Thalzon

Those screens actually make a lot of sense. Games rarely resemble their concept art completely, and no matter how "epic" this is, we have to remember that it's still Disney, and therefore a certain level of "not scaring the shit out of five-year-olds" is required... Or has been since like 1965 at least. It still looks dark and vaguely ominous to me. Sure, there's no monstrosities comprised of several random disney characters anywhere (except that car thing with the Hades face -- weird), but it's still oozing style. The mix of colourful, decidedly happy Mickey with the bizarre architecture and ominous twisted realms is a good contrast.

We can also rename the FFs to have neato subtitles. Final Fantasy 1: Chaos Crystals Final Fantasy 2: Drag Me Through Hell Final Fantasy 3: Eh Final Fantasy 4: Moon Prism Power Final Fantasy 5: A Tale of Two Worlds (hurr durr easy joke to make) Final Fantasy 6: The Gods Must Be Crazy Final Fantasy 7: Big Holes Final Fantasy 8: Chess to Impress Final Fantasy 9: The Wizards At Odds Final Fantasy 10: The Real World Okay maybe not.

I know. But those are their titles.

Lou ain't dead. He'll live on.... in our hearts.

Mystic Quest Crystal Chronicles Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers Chocobo Racing FF7: Dirge of Cerberus FF7: Crisis Core FF4: After Years Chocobo's Dungeon Chocobo's Dungeon 2 FF Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon FF Tactics FF Tactics Advance FF Tactics A2 FF Legend FF Legend 2 FF Legend 3 FF Adventure FF Dissidia

I really want this game. Psychonauts is by far my favourite platformer of the last generation. However, I am nearly broke, and won't be able to afford this and A Boy & His Blob (out the day after) unless I get hired somewhere.

Nope! I haven't used any cards yet, anyway. Found some, but they appear to be for a minigame. Your armour is saddles and your weapons are talons. It's a straight-up roguelike with job classes.

Speaking of rather underrated Squeenix games, I bought FF Fables: Chocobo Tales. It's a roguelike game, and a simple one at that. Not terribly difficult, but it's still fun, has good voice acting, and very bright, sharp graphics. Best of all, about 95% of the music is remixed older FF songs! So far I've heard The Void (FF5), Hunter's Chance (FF9), The Man With the Machine Gun (FF8), and the boss music from FF8. There's more, but my knowledge of lesser FF themes like town music or some dungeon music is tenuous at best. Dialogue is a bit.... special, though. Because it's a light, fairy tale-esque story, you won't even hear so much as a "darn".

Silly Yahtzee, Ooze totally beats Cthulu!

I liked Meteos. Don't own it anymore, though.

I bought it for $15 on Wiiware and it was totally worth it. The music mixed well with the creepy, laissez-faire apocalypse plot, and the ending was one of the more touching ones I've seen lately.

World of Goo-ooh-ooh-oooooh.

Of course, most jobs are reptitive bullshit anyway. I never homebrewed Brawl because tripping and losing and wavebouncing and all that shit don't really matter that much to me. It's a game I play with friends every once in a while. I mean if you're making money off it being serious business more power to you. But eh.

Video games got me into video games. I recently graduated from a game development college program. 3 years. No job yet tho. Woooooooooooo.

V is for Vexx.

"feeling" being the operative word here. Doesn't mean they can't put on an act or whatever, or bitch endlessly to garner up whatever sympathy they can. Really though, the whole idea of an omniscient council of vagueness made up of nothing but sexy metrosexual guys (and one psycho-bitch) talking about hearts and kingdoms and shit and generally being really bad at following their own plans was an ill-conceived idea from the get-go. Seriously. When your whole plan is, "Let Sora kill lots of Heartless and stay out of his way", you don't usually GET IN HIS WAY if you want to succeed. But oh well, there goes Xigbar, Xaldin, Demyx, etc etc etc... Of course, they were just following Fearless Leader's orders, so maybe they're just too dumb to live.

He's physically in your way earlier in the dungeon. You fight him, the battle stops, he leaves. Then he comes back during the fight against Necrophobe (or whatever his name is) and goes boom.

Mass Effect has a similar moral dilemma in one of its downloadable missions. In Bring Down the Sky, you ultimately have the option of saving the civilians and letting the terrorist go free (considered the "good" choice) or capturing and executing the terrorist at the cost of all 100 hostages' lives (the "bad" choice). No matter what you choose you're likely to be called on it for being a wrong choice, however (especially by that Turian council member who's never happy with anything you do, ever). Then again, Shepherd doesn't really feel like a "you" in this case. I mean, you can make him as close to being "you" as possible, but in the end you're not seeing the story through his eyes or anything. And at least Mass Effect had the decency to have highly idealistic and highly cynical outcomes for most important game choices. But then there's Kaiden and Ashley. SPOILERS ahead! You gotta choose to kill one or the other. There is no way to take a third option. Also, depending on earlier choices, the lives of other soldiers may be affected as well. So, sucks to be you if your party was Shepherd, Kaiden, and Ashley. One gets to die horribly in a nuclear explosion, no exceptions.

Pixar worlds in general would be pretty sweet. Also, give us 101 Dalmatians world, just for the chance to totally fuck up Cruella DeVille. But yeah, Pixar's ripe for worlds: Toy Story Bug's Life Monster's Inc Up Incredibles Lastly, gimme a James & the Giant Peach world.

He also mentioned later on in the game that Hollow Bastion was their home. Cloud, Aerith, Yuffie, Cid, and Squall are all from Hollow Bastion.

F is for Fatal Fury.

Anyway, about new games that AREN'T Mario/Metroid/Zelda coming out in the next year or so... Tales of Graces! Lots of redheads this time around (also a bluehead and purplehead and one redhead is also a Canadianhead). They say it'll be one of the longest Tales games, story-wise, at 80 hours or so of main plot. Sadly I didn't buy the Conduit, but Grinder looks pretty neat (if all those vampires don't take forever to kill like in the trailers). I'm a sucker for a gripping plot, so I'll buy any game that has one... If I can afford it, anyway. Also, Endless Ocean 2. I loved the first one. Wish I played it more thoroughly than I did, though.

R is for Radiata Stories.

... Oy. Yeah, I feel dumb. Thanks, though.

It started getting really bad around the time Wii Music was shown off. It seemed like everyone I knew began denouncing the Wii as "just a Smash Bros machine" and that Nintendo had sold out. To someone who had been keeping an eye on the actual good titles and making informed purchases for the system it baffled me. These people hadn't bought Zack & Wiki, de Blob, No More Heroes, etc etc etc... But they complained anyway. Hell, most hadn't bought anything besides Smash Bros. Did they just want... another Smash Bros? With fans like that, I could totally understand Nintendo not bothering to please them... But Nintendo never really "abandoned" them anyway.