New friend request from Chocobo’s Crystal Tower

Many Facebook games pass me by day in, day out. I prefer it that way. I think the website did something recently to hide the thousand and one status updates pertaining to Farmville cows and one’s desperate plea for wood (::snerk::), which I’m eternally grateful for because you can only see so many of those before you begin to worry, not only about your sanity, but that of your friend’s. And when I did play a few Facebook games, such as Farmville and Pet Society, rarely did I ever choose to tell my friends about my latest in-game accomplishments. It’s not my style. I mean, I don’t do it with Fallout: New Vegas, rushing over to my laptop to alert everyone online that I completed the High Times quest and they should “like” this. No one cares.

And so it takes something special to get me into a Facebook game these days. Most are often click-spammers, lacking depth and forcing social interaction left and right. Thus, I was shocked to learn that Square Enix released two games for Facebook this week, both related to their Final Fantasy series: Knights of the Crystals and Chocobo’s Crystal Tower. I did not glance too long at the former title as it is very much a Mafia Wars sort of game, but the latter hooked me with its chocobo raising and RPGness.

I mean, the most fun I actually had in Final Fantasy VII was raising, breeding, and racing chocobos to obtain that ultimate summon spell hidden on a tiny island that only a special chocobo could get to. Took many long hours, as well as a strategy guide, but I did finally get it. And I ended up growing pretty attached to my giant magical birds, too.

So, in Chocobo’s Crystal Tower, which is currently in beta status, you raise chocobos on a ranch. You feed them, brush them, adorn them with adorable outfits, and, when they are old enough, send them off to a local tower to battle enemies, collect treasure, and gain experience. You can also breed your chocobo with other players’ birds. Everything takes time, which is fine, and you can spend your earned gil on decorations for your ranch, food, or special outfit items. The game also supports Achievements. It’s simple fun, with a cutesy art style and classic soundtrack; it’s biggest selling point is, naturally, hearing that instantly recognizable kweh! from your chocobo. Warms my heart every single time.

The game does a decent job of explaining most of its important parts to the player during the tutorial, but it’s a bit slow going, especially since none of my friends are playing it with me, and there’s some horrible load times as you switch between menus. I even got locked up on a loading screen and had to refresh out. Also, my current chocobo star Tiktok recently came back from a dungeon missing all of his gear (French hat, shirt, rubber boats), and I have no idea what happened or how to find out. Love throwing gil down the drain. We’ll see how long this one keeps me hooked…

Here’s the link to the game’s main page if you’re interested in giving it a shot.

BONUS QUESTION: How do you pronounce chocobo? Is it cho-co-bow or choc-oboe? Tara and I say it differently.

Kinect–or what’s so wrong with pressing buttons?

Lately, when I think about Kinect, Microsoft’s new piece of tech to power up their Xbox 360 and directly compete with the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move, the oil cans scene from The Jerk comes to mind. Except, instead of someone hating cans, they really hate buttons. Stay away from buttons!

I mean, really. What’s so wrong with pushing buttons?

Wait, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s talk about Kinect. Now, I have not experienced first hand this $150 add-on to the Xbox 360, but I’ve kept tabs on it and its plethora of games released this week, and it seems that the whole thing is rather…okay. Like, it sort of works, and when it works, it works, but other than that, this is not the spark of a revolution where gamers worldwide meet up in large fields, toss all their console controllers onto a stack of firewood, and spend the night singing hokey songs as the burdens of their past burn out a-mighty.

Right. So, Kinect is a camera, which tracks movement to turn the player into a living, breathing controller. The camera also comes with a built-in microphone to detect voice recognition. Sounds like something straight out of Minority Report. It could very well be. The point of Kinect is to introduce a new way gamers play games: hands-free. Or, rather, all about their hands. And feet. And entire body, too. You are the controller now, and you are in control. Swat at flying balls with your Xbox Live Avatar, play with pet tigers, and drive a videogame car like you would drive a real car, hands out and on the wheel.

These are all videogame tasks you could do the way it’s been for several decades, with a controller, some buttons, and thumbs. Also, sitting down. So why then is Kinect so insistent you do them without a controller? What’s so wrong with pushing buttons, anyways?

Strangely, I was never as skeptical as I am now when the Nintendo Wii came out. Sure, I didn’t really get it or fall in love with the concept, but the fact remained that, for most games, if one wanted to, one could turn the Wiimote sideways and play traditionally. I think that safety blanket was all I needed to be okay with the whole thing; and I do enjoy a couple rounds of Wii Sports, but never enough to do me in.

Back in the day, before every single game had some kind of tutorial level to teach you the basics, one had to figure out what each button did by pressing it. Hmm, how do I jump? Oh, this button. How do I run? Ahhh, hold down this one. Now, I wonder if I can run and jump for extra distance…

With Kinect, if you want your character to jump, you jump. I guess I just don’t see that as revolutionary. Or an upgrade. Pressing a button to jump is dang near a standard and, despite wonky physics at times (::ahem:: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind ::cough::), it’s perfected as a cause/reaction happening.

I’m not here to say that controller-free gaming isn’t fun or without a purpose; I just don’t see it as better than what we have now, and I do worry that a select portion of gamers are going to be completed ignored–unless one can imagine playing an entire first-person shooter by holding an imaginary gun in our hands and pulling the imaginary trigger a thousand times over. Also, will we see an epic Kinect RPG in the future? Will there ever be a mix of things where one can play with a controller and still do Kinect-like actions, or is it gonna be all or nothing from here on out? These are important questions, and I’m not the only ones thinking about them; reviews this week have been rather mild with excitement over the tech, criticizing its space neediness and glitchy recognition, as well as the lack of depth overall in its launch titles. All of this comes at a hefty price, too–$150 to $400, depending on what one already has in stock. Others, however, seem to be enjoying Kinect Adventures and navigating the dashboard like a superbeing with a swoosh of a hand.

For as long as I can though, I’m gonna push a button.

I don’t love zombies, but I’m probably gonna eat up I Love Zombies

Gotta be honest here…I’m not a huge fan of zombies.

Nowadays, the gaming trends seems to be “add zombies.” They’re coming soon to Red Dead Redemption, they’re swarming about in Borderlands, they’re funnily enough in PopCap puzzle games, they’re in Crackdown 2, they’re sort of in Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas, they’re in Mass Effect (don’t try and deny it, Husks), they are most definitely in the Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising series, and they are most likely not going away any time soon.

Hey, some people really dig ’em. Me? Not so much, and not just because I’d totally die super fast during a zombie outbreak.

Of course, there are exceptions. I’m totally in love with Cherie Priest’s books Boneshaker and Dreadnought, which feature zombie-like minions, nicely dubbed rotters, and I also happen to have really enjoyed Tobias Buckell’s Sly Mongoose. Guess I don’t mind the undead too much in fiction form.

That said, Zombie Daisuki (“I Love Zombies”) looks like a lot of fun. It’s a recently announced new Nintendo DS game that puts the player to the task of rebuilding one’s farm during a mass zombie outbreak. So, a survival farming sim? That’s gotta be twenty-six times better than a boring fantasy dungeon crawler farming sim, right? Check out how adorable it looks so far:

I Love Zombies will be released in Japan on January 20, 2011, for JPY 5,040 (approx. USD 62.36), with a B rating (12 and up). There’s not a lot of information out currently, but I’m definitely going to be keeping tabs on this one. It could very well be the title that changes my snobbiness towards zombie-heavy videogames for me.

Excellent memory is Mario’s greatest power-up

Got the yellowing, but still lovely SNES all set up last night, which meant that, naturally, Tara and I played some Super Mario Bros. 3 for a bit. Well, more like an hour and change. Because that’s just what happens. Time flies when you’re stomping goombas, opening item chests, and…playing that memory card mini-game that randomly appears on the overworld maps.

Remember that? You only got two chances to guess, and if both were wrong, well, that was your opportunity swarted. Good luck remembering what cards you flipped and where they were on the playing grid because the next time that mini-game might show up could be much later on. I used to scribble notes down on paper as a kid, crudely drawn diagrams and other rushed recreations, but I really don’t think I ever got to complete the full memory card game before.

Until last night, that is.

Only took three instances to clear the board, too. And for some reason, I really thought you got something special for doing that. A warp whistle, perhaps? I had no idea that you were already gaining items in the process. No idea. Like, if you flip the 20 coins card and match it with another 20 coins card…well, you got 20 coins for that. I was really hoping for an explosion of 1ups at the end of the whole thing. But it ended without a bang, and it was back to tackling level after level for the two of us.

In this time of the Internet, no secret is truly secret for long, no mystery still a mystery. It’s easy enough to look up the answers to all the memory card games online, but that totally ruins the fun. And I never had such an oppurtunity as a little kid on Christmas morning just plowing through the game in a fever of excitement and joy. I just had me and my brain full of Other Things to remember; it was hard going, and I probably only ever matched one or two cards, not even realizing that those items in my inventory were from there. Oh well. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle. We stopped somewhere around World 5, no skipping either, each with about 20+ extra lives already.

A night of Tekken 2 and Tony Hawk

Progress is slowly being made on setting up the living room at the Leaky Cauldron, with the most important part being the entertainment section where all the videogame systems go. Right now, we only have the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 up and working; the Wii and SNES will come later once we find all the wires and space for ’em. This is a little embarassing, but I only noticed that there were more audio/visual ports in the back of the TV as we moved it from apartment to apartment, and that means having multiple systems plugged in and ready to go without having to switch wires in and out all the time. Go ahead, call me a n00b. I deserve it.

Tara wanted to play some games last night, and since we were having trouble finding a certain wire for the SNES we went with some ol’ PlayStation games because, well, the majority of my Xbox 360 games are very much single-player experiences. Watching me play Fallout: New Vegas actually puts her to sleep, she says–but she means that in a nice way. Evidently, the sounds from V.A.T.S. and menu clicks are like white noise to her, very soothing and not distracting at all. To each their own, I guess.

First we rocked some Tekken 2, a game that really has not aged well. Those blocky, stiff characters really stand out as…blocky, stiff characters. Especially the bigger dudes like King and, um, Paul Phoenix’s hair. And speaking of characters, I didn’t have all of them. Must have erased my memory card save a long time ago, but now I’m itching to unlock everyone again just in case we ever feel the need to play a fighting game again. Having options is nice.

I remember when I first got my PlayStation; it came with a demo disc that had a slew of interesting titles on it. One was for a couple of rounds of Tekken 2, and it was all I played. Over and over and over. The same two characters, the same boring black background level, the same time limit. But over and over I played, trying to learn all the moves and throws, loving every instant replay it showed me. I remember thinking this was THE game to get, and soon after I did get it. And still have it. Playing it now, I can obviously point out its lack of depth (and side-steppin’), but it’s still a classic fighting game, with fun characters and bizarre snippets of FMV.

After a couple rounds, we moved on to some Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Oh boy. Tara was Wolverine and I was that Eyeball logo character. We did some free-skating in Suburbia and Los Angelos, falling down a lot and constantly goofing up strings of tricks, and then created characters in our own likeness. Well, mine could’ve been fatter. Did some more skating, skipping every rap song in the playlist. Was a lot of fun actually, and now I really want to revisit some older games that I haven’t played in a good ol’ while. Too bad Fallout: New Vegas is here, demanding the majority of my free gaming time. Yes, “too bad”…ha!

Inching closer to Ramona’s final evil ex

Twins are cool. That’s just a fact.

