I is for…

"Nobody else can make a cowboy hat look this good."

Irvine: The lone wolf cowboy sharp shooter from Final Fantasy VIII, and also the last member of your party you gather in the game. Irvine is as girl crazy as he is gun crazy and doesn’t get along with anyone off the bat. He joins your gang just to shoot the Sorceress but this seemingly confident sniper kind of falls apart when it comes time to take the big shot, forcing Squall to channel his inner motivational coach. Irvine’s my favorite character in the game – I like his mix of arrogance and sensitivity. What I don’t love is getting the high powered pulse ammo for his limit break. Of course it can only be made from these rare and hard to get crystals. Because that’s where all decent bullets come from.

I is also for…

Surprisingly his favorite activity is snuggling.

It's getting hot in here! So take off all your clothes!

Ifrit – The fire based beast you can summon to rain fiery anger on your foes in most of the FF games. Along with Shiva, he’s one of the most reoccurring summoned figures.

Interceptor – Ninja Shadow’s trusty dog in FFVI. Shadow likes to claim the dog is deadly, and it’s hard to argue with him when the pup comes out of nowhere to attack your enemies after Shadow is hit. Man’s best friend indeed. Kick Relm or that walking corpse Strago off the team and put this canine in instead.

J is for…

"I'm that father you hope doesn't show up to your high school graduation! And don't worry, I won't."

Jecht – Main character Tidus’ arrogant dead beat dad who was a professional Blitzball player, an alcoholic and generally verbally abusive jerk to his small child. One day he up and disappeared, probably because he didn’t want to pay child support. Okay, that’s not what happened, but the actual story is a complicated thing involving time travel and three men on a journey to save the world. In my opinion, this guy’s best contribution to the game is his awesome Blitzball scoring technique, which is named after him, of course.

J is also for…

Gotta respect the mustache.

I think it's compensating for something.

Junon – After Midgar, it’s Shinra’s biggest stronghold in Final Fantasy VII. It boasts an underground mako reactor, friendly dolphins, non-stop Rufus parade music and a giant cannon by the end of the game.

Jumbo Cactaur – Take one of the tiny cactaur’s, multiply its size and terrifying 1000 needles attack by ten and slap a mustache on it. Now you have the Jumbo Cactaur, a very useful, if annoying to acquire GF from Final Fantasy VIII. Don’t take the proper approach while fighting him and he’ll run for the sandy hills, forcing you to repeat the whole painful process. And I mean painful. Can any attack called 10,000 needles be anything but?

K is for…

"This better be worth delivering all those chocobos myself."

Knights of the Round – And the angels came to Cloud and said, taketh this summon materia. And beat the crap out of Sephiroth with it. If only it was that easy. This is the ultimate summon of Final Fantasy VII. It makes that last battle with the one winged angel much easier. So of course getting it isn’t as easy as plunking down some gil in some shop. No. One of the few ways of getting your hands on this precious summon is by obtaining a gold chocobo. And the only way to get one of those is to either fight two terrifyingly murderous monsters or basically make one yourself. From scratch. Starting back a few generations. Good thing chocobos take only a day to be born and apparently can start mating as young as 2 seconds old. In all reality the planet should be overrun with these things. Anyway, all the hard work is worth it, because after Sephiroth hits you with multiple planets and a meteor and all other kinds of space garbage it’s pretty satisfying to send thirteen knights with sharp weapons after him.

K is also for…

"Just point me in the direction of the bar."

Do we at least get to make our own headstones like in Oregon Trail?

KO – Crap, you’re “knocked out” AKA “dead”. Or out of HP. Either way it’s not good. Break out the phoenix down or other life saving magic.

Kalm – The town right next to Midgar in Final Fantasy VII. This is where Cloud tells his really long and mostly inaccurate story of why he hates Sephiroth while Barret doesn’t pay attention and consequently understands nothing for the rest of the game.

L is for…

Squall strives for nothing less than constant perfection.

Limit Break:VI (Desperation Attack), VII, VIII, IX (Trance), X (Overdrive), XII (Quickening) – Sure, they’ve been called different things over the course of the series, but limit break is the preferred term. Basically they’re special attacks that can cause loads of damage. Usually you have to take a bit of damage to be able to use these awesome powers, but there are other ways to get these special moves going in certain cases. Trance is by far the worst of the incarnations – it isn’t very powerful and if it activates at the end of a fight too bad for you, because it’s not carrying over to the next battle. Overdrive is arguably the best – you can customize how you want your gauge to rise and you also have some control over the moves themselves.

L is also for…

Great, these stains are never gonna come out.

Girls can use swords!

Lightning – This main character from XIII has a kick ass name to match her attitude.

Lifestream – This stuff basically runs the planet in VII, although it can also poison you and make you loopy. Or, if you’re Cloud, it can cure your extreme memory problems and delusions of grandeur.

M is for…

FEED ME. IT HAS TO BE HUMAN AND IT HAS TO BE YOURS.

Malboros – There is no random encounter enemy that I hate more than this abomination. I’m pretty sure this thing is the result of the devil impregnating a some kind of mutated flytrap. And you can’t escape them. They pop up in game, after game, after game. Some titles have more than one type of this creep show – yes, they somehow managed to make the original even worse. By far the worst incarnation is in Final Fantasy VIII where their Bad Breath attack has brought my party to its blinded/silenced/petrified knees way too many times. Why? Because Bad Breath casts every status effect on your party. At once. And besides chucking acid at your face, it’s basically the only attack it’s got. And it’s all it needs. After casting it once, the Malboro then stands there and watches you slowly die. That’s it’s version of Jersey Shore.

M is also for…

Where dreams come to die!

I'm gonna take it home and call it cuddles!

Moogles – Cute, cuddly creatures that pop up in multiple titles, Moogles are always there to help. Sometimes they help you save or deliver mail, and in VI you even get to have one in your party! Kupo!

Midgar – Shinra’s stronghold city in VII, this city is divided into various sectors which are basically slums. You don’t get to explore too much of it, but when the nicest sector contains a whorehouse, you know this isn’t the type of place you want to be raising your kids. That and the fact that Shinra seems to have no problem destroying sections of it and crushing people to death.

N is for…

I can't even pronounce the name of this place, so I hate it already.

Necrohol of Nabudis – This is an optional area in XII, and the area basically brings death unless you have an insanely strong party. So why go there at all? Because you can find the best weapon in the game inside the monster overrun palace. And not only that, you can access this area fairly early in the game, when your party is nowhere near ready to take on the monsters inside. It is possible to run inside, grab the spear, and haul ass out of there, but you better be prepared to run and never look back. Because the baddies in there will murder you quickly. I call the mad dash to grab the weapon the “Run of Death”. It would be more worth it if the weapon were more badass, but the Zodiac Spear is actually kind of disappointing for something that’s such a pain to get.

N is also for…

"Why do none of the villains in this game have a defined gender?!"

Here's your poisoned coffee, Headmaster Cid!

Nida – He’s the other random character who becomes a SeeD alongside Squall and Co. Later he winds up piloting the Garden. Although he doesn’t say much, when he does speak he is annoying and/or creepy. At one point he mumbles under his breath that he’s going to run Garden one day. I’d stay away from his dorm if you want to keep your organs.

Necron – The bait and switch end boss in IX. You defeat Trance Kuja and then this whatever pops up out of nowhere. I guess it’s supposed to represent death, but no one’s really sure and it’s presence is basically pointless.

O is for…

"Wanna buy a potion? I swear they're real and not mostly water and vinegar."

O’aka – In X you meet this traveling merchant, and his prices are downright outrageous. After he tries to sell you potions he’s marked up 200%, he has the nerve to ask for a loan. Now I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure asking strangers for money isn’t the best business plan. Nor is giving money to random peddlers the best investment plan. In most cases, the guy would run off with your money never to be seen again. Well, luckily for Tidus and Co., if you give O’aka a certain amount of cash, he eventually offers the best prices in the game. He doesn’t run off and just buy a bunch of meth. O’aka also pops up in the sequel, where he again has money troubles and needs you to bail him out. On second thought, maybe he does need an intervention.

O is also for…

I fail to see what this has to do with the vegetable.

"Don't make eye contact with my horse. That alone will kill you."

Odin – the Norse god turned summon who pops up in several games. He’s probably most memorable in VIII where he has to be defeated in a certain amount of time in order to gain his respect and helping hand. After that he appears randomly in battle and destroys everything on screen…at least until you fight Seifer for the last time and he somehow manages to take the big guy down, even though he can’t even use his gunblade correctly.

Onion Knight - The Onion Knight has held many hats over the course of the series: a job class, an enemy and a weapon. Unless you’re a really hard core player, the job classes are kind of useless, as they are difficult to master, but the weapon is powerful, despite the fact that it looks like something you could win out of a crane machine at the arcade.

P is for…

You can never find one when you need it.

Phoenix Down – This item is the life force of your party. Literally. You can always count on a good ol’ Phoenix Down to bring your party members back to life. (Most of the time, anyway. They can be rather fussy in some of the games.) Some of the variables about the item may change from game to game (the price has ranged from 100 gil to a grand each, plus in III you can’t buy these necessities at all), but since the second game rolled around, fans knew what item they could throw on a fallen party member to get them back in the fight.

P is also for…

You take those baddies down, you...purple thing. With weird yellow...eyes? I hope?

Waiting for their Doublemint commercial.

Palom/Porom – Twin mages from IV who sacrifice themselves to save the rest of the party when the walls start caving in. Don’t worry, they come back. You can’t kill children in a game. Well, maybe you can. But you shouldn’t.

Pandemona – A wind element GF from VIII that looks like a…thing carrying a…thing. I don’t know. It’s fairly nightmarish. At least it’s on your side.

Next time, letters Q – Z and we finish this thing off!

If you want to read more of my stuff, check out my blog – Sephiroth’s Tutu.

How did I put this list together? Well, it was a stringent scientific process where I sat down, jotted down a bunch of Final Fantasy stuff and then whittled it down to the top three under each letter. I tried to choose things that encompassed more than one game, and when I couldn’t, I just picked my favorite stuff or what I thought was most important. Yeah, it really wasn’t scientific at all. I’m a total liar. Just enjoy the primer. I’ve broken it up into 3 parts so I don’t overwhelm you with too much Final Fantasy awesomeness.

A is for…

All aboard to the end boss!

Airship: What do the Highwind, Ragnarok, Hilda Garde I, Enterprise, Falcon, Lunar Whale and Strahl have in common? …Besides being kind of awesome band names. They’re all airships that have appeared in Final Fantasy games. In pretty much every title you work your way up to an airship that allows you to easily travel around the world and attend to your world saving duties. The best ones can land anywhere – some can even be hopped on through save points. You acquire them in various ways: simply finding them, borrowing them from an ally, and…occasionally you might have to steal it or rescue one from space. Pretty standard stuff. Finally getting your hands on an airship is a big deal – no more plodding around from one location to the next, fighting randomly encountered squirrels which are deceivingly powerful. Getting an airship is like a Final Fantasy rite of passage in every game. They let you easily zip around wherever you want to go in the entire world. All those side quests with the scary monsters to fight are now within your grasp…if you dare.

A is also for….

"I forsee myself kicking ass."with its giant feet.

You wouldn't imagine anything holy coming outta this thing.

Alexander – the gigantic machine-like summon that lays down a holy smack down.

And probably crushes stuff with its giant feet.

Auron – the grizzled, sword wielding guardian who always has a word of wisdom in Final Fantasy X.

B is for…

"I eat enemy faces for breakfast, with a side of orange juice."

Bahamut: Sometimes he comes in different varieties, like “neo” or “zero”, but mostly he’s just the intimidating dragon summon and/or boss that’s appeared in almost every Final Fantasy game. Sometimes he just up and joins you, sometimes he makes you play a trivia game because he’s been stuck in the cave watching too much Jeopardy lately, