Shadow Wolf

That is definitely my biggest complaint with Final Fantasy XII. Character identity was skin deep and went no farther than the model because every character could learn exactly the same skills and be changed on a dime to be a completely different class, and perform exactly as well as the person before them. It removed the NEED for using more than the characters you had in your party. Pick the prettiest and play through the whole game with them. If that direction continues with the series, I'll probably never pick up another Final Fantasy game. I personally (and I'm aware of my minority status) think that 10 had the best training system devised in the history of the series. The sphere grid was genius, because while every character COULD learn the whole grid, they had to start SOMEWHERE, and that somewhere defined what their class would be for the majority of the game. Skipping around meant you never accessed high level skills, you needed to follow a path out. The second thing that game did right was instant and unlimited party shifts in the midst of a battle. I felt that actually reinforced the identities of the characters. Yuna was never ever a frontline in my party, because she couldn't fight worth a hoot. But if I needed a white mage, well dammit Yuna was it, so I moved out Kimahri, cuz I didn't need a tank, I needed healing and Yuna could do it. I thought it gave a great sense of uniqueness to every character, and a beautiful level of strategy and flow to party management.

What exactly is the difference between 13 and versus 13? Forgive me for being behind the times, but I tend not to give a crap about FF games anymore until they can be bought cheap. 12 kinda ruined it for me. Beautiful game, deep combat systems, deeper story. Problem was it was too damn deep to get into. I got things to do.

No! Dammit Salieri! B FLAT! Really though DS, I bet Mozart has a lot of mixes posted on this site. How many of the mixers here did he INSPIRE in some way shape or form? Don't those mixes belong to him just a little bit? That said, it is kinda fucked up nobody could get your birthday right.

Last year didn't strike me as a particularly huge year for games, honestly, but that may well be because I was just too busy to play any. Still, the only really major releases I can think of off the top of my head are LittleBigPlanet, Fallout 3, and Gears 2. Throw in Bioshock for PS3 if you like, but that was a 2007 rlease originally. Hard to say what we'll see this year though. Usually the big announcements happen in roughly May, and the big releases start in the Summer, with the killer apps releasing even later in November. I hope it's a good year, I'll have time to play games again come May!

Thanks.

Yeah, I suppose it's time for an update. My weight is now 239.6, (overall loss of 20.1 pounds and continuing to drop) and my legs are in insane shape. Upper body's still a trick because of spinal issues, so all I can really do is walk. Point is, I'm losing weight. Yay!

BWAHAHAHAHAHA you thought it was Zelda and it's a game shorter than all of your prior sexual experiences combined. HAHA. I shall now go drink and smirk in a superior and ostentatious fashion.

Although I think there's .0000001% chance this is a Zelda game, I will throw my two pesos in: The old formula of Zelda is worn out. WORN. OUT. It isn't innovative anymore, however intriguing it might be. 3 dungeons, major game event, 7 more, and endgame... it worked very well for LttP and Ocarina, they were amazing games. Anymore in a Zelda game, we're very lucky to see one that contains as many dungeons as Ocarina and Twilight Princess. We usually end up with games like Majora's Mask and Wind Waker that have a neat overworld, but only 4 or 5 true dungeons. In today's gaming world of swords, sorcery and questing on a scale as epic and huge as World of Warcraft, and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, it's time to re-examine things. I'd like to see Zelda at the very least move to an open overworld type of format, sort of like Fallout 3, to use the most recent example I can think of. You receive quests from characters, and dungeons sort of happen in little parts all over the overworld. You might get the key to the end of a dungeon from a character in the overworld, ACROSS the overworld from said dungeon. Larger scale, at the very least, and probably an even bigger overhaul than that. Things in Zelda games have become TOO compressed, TOO predictable, and TOO easy. Even playing a new Zelda game cold, I know exactly what I need to do to beat it. Map, compass, key, item, boss, and move to next dungeon. This isn't just Zelda. ALL Nintendo's major franchises are suffering from this stagnation. Zelda hasn't seen anything truly innovative and fresh since Ocarina of Time in my opinion. Mario Galaxy was really cool and very fun to play, but even at that it was merely an extension of the formula introduced in '96 with Mario 64. Even the Metroid series is beginning to suffer, despite the fact that Retro did a beautiful job with all 3 of them. But when I start any game from any one of those franchises, I know exactly what to do and how to do it. There hasn't been a learning curve for me to conquer in a Nintendo game in 11 to 13 years. It's time for change, and until then I usually end up taking my thumbs to meatier offerings on the PS3 like Fallout 3.

ROFL at the totally rampant and completely baseless speculation.

I'm gonna be the first one to chime in and say I doubt it. I don't see anything whatsoever that would denote Zelda in the animation, except the aforementioned Sierpinski triangle at the 12 o' clock position. You see the same symbol with other triangles removed around the face of the clock. Really though, I say no for a couple reasons. One, Marvelous has made some neat games, but unless Nintendo bought a controlling interest in the company, I don't see them ready to take on anything like Zelda. The most well known thing they've done in the past is Harvest Moon games, and the original concept for that wasn't even theirs, it was Natsume's. Second and perhaps more important is that if Nintendo needs a third party to take on a Zelda game for Wii or otherwise, they already have a long and successful working relationship with Capcom. There's people at Capcom that already know Nintendo's workflow and styles of management for Zelda games, even if they have been handheld games thus far. From a business standpoint, it would seem silly to me to throw my resources into training people from another company when I could tweak things with my previous Zelda dev groups from Capcom and probably get them rolling on a Wii game pretty quickly. EDIT: Mute and Bleck, Capcom didn't "make" the Oracle games or Minish Cap, in the sense of having complete creative control. They developed them, and Nintendo published. In other words, Miyamoto worked with the dev teams at Capcom to bring another of his stories to their handhelds. So as far as story, and to a great extent gameplay, Nintendo still called the shots, much like they did with Retro and the Metroid Prime series.