And over the weekend, Tara and I took down two of ’em, at the same time, thus earning ourselves the following Achievement from Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game:

Twin Dragons (10G): Defeated the Twins simultaneously.

To be honest, it happened too fast and too easily. I mean, we had so much trouble staying alive against Todd and Roxie; I figured the Twins were gonna be a handful of ass-whoopin’, but no. I got both of them cornered up in the top left part of the screen and slashed away with a stolen ninja sword while Tara took care of any nearby goons. Within seconds, one of the Twins was flashing yellow, an indication of his low health, and then boom–KO!!! Both dead. Both within milliseconds of each other. I really thought killing two bosses at the exact same time would’ve been tougher than that, but it was almost mindless how it went down.

Here’s hoping NegaScott or Gideon toss up a better challenge. Granted, there’s no Achievements tied to them so all Tara and I need to worry about is staying alive. I’ve hit the level cap with Scott, but she’s still climbing the experience ladder with Kim. I have to wonder if maybe I was a bit overpowered for the Twins? I doubt that though because just the level’s regular enemies put up one stink of a fight. Hmm. Can’t wait for the DLC and patch to help balance out the difficulty issues. Still need to get online access though…

Here’s a bunch of links to cool Fallout: New Vegas thingies

So, there’s this game out that I’m currently obsessed over. I’m sure you can figure out which one it is. No, it’s not Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction. Anyways, let me share some nifty links with y’all…

Over at Grimly Enthusiatic, a journal of the Courier’s days in the Mojave Wasteland. It’s not really an actual journal journal, as in “dear world, here’s what I did today, I am so lonely,” but rather a loglist of odd bugs and glitches. Looks like some desert folk can’t tell the difference between a male/female Courier.

Over at 1Up, read and take in their Fallout: New Vegas survival guide. Some very good tips, especially the whole “play to your strenths” one. Quick note: the guide contradicts itself by saying that Science, Repair, and Lock-picking are the best skills to tag and then says in the text that Science, Lock-picking, and Speech are the best. I’ve yet to really find a good use for lock-picking, but having a good Speech skill is nearly essential. Oh so essential. Tag it. TAG IT RIGHT NOW, KIDS.

Over at Popmatters, two interesting articles: Sex Workers and Sex Slavery in Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout: The Scrounging Simulator. I can’t really comment on the first one as I haven’t done any quests related to slavery and prostitutes in the latest game, but I do wholeheartedly agreed with the second article. During these tough times, it is important to learn to carry only what you need, only what will keep you going forward.

Over at G4TV, there’s a Fallout Fall Fashion Show. Pretty hilarious stuff. Actually, after watching, most of the outfits seem inspired more from Fallout 3 happenings rather than Fallout: New Vegas. Oh well. I’m sure many will still dig ’em. “Seriously, I’m gonna loot that body.”

Lastly, over at Kotaku, actor/rapper Ice-T is also dealing with the bugs and quirks in the Mojave Wasteland. Don’t really get it, but that’s just me. I’m still waiting for someone more like Zooey Deschanel to openly admit how much of a Fallout fan she is…

Okay, that’s all for now. Happy reading!

I hate the new Xbox.com

You know how the saying goes: nobody likes change.

But the revamping of Xbox.com, a website I would frequent often to scan my list of earned and unearned Achievements, catch up on what my online friends were doing, and play around a bit in the forums, has not merely been changed. It’s been made, more or less, unnavigable.

It took me a good number of clicks to find the forums, and even more to scan my list of games played as well as their progress towards 100%. What’s more annoying is that even when under my section of games played, clicking the game’s name or cover art box no longer brings me to my Achievement list; instead I am rerouted to the game’s hub page so I can hand over hard-earned money for DLC and Avatar items. Er, no thanks. No…see, I was supposed to click the “view Achievements” button off to the side. I don’t know. It’s probably a small thing to some people, but I used to think that all the covers and game names were connected to me and my progress. It is also harder to see what Achievements have been earned versus not earned; they used to be grayed out, but are now tagged the same style except they have “- -” next to the Gamerscore icon.

New features include the ability to edit avatars via the website, a combined view for messages, friend requests, and game invites, improved account notification; family reports so you can keep tabs on your household, and the ability to play web games with friends via the website or Windows Phone 7. Nothing to really jump around over. Couldn’t figure out how to play a web game with a friend via the site either.

Also, the fact that the new site incorporates so much white space gives it a vapid, unprofessional feel to it.

In short, ughhhhh. And I’ll probably end up using the site a whole lot less. Good job, Microsoft!

Found my first bugs in Fallout: New Vegas, and I’m not talking about radroaches or bloatflies

Fallout: New Vegas was only released like two weeks ago, and the world mostly knows it for being an extremely buggy game. And we’re not talking about a wasteland full of mutated swarms of praying mantises or radroaches; no, these are programming bugs, wonky coding and scripting that can totally ruin one’s gameplay session. Or, in my case, help keep me alive for a few more minutes. More on that later. But yeah, bugs. LET ME SHOW YOU THEM, says LOLCAT.

How bad can it be? Well, the game shipped, and several players found a rather unsettling bug in the very first few minutes. Not a good start. Luckily, Doc Mitchell’s head stayed put for my first playthrough. Over the past few days, thanks to a patch, Obsidian Entertainment passed along 200 scripting and quest bug fixes for those connected to the Internet. Me? Nope, no Web yet. Still gotta call Comcast and get it all set up at the Leaky Cauldron, which means I’m playing vanilla Fallout: New Vegas, the true layer, broken and spotty, the way it was meant to be played because, well, the game shipped like this, and that’s actually a little sad. They had like two years to toy with that engine. But Fallout 3 prepared me for glitchy gameplay, and there’s nothing too terrible to really get me to put this game aside.

So, last night, while working on the quest My Kind of Town I came across three different bugs.

Buggy bug #1: I entered an NCR tent near Primm to find a trooper standing on top of a chair as if she was five years old and throwing a tantrum for a cookie before dinner. Tara and I laughed out loud and waited for her to walk off the chair back to the floor. Which she did quickly. Odd, all in all.

Buggy bug #2: Being chased by two radscorpions, which, if both hit me, would be certain death. Thankfully, one of the radscorpions walked into a rock…and got stuck there. Like…inside the rock. I could target it with V.A.T.S. and all, but it was not moving from that rock. Sweet. I took care of its brother and then left it to die a rocky death.

Buggy bug #3: Now, this is the one that worries me. Was in the NCRCF, taking out Powder Gangers left and right in search of a new sheriff when all of a sudden…my gun disappeared. Poof. Gone. No more 9mm pistol. Yet I could still fire and damage enemies. I just had no way of aiming, but V.A.T.S. still worked as well. I tried putting my weapon away and taking it back out so to speak, but nothing showed. So I hid in a corner, freaking out with a bunch of corpses and bent cans. Then, without reason or sound, the gun came back. Thankfully, the room was already cleared out by then. This kind of bug can be very damaging though, and I hope I don’t see it happen again.

But at least no quests have wonked out on me…yet. That would be the saddest thing ever, like not being able to finish one’s favorite meal. I love quests. I love starting them, following them, and finishing them. Especially Fallout quests; they are so inventive and open, and they can be done this way or that way or not even done at all.

So, yeah. Fallout: New Vegas is kind of a crappy game from a programming bird’s eye view. However, that won’t stop me from having a good time. Think I might even head to the strip soon…

PING! GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED EVER

…oh right! I forgot to mention that I unlocked the above Achievement eleven days ago in a tiny chapel in Kinnelon, NJ, but I can’t seem to find it in my big  online list thingy. Hmm. Maybe it’s glitched. Well, the ceremony oh so happened, I swear! Further proof is on my ring finger and in my heart. Love you, hon.