Avatar of Justice

Well, it looks like they are still calling Robotnik Eggman from the website. I know that'll piss a lot of people off automatically.

What game is this? An RPG where the two paired romantic leads don't end up together, the male rejects the woman, and the woman ends up with someone else actually sounds pretty interesting for an JRPG story. Also, if he's a White Knight, wouldn't that mean he SHOULD get the hottest piece of ass around, or are you saying hot girls only like assholes?

Hmmm. It sounds like a lot of the people who rag on JRPGs play a lot more new JRPGs than I do. As with every genre of gaming that I like, I tend to play the 1-2 games of that genre in that year that really appeal to me and ignore the rest due to non-gaming interests that demand my attention. When the only new JRPG's you are playing are the really exceptional ones like Valkyria Chronicles and The World Ends With You, the future of the genre looks a lot brighter.

So what you're telling me is that all these "innovative artists" that worked on Heavy Rain actually just remade Dragon's Lair?

This is why the only website where I really pay much attention to JRPG reviews is RPGamer. The rest of the websites seem to spend half their time complaining about things that are inherent in the JRPG genre that I actually like. I'm around 24, and I don't really feel like on my next birthday I'll suddenly turn against JRPGs. I've just had to find new reasons to still like them as a lot of the plots became laughable and generic around the time I graduated high school. Rather than caring all about the story like I did as a kid, I tend to focus a lot more on the gameplay and design aesthetics. As a kid, I didn't give a shit about Chrono Trigger's battle system, I wanted to know the story. As an adult who played through Chrono Trigger last week and found the lack of character development to be boring, I appreciated the fast-pace of the game, battle system, logical dungeon design and clever enemy placement.

Has anyone played Sands of Destruction? It came out last week on the DS, and I can't find any good reviews of it. It has Yasunori Mitsuda as the composter and Masato Kato (writer of Xenogears and Chrono Trigger) wrote the story. I'm in love with the concept of the game where you play as a group of people bent on destroying the world. However, it seems like it has the potential to be a mediocre game.

Heavy Rain lost me when the creators and the hype got overly pretentious. http://kotaku.com/5430794/heavy-rain-not-a-video-game-anymore-in-creators-mind Yeah, fuck off. I'm sick of seeing people all over the Internet heralding it as some savior of video games. That being said, if the interactivity ends up working out, I might check it out. I love noir. It comes out a little too close to FF13 for me though to check it out anytime soon though.

I assume the Japanese, in general, just suck at games at this point. A lot of old NES games were easy in their Japanese incarnations and this tradition continues up through today with games like MGS4 where the Japanese normal was the US easy. Too many dating sims, not enough Contra in their gaming diet.

This. I'm convinced that the future of the 40-50+ hour game lies on handhelds.

http://www.gamestooge.com/2010/01/06/final-fantasy-xiii-last-of-its-kind-for-square-enix/ Basically, what I'm hearing is "If this game doesn't make enough of a profit we are moving away from the traditional Final Fantasy model." I imagine this is less gameplay related and more of the fact that the Final Fantasy model is spending 3-4+ years on a single 40+ hour product and selling it. As opposed to say something like Gears of War, Assassin's Creed, or Modern Warfare, where the model is to only spend 2 years on the product, make it only a 20 hour or less game, sell MORE copies than Final Fantasy sells, and then just make sequels out the ass every few years. Also, he has noticed that Final Fantasy is becoming niche and lacks mainstream appeal. Square-Enix doesn't want to be Atlus. Final Fantasy is profitable, but it could be MORE profitable which is how these corporate types always see things.

Rarely. The first music I ever loved was the music in games I was playing, so I often have a hard time liking music (game or otherwise) without a "context" or story that evokes an emotion within me. This is why I often don't like songs that might have great music but lyrics that I can't relate to. The context sucks. Sometimes, I'll listen to a games music before the game comes out. Like take BlazBlue or Guilty Gear Isuka. I had the soundtracks to those games months before the US release because I'm a fan of ArcSys games and Daisuke Ishiwatari's music in particular. I also typically listen to some of a Final Fantasy's music before it comes out just to get myself hyped up for the release date. A funny situation I found myself in in 2007 was trying to decide whether to play The World Ends with You or Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. I decided to download both of their soundtracks and play the game with the more interesting soundtrack. TWEWY won by a long shot. So in that case, I used the music to like the game, not the game to like the music (nostalgia as you call it).

Yuuki-chan's Papa, obviously.

I vote they make a God of War style game where you play as a Ganon lookalike character who uses the Triforce of Power to brutally rip apart Zelda's iron fist rule of Hyrule using the Triforce of Wisdom with Link as the commander of her armies of tyranny. It's called The Legend of Zelda: Queen of Death, as Zelda rules from Death Mountain.

I loaded up my SNES Chrono Trigger cart yesterday for the first time in 6+ years and all my saves are still around, and new save files still work. Hell, a Zelda 2 cart I own still has working saves. I know that save batteries can eventually fail, but my NES and SNES collection has yet to have a battery-backed up game that can no longer save. Does anyone have any stories related to battery backed up old games no longer saving correctly? I would've thought those batteries would've started failing by now.

This is the same man who was a secret agent in World War 2. During filming of LotR, when Saruman was stabbed in the back by Grima Wormtounge, Peter Jackson was displeased with the gurgling noise Lee made and told him to change it to something else. Lee informed him that the sound Jackson was making was not the sound a man stabbed in the back made. I am pre-ordering this shit.

Things I learned at MAGFest 8: 1)The Megas don't suck. The Protomen are much much better all around, but The Megas really don't suck. 2)The One-Ups have went on to do much better material than Time & Space since I bought Time & Space 6+ years ago. 3)LittleSound DJ is pretty badass. I saw Zen Albatross "just mess around" (in his words) and was blown away. 4)I seriously need to learn an instrument. I like music too much not to and you people who can play are like gods to me, and I want to join your ranks. I'm starting piano lessons as soon as my acting classes are done with in 8 weeks. 5)DDR is fun. In the words of one of my friends "I can't believe it took you until 2010 to discover DDR." That is all.

I've pretty much had a blast with every Final Fantasy that I've played (III - XII) excepting IX, which I didn't bother to beat, and XI which I don't even consider part of the main series. FFX had the best story for me and FFXII had the best gameplay. It was just FUN to roam around and not have to micromanage the combat constantly. Linearity doesn't really bother me. My favorite video game, The World Ends With You, was a linear experience and I thought it was fantastic. If the combat in FF13 is fun, the story is good, and the music delivers, I will have no complaints.

This movie is basically a Dances With Wolves that doesn't suck. And I'm ok with that. I really like the idea of the neural network planet that Pandora is. Plus, the movie has the most extreme thing I have ever seen. A giant robot jumps out of a burning airship. That's fucking extreme.

I guess she won't ever be doing a collaboration CD with Paul Oakenfold now. Damn, I was really looking forward to that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk3Z__7ItJY

Well, here's for hoping for a PlayStation 3 release since I don't expect to own a Wii anytime soon.. I wouldn't expect Nintendo Power to say anything about the other consoles.

I'll be coming from Raleigh NC although my car and room are already full with friends.

Epica, a symphonic metal band who has a soprano and a guy doing death grunts. They are a bit like Nightwish, but in my opinion better. I saw them a few years ago in Charlotte when they opened for Symphony X and they were pretty awesome. Never Enough: Fools of Damnation: Chasing the Dragon: Sancta Terra: The Divine Conspiracy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbv65llQ0e0 I'd love to see this used as a final boss theme in Castlevania. They are a metal band with a hot red head as the lead singer http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Epica_Hellfest_2007_17.jpg How could they not be awesome?

There's some song from La Pucelle that I have on my mp3 player called Maiden of Light that sounds more Celtic than J-pop. It isn't the song you linked to obviously. And yes, I f'ing love the Suikoden III intro. What I want to know is how important this stupid FF13 song is exactly. Is it just going to be played during the credits like FF12's? It's probably going to be used in promotional materials than anything. I'd be right with you guys if Uematsu had composed the original J-pop song or something. That would've been a huge snub to long-time fans of the series. Console yourself with the awesome FFXIII battle theme: the best Final Fantasy battle theme since Don't Be Afraid from FFVIII.

Not all those tracks are pop. The vocal tracks I know from La Pucelle Tactics and Suikoden III aren't pop.

The game community continues to baffle me. They announce the release to a new Final Fantasy and a bunch of people are pissed about some pop song? Whatever. They already are screwing up the immersiveness for me by including any kind of pop song J-pop or Western. Alright weeaboos, listen up. Square is trying to make Final Fantasy a truly international product because their sales are down. There aren't enough weabboos to sustain big budget Final Fantasy games. Therefore, they gotta localize the game and make it have broad appeal. Americans aren't used to suddenly hearing J-pop in their movies. So deal. Shitty pop is shitty pop whether in Japanese or English. When the gods offer you a blessing like Final Fantasy, you don't complain.