Gauntlet: Dark Legacy. Serious issues. Muddy graphics, music composed so half-assedly that it's actually off beat in certain places... but crazy fun to play.

WUUUUT? If I hadn't just started my last semester I would be all up on this like white on rice on a paper plate with a glass of milk in a snowstorm.

I really liked Advent Children personally, because I knew from the outset that it would never live up to the sheer amount and quality of the story from Final Fantasy 7. I always viewed it as an aside, as an addendum to the original story rather than one that's supposed to stand alone. As a part of the FF7 story, it's merely a postscript, and as a movie, it's pure fanservice, no two ways about it. What I enjoyed most was that because of the visuals, it gave me a much greater appreciation for the world they were trying to convey in the original game. When the Lord of the Rings movies released, seeing those characters come to life on screen made it much eaiser to enter the world of the books for me. I had read the books before, and had a kind of mental image of each character and place. After seeing the movies, I see those actors and those locations when I read the books. Advent Children did the same thing for me. It clarified the look of the characters, the locations, and many of the personalities in ways that the PS1 game simply couldn't. I actually enjoy playing FF7 more now because of that movie. As far as Spirits Within goes... it was pretty, all around. Pretty to look at, and pretty bad as far as decent movies go.

Wait, I lied way up there somewhere. I did adore Sonic and Knuckles, that was an awesome game.

That explains a lot. I haven't cared for a sonic game since Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but I always felt like Sonic Adventure 2 could've been good with an overhaul to the voice acting, controls, stop on a dime collision detection, superfluous characters, soundtrack, kill Tails in a bloody and satisfying gorefest.... Nevermind, I lied. Sonic's been broke for a long time, and it could be fixed by stripping off all the layers of crappy paint they've thrown on over the years to make it look new: Shadow, Amy, Werehogs, calling Dr. Robotnik Eggman, giving side characters that have no interest their own stories, THE CONTROLS... I want Sonic to be good again, I really do. But it's gonna take a lot to fix it. Like a studio that cares about it and isn't sweatshopped into making the games.

Hell yeah 2009! Post your resolutions, your hopes, your dreams, your pudding snacks... just have a good year everybody!

Fallout 3 is an absolute must. Definitely a very nonlinear RPG, but it's so open ended that you honest to God can play it over and over, choosing different dialogue options, and get an entirely different game. There is some credence to be given to the accusation that it's post-apocolyptic Elder Scrolls. Most of the control schemes, actions, and methods of character/world interaction were lifted directly from Elder Scrolls, but just because it plays the same way doesn't mean it's that alike. Just get it. On that note, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is amazing as well, although I haven't played it nearly so much as Fallout 3. I bought it several months ago and decided it was awesome, but I was tired of swords and sorcery at the time, which is probably why Fallout 3 fits me so well. EDIT: Since everyone bitches about the load times, it's worth noting that I've never found the loads in Oblivion or Fallout for PS3 to be over the top at ALL. The bullshit about loads making these games 'unplayable' is precisely that. I prefer these types of games on a console because they're guaranteed to play at full graphical quality without fucking up, and I don't have to tack 300 onto the price of the game for a new video card. Both Elder Scrolls and Oblivion for PS3 average about 8 seconds load time for a new area, if even that. You're really not gonna do much better than 8 seconds for an area load unless you're running a $2000+ PC. I never minded load times anyways, I have to drink my beer sometime. If you don't have time to wait around for an 8 second load, you probably have much more important things to do than play the game in the first place.

Yep, that's what this is labelled as.

I'll download this tonight when I'm on a nice fat juicy internet connection. That artwork is awesome though. It'd take me days if not weeks to cook up something that hot in Photoshop.

You and me both.

So I'm on dafont.com tonight, browsing for a font to use in my sextacular new sig. See below for l33t Ph0t0$h0p skilz. But WHAT to my wondering eyes should appear but the exact font used to make the site logo. I didn't even know such a thing existed. Do you people know how much OC Remix artwork I have NOT done because I didn't know this font existed? Do you know how many times I've ASKED about this font?

Thank you for inadvertently answering my question.

If I ever has an iPhone, I will also has your game. Question though. My 5 year old G4 iPod with Click Wheel is finally wheezing its last. In a few months, whenever they release any iPod Touch above 100 gigs, I'm picking one up. Do iPhone games work on the Touch?

DUDE! What the hell with everybody getting married and crap? I swear, this place is getting disgustingly sappy. I knew shit like this'd happen if UnMod wasn't here to balance out all the cuteness. No seriously, congratulations, and I wish the best for you both. It's a Festivus MIRACLE!

It does very much, thanks. I found the handy dandy cross compatibility chart a couple hours after I posted that last night. Their chart still says the GHWT drums don't work in Rock Band 1, but I don't believe that's accurate anymore either. It would seem the World Tour instruments are pretty widely agreed upon as the nicer controllers as well, so I'll eventually pick up RB1 and 2 and play them on the GH instruments. Since I don't have a PS3 that can play PS2 games, I'll have to pick up a PS2 guitar if I wanna play Guitar Hero 1 & 2. Honestly though, 3 was the only one I was overly concerned about, I don't like the number of bad covers in the first 2 GH games.