, combat, and puzzle-solving is just that: a balance. You will run and climb your way to the corrupted land (acrobatics), possibly solve a riddle (puzzle-solving) to get you to the next level…where you will fight a mini boss (combat). Rinse and repeat. There is little variety, especially when the mini bosses all have a pattern to them. After the lands are healed you can spend time hunting down balls of light, but you really only need to find 600 or so to complete the game, and I don’t I’ll go back and find all 1,001 of them.

Achievement-wise, Prince of Persia seems fairly forgiving, especially since you can’t die (more on that in a second). I unlocked 35 out of 60 on my first playthrough, none of which required too much skill. A majority of story progression-based, some involved special tactics against the mini bossess, others were more about collecting. My favorites were Improvisor (10G: Congratulations, you used the environment to your advantage.) and Precious Time (10G: Congratulations, you know when to stop.).

That said, I will never achieve Be Gentle With Her (100G: Elika saves you fewer than 100 times in the whole game.). Technically, the Prince can’t die…but I died a lot in this game. Missed jumps, timing off, QTE jitters. I’m pretty sure Elika saved me at least 500 times or more. A moot point, but I’m a little put off by the fact that the achievements all use the same picture and word “Congratulations”…feels a bit robotic if you ask me.

In the end, the reboot works though. It’s a much more colorful and lively game thanks to the graphics and voice acting, even if it gets stale rather quickly. A little more variety would’ve been nice especially since it was billed as having “open-world gameplay,” but for $20.00, I had a good time. You might, too.

7 out 10

Nintendo Announces the Nintendo DSi LL

Nintendo announced at a Tokyo press event there will be a revised version of the Nintendo DS, dubbed the Nintendo DSi LL.

Great. Cause at this point, the world needs one more iteration of the DS. Here’s how it’s gone down over time:

1. The DS
2. The DS Lite
3. The DSi
4. The DSi LL

Evidently the “LL” is in reference to the new, larger screens, which fans have been asking for since the 207 B.C. It’s mostly there for those using the system to listen to music and surf the Interwebz though I wouldn’t mind seeing my tiny Animal Crossing: Wild World items better represented. Anyways, the new DSi LL also comes with two styluses, three in-system games, the DS Easy Dictionary, and three snazzy colors (Dark Brown, Wine Red, and Natural White). There’s probably a stronger battery life in there, too. No U.S. launch date or pricing yet.

For what it’s worth, I love the color wine red, but really feel that things need to slow dooooooown.

Kotaku has a comparison up of the DSi LL to the DSi and DS Lite.