Arcana
-
Posts
2,919 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Articles
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by Arcana
-
-
I am in Grande Prairie, Alberta. I'm an hour from the BC border, and about 14h from Vancouver. I was planning on flying down, hopefully catching a seat sale on Westjet.
I'm from Canada as well and I definitely plan to fly as well. For me though it's possibly cheaper to fly from Victoria to Seattle than it is to travel to Vancouver to fly from there.
-
I don't see anything in common between this game and an FPS other than the pace of the story. Normally Final Fantasy games give you the impression that it occurs over months whereas FPS games occur over a few days. FF XIII on the other hand is short in comparison.
Regarding saves, I just feel that, for such a forward-thinking series, they have a remarkably outdated mechanic. I don't mind manually-saving either, but having save points and no autosaves just strikes me as antiquated in games now - just like monster-grinding, using passwords for game progress, SDTV, and status windows that take up 2/3 of your screen all the time.
As I said - the game really should just autosave itself into a new file for each significant checkpoint, and in addition allow the player to, in addition, save whenever he or she wants to do so manually. Saving nowadays breaks up the game play more so than "Now loading" screens do and only remind me that "I'm playing a game".
And prohpet, I did play the PC version of DA:O. It autosaved pretty much every time you entered a new room, but you also got the opportunity to save manually, which I used frequently. Dragon Age was much less linear of a game than FF13, which also meant that you saved and loaded a lot.
I'm not about to recommend that someone not play Final Fantasy XIII because it uses an antiquated save feature. I just think that being prompted, every 30 minutes, with a "Do you want to save?" is an outdated mechanic.
-
That's a very underpowered computer. My 5-6 year old Pentium 4 3ghz desktop was definitely more powerful. The main problem is your audio drivers... you need a real interface of some kind, as most laptop interfaces are bad/CPU inefficient. Reason IS a CPU-efficient program but FL is hardly hungry at all.
Well the Pentium 4 architecture had an artificially deep pipeline simply to increase the clock speed. Recall that 5 years ago, you had a 3 GHz computer... check the clock speed of your computer now. If it's an Intel Core 2 Duo, chances are it's in the 2.5 to 3.5 GHz speed.
If he got a 1.6 GHz computer from 3 years ago it was probably an Intel Core Duo - a decent reference point is that 4 years ago, Apple released its first Intel MacBook and it was a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo.
But yeah, Propellerheads makes it a point of pride to say that their system is extremely efficient. They are extremely proud of it. Also, they don't use VSTs which might add some overhead to the whole system.
-
I take it you've never played Demon's Souls...
THERE ARE NO SAVE POINTS AS IT'S ALL DONE PERIODICALLY REGARDLESS.
nonetheless an awesome game.
I have not.
But "no manual saves" is bad design too.
-
Oh I'd say saving manually, or the occasional blurp requesting whether I wish to save or not is better imo. The auto-saving that occurs in Fallout 3 and Demon Souls for example can easily fuck one over...
"I didn't mean to save AFTER releasing Yurt! NOOOOOOO FFFFFFFFfFfffff"
"Okay so let try this baby out... FUCK got killed by the Deathclaw, no matter I'll reload... YOU GOT TO BE SHITTING ME, THREE SECONDS BEFORE I DIED?! OKAY I'll just load up from the last manual save I did.... TWO FUCKING HOURS OF GAME TIME AGO?!?! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"
yeah...
I'd turn off the automatic saving every chance I get and welcome the occasional game blurb requesting me if I wish to save; though I do find it funny sometimes how it asks if I wish to save before and after an event scene before I actually do anything.
That doesn't remove the opportunity for the player to walk up to the save point and select, "Save" though. I don't know if in Fallout 3 there were save points or save-anywhere features; the games I've played that featured autosave always did it on saves separate from the player's manual save slots. Final Fantasy doesn't force you to save either, you have to also go up to the save point and select "Save?" then "Want to save in a new file?"
-
Ohohoho, you'll be doing this plenty in the last 15-20 hours or so. Upgrading weapons and armor and spending crystal points gets crazy expensive and you'll want to make things as cheap as possible by using the right ammount of organic vs. mechanical components.
That doesn't surprise me.
Still, I maintain the lack of need for the game asking you to save and instead maintaining an automatic save for the lazy and/or motivated.
Every time you pass by a save point for the first time, it should automatically save in a new file (or overwrite the oldest file in a set of X autosaves allocated on the memory unit). The player as well is also provided the option to manually save (as the game already does) when he wants to experiment.
-
it doesn't allow autosaving because, as with all FF games, there are often times when you want to experiment with crafting or creating some weapon or armor and you don't want to save it if it doesn't work out. in the same way, you might save before you go into a tough dungeon so that you don't have to fight your way out if it doesn't go well, etc. autosaving wouldn't be a good design decision for this game, honestly. does the three seconds that it stops and asks you about saving really annoy you that much? on the ps3 it only takes a second or two to save, dunno about the 360 version.
Then how does Dragon Age: Origins, a game that's much less linear than FF XIII, get away with keeping an autosave file for you? There was a game that I actually saved and loaded repeatedly.
Do you know how you get into experimenting? Allow the player to keep both manual and automatic saves. I think this "experimenting" is virtually nonexistent anyway. Maybe later in the game, but in the first ten hours I've had zero desire to go back and take different decisions, whereas I have wished that I didn't have to go through 3-level deep save menus that destroy the immersiveness of the game.
It's like watching a movie in the theatre that has commercials in the middle of the damn movie.
to be honest, if these are your biggest complaints in a 60-hour, industry-changing, internet-polarizing, FPS-inspired RPG epic that you thought was going to be horrid, shut up and get back to playing =) just because you're too fat to get off the couch and change a disc doesn't mean that you're allowed to complain about it. play from the exercise bike
I'm quite able to change the discs myself, thank you - and if you read my white text you'll see that the disc thing was an extremely minor gripe. No need for insults now.
But thanks for the information about game installing. I didn't know you could install games on the XBox 360 (you'd think manuals would talk about this kind of thing).
-
I just bought this and I'm about 9 hours in (just switched to Disc 2).
I don't know, this game's interesting enough for me to have played nine hours in a single night (heh heh) but there's something... missing from it.
I'm going to blank out everything below just to prevent people from being spoiled even though I know most of you are ahead of me.
-Begin maybe spoilers-
My main problem with this game so far has been pacing. The game moves like molasses even though tons has happened. You know what's wrong with the pacing? Up until just now (the scene with Snow and Cid on the airship), there's been a lack of any formidable villain character. And, all prior to that, there's been little direction other than, "Let's get out of here". The problem is, as a viewer, I have one burning question:
Once they do get out, where are they going to go?
The Lightning/Hope arc is not bad because they actually made a plan, but even though I agree that Sazh is the best character in the game thus far, the parts with him and Vanille are mind-numbing at best and downright disturbing at worst (I really, really really hope that they don't get together. They have absolutely no chemistry together and they totally deserve other people in the world who will love them).
About two hours in, it's pretty exciting because you find out that they all get together, they become L'cie, and all of that, but then you're like "Uhhhhhhhh" and the "uhhhh" goes on for about 4 hours with maybe an hour worth of flashbacks. The motivating elements aren't there and it's kind of annoying that me, as a player, am playing with a pray-hope that it picks up.
I mean, I like "desperate survival situations" and all, but it seems that there's not enough discussion of "Where should we go?", "How will we live our life now?", or even "What are we going to eat tonight?" for me to suspend disbelief. I would have been totally happy seeing them in a scene scrounging for food or something if only because it helps satisfy my longing for grounding in realism and an illustration of the desperation of their situation while they determine how they are exactly getting off of whatever area of the world they're in.
I think it would have helped actually if there was either some kind of world map, or at least an indication that the characters knew where to go and that eventually, if they walked in the same direction long enough, they would get to that one town that slips my mind at the moment.
I think it's in elements like this that make the game's lack of a central map a bit harder to digest because you can't really orient yourself around the game world. They all talk about the world Cocoon, and the outer rim and the inner rim and the characters all know what it's like, but you the player still have no idea what it is like, what the countryside is like, and what the cities are like (though you get a taste of Bodhum in cutscenes). While this doesn't matter in a game like Doom 3 or Gears of War, it matters when the game is so character-focused and when the characters talk about things like missing home and trying to find their way home and things like that.
In fact the game reminds me a LOT of Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter in terms of its layout so far (by the way, BoF V is an excellent, excellent, excellent game and is thoroughly overlooked) because of its focus on dungeons and fighting, rather than on towns and character interaction. But at the same time, I'm reminded of the importance of towns in RPGs - towns are designed to immerse you and make you if not CARE about the world's inhabitants, then at least to make you understand a little about them. FFX's implementation of a town was good in that it was not a "base of operations" more than it was a "part of the story that you got involved in". FFX III is sorely lacking in that "everyday normal human stuff" so far. The flashbacks are by far the best at immersing people into what people's everyday lives were like (which is the point of them, I do understand that).
Basically, I've played for 9 hours and I'm pretty disappointed that more hasn't happened. Remember, in FF7, 9 hours of play got you out of Midgar and into Junon. In FF10, 9 hours got you significantly into Yuna's pilgrimage. In FF13? 9 hours later and you're just starting to get out of this barren underwasteland you crashed into after trying to get out of a crystallized lake that you also crashed into. I understand the pacing in this story is very different from the other games, but... yeah, in my opinion it's slow.
Also, while I rarely wonder about things like, "what are the characters going to eat?" that's because they normally have things like Inns and similar. Even in Final Fantasy X Tidus says, "I'm hungry!" I dunno. I don't wonder in Gears of War, Doom 3, or similar games because the entire game, even if it takes 15 hours, usually happens in what is presumably the span of the evening (Gears of War for example starts during the day, and ends the next morning). I think we all expect the scope of a Final Fantasy game to cover the span of many, many, many days and that the story will end up being really long.
I do agree with statements about Vanille's voice though I didn't really notice her 'squeaking' so much just because it's such typical Japanese girl fare to squeak and do orgasm-grunts. She's kind of annoying, but she's such a stereotypical character that I've learned to look past it. I don't get urges to beat her head in with a bat or anything.
As far as Snow goes... I don't like him. I think it's because he seems to try to be such a cliche Japanese-tough guy, right down to the beanie hat and unshaven chin and shit-eating grin. He's too archetypical. I hate his girlfriend Serah way more than Vanille, by the way.
Lightning goes into the archetype totally the other way, being the total "bitch girl".
In fact, one of the more believable characters I found was Hope because he's actually responding to the situation how most people I would think would respond - with despair, depression, thoughts of suicide, and desperately trying to prove himself useful in a (pathetic) attempt to get over it. Yeah, he's a whiney kid, but you'd probably be a whiney kid too if your mom was killed violently and you were branded to death.
Story-wise, I appreciate the fact that the party doesn't like each other. I kind of lamented the teen rating because I really anticipated people calling Lightning "a real bitch". The shifting perspectives is pretty fun as well as the mandatory party changes (something I haven't really experienced since Final Fantasy IV, and it was something I really missed).
-End maybe spoilers-
The combat keeps getting better as the game goes on (though really I'm surprised it took them 9 hours to explain all of the combat elements and I bet there's still a few tutorials to go). I only realised just now that the stagger meter actually indicates the % bonus damage each hit does :0 I'm bad. Also, thanks Malaki for the tip of "organic" vs "machine" parts for weapons upgrading, I was wondering how I got XP bonuses from some items but not from others.
For a while when playing it (especially the first two hours) the combat was dreadfully boring because you don't have any options to select from. Getting the roles and paradigms in though makes the game far more interesting.
Finally, I am kind of concerned about the intricacies of the Crystal system. It doesn't look, well, significantly interesting. To me it kind of reminds of the implementation of the World of Warcraft talent point system, where a spec is a particular role and that there's pretty much One True Way to spec, with no variations whatsoever. There are no branches in the FF13 system (unlike the sphere system) and to me the system is just about "picking a tree and pressing A until you run out of points". When you max out a tree (so far, in the early game, it hasn't been hard to max out the trees at all, though I expect this to get super hard later on) you just pick the second-most useful tree and work on that until it's maxed out.
Oh and a couple more things...
Does anyone think this constant "Would you like to save your game?" is totally archaic? Of all the things that FF XIII is progressive about (fast complex battles, no HP loss between combat, streamlined exploration), WHY does the game insist on asking you if you want to save every time? Can't it just assume that you want to save, and do it? Or, even better, couldn't it just keep a set of two or three autosave files that it automatically saves to, like every other video game I've ever played? I've gotten so used to not having to keep track of saved games (or conversely having the option to save anywhere) that it's really a bummer that the game keeps asking you. Also, I hate how, by default, it asks me to save a NEW game every time. Again - I really don't need a new file whenever I save the game. Can't you just keep it on the old one? Or... yes, guess what. Autosaving is good. Please learn how to implement it for Final Fantasy XV, you'll only have about 7 years to learn how to do it in time for the XBox 720 and PS4. (Also whenever I start the game, it asks me what device I should load games to, and brings up my hard drive as the one and only option... I don't know if this is an XBox system issue or a FF XIII issue, but you'd think if it finds only one disc device on the computer it would default to that one).
"Loading... please wait" and "Please insert Disc 2" sucks, but it's a CD-based console game so I kind of expected it. It's a shame though. I have 90 GB free on the XBox 360, I wish they could allow me to install the game onto the hard drive.
Anyway, I had zero expectations of this game so although it sounds like I'm hating on it quite a bit, I'm not - I think it's interesting and I intend to play more of it. I think the basic story concept is good and I like the multiple character perspectives as well as the battle system. Even if the characters, individually, don't really strike me as being excellent, their interactions and situations are involving enough for me to want to keep playing. I'm hoping it picks up story-wise though.
Oh and before I forget...
Anyone else think that the image of Snow riding the bike is VAGUELY suggestive: http://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery-09/ff13-shiva-bike.html ?
-
Also note that the phenomenon of age and video games, while an issue before, didn't really start to take centre stage until the widespread use of voice communication for gaming. I'm sure back in the original counterstrike days when everyone played pick-up games without voice, no one cared about the age of the players on the same team.
-
Bayonetta is neither. She is very sexualized and dangerous, but she is neither baby-faced nor ice-queen. She is a mature woman, confident in her sexual dominance without needing to justify it by acting like a 12 year old or scowling at everyone she meets. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I have yet to see another character be so sexualized without becoming one of the two examples above.
I think it's just the "third stereotype" that people in North America tend to enjoy but that people in Japan don't really see as much.
It's the "mature, adult woman" type, the mentor and guardian character. This is becoming a more common archetype, possibly as gamers get older, as development shifts from Japanese views to Western views, and as tastes change (boys aren't as afraid to admit to having an older woman "show them the ropes" now).
-
I don't really see that as an error in judgement. I think it's safe to assume that he might have been well aware of how older gamers tend to shun/treat younger gamers and just wanted to avoid that all together. I don't think it's right to say the "mature" thing to do would be to say he can't speak on vent - either route he took at that point he would be lying about it.
I see it as his way of avoiding the whole younger/older gamer fiasco, which in my eyes, is fairly mature as he would rather just play the game than worry about age and talking over vent.
Well, I would see making up a story about how he had a vocal chord speech impediment being more a problem than saying "I don't have a mic". There's lying, and then there's lying.
You're right in that he is more mature than most kids his age (we talked to him later on - his voice was changing actually - and he was telling us about how he was doing well in school, doing competitive tennis tournaments, and how he was trying to avoid drugs and smoking).
But I still think that trying to make up a story is a bit on the problematic "drama" side. I think it happens to many people on this online age though, where people try to pretend to be someone they're not due to the ease of doing so (especially on online communities and games).
In many persistent communities (what I mean by persistent is a community where the same people regularly speak to each other, so a guild in a game, or a writing club, or even a group like OCR) the young people in the community either have to grow up or get out. If they act like "kids" so to speak, then they're going to get mocked. I think there's a lot of pressure in that respect to gain acceptance from older peers if you do happen to be young and want to fit in. This pressure definitely doesn't exist in incidental or emergent communities that get together fleetingly.
-
Wasn't there a similar thread where Harmony or BCG or someone linked an article where, when given the exact same version of a song, except one was made louder or something, almost everyone preferred the louder version?
-
Oh the other thing with kids is that you have to censor your own language too like The Author said. Even though you have it somewhere in the back of your mind that the kid already knows everything there is to know about bad oral sex jokes, you don't want to be that guy who cracks those jokes precisely when the kids can hear them.
-
I know at least one kid who lied about his age and refused to talk on vent because he was 13 at the time. He was ashamed of his age and his voice even though (as far as we could tell) he acted relatively mature at the time.
Of course until that incident the mature thing would be to tell us that he can't speak on vent rather than try to hide it (he said that he had a vocal chord problem and couldn't talk well). Eventually he came clean about it and everyone forgave him but it's kind of illustrative that even the most well-meaning kids have errors in judgement.
As for MMORPGs, the kids tend to get either weeded out through an application process (ex, they get you to talk on vent for an interview) or they get weeded out through culture over time (ex: if they find out the age you get ribbed until you want to quit). In almost all of the hardcore raiding guilds I've been in in WoW, all of them had an age limit and the youngest person they recruited was 17, and he was considered the baby of the group. He was a good player but when the 17-year old is considered young you know that there'd be no tolerance for 12-year olds.
Why not? Well in a game like WoW where you are expected to be online for the block of raid time (reminder, this is a hardcore raiding guild we're talking about, probably top 500 US guilds) and kids tend to interrupt with that. They have to "go do chores" or "go do homework" or "go to bed". Their parents are asking them to go to do whatever here and there. It's disruptive and difficult to work around when everyone else is able to block off time. Now if one of these things does happen, the guild would just replace his raid spot. A mature kid will handle it. An immature kid will whine about how his raid spot is given up (note that this happens to immature adults as well).
If the adults are playing a game when they are in a mood to teach people (like a casual WoW guild for example) then young kids are tolerated much more. In fact if you're in a good MMORPG guild and talk with adults a lot as a kid, it is actually going to affect you and you will end up acting more like them. Most of the time 12-15 year olds don't get a chance to hang out with adults due to school, so those who do get the chance to listen to what adults talk about and how they handle situations get the opportunity to learn social conventions much faster. Note that this means that you have to play the same game with the same group of people frequently and form friendships, of course.
-
So I was just thinking about the White Mage from Final Fantasy since I was looking into buying the game. I don't know where I read it (I think it was here actually on OCR) but someone once said:
"I had a huge crush on White Mage until she underwent a class change and turned out to be Jesus, ruining the fantasies of ten-year old boys everywhere."
As for my favourite female character? It's probably Lenneth, from Valkyrie Profile. Or Mystina. Or both. There's so many good characters in that game.
-
Because this is research, I won't put any of my own opinions on here. Thanks for helping me out!
Well, a mark of a good researcher is the person who is able to generate sound opinions backed up by data...
-
NEXT FROM OCR:
"The Final Fantasy X - Hurry! remix project" directed by Liontamer.
-
According to the reviews I've read, they're virtually identical to the PSP versions and yes include all of the extra dungeons.
-
Darkesword's my go-to man for this kind of trivia.
I read some press reviews of the PSP remakes and they almost unanimously claimed that the $30 asking price as too high, which means that $8 might be a fun romp in the park.
Yes, the last time I played Final Fantasy I was on the NES (not even emulated). I don't know where my NES is anymore but I remember that I owned the cart and that it was the only NES game that I still owned; I sold all of my other ones.
Might be worth grabbing especially since I've never completed FF II.
-
Has anyone tried these? They're $8 each. I am wondering if they're ports of the GBA ones that were released 4-5 years ago. Also I'm wondering if it would be better for me to just pick up the GBA ones if they're in fact very similar game-wise and graphics wise.
Thanks guys,
-
I recall reading in an interview that he uses Pro Tools... or was that Iwadare?... let me see if I can dig it up.
-
and it has nothing to do with sex.
You know, you would have gotten a small community if you told everyone that EA programmed a minigame in which you have to hit on chicks in a restaurant, but that you have to unlock it by doing five consecutive Birdies or something.
-
Say, install a pull-up bar and do a few pull-ups every time you walk through that doorway. Do a few push-ups while you're waiting for water to boil. Feels like nothing, doesn't require any substantial change to your daily routine, but it gets you started and gets you regularly exercising.
I totally want one of these in my house, when I get a house.
They're boards with finger grips in them, so you basically hang off of them to build grip strength and finger strength.
Whenever I go climbing though I think, "Man, I bet Taucer would be totally kickass at this."
-
What's been toned down in Logic Pro? I'm curious now.
Gamer IQ Test
in General Discussion
Posted
They put the pink-haired chick from Aion on this poster ("first" row). Surprised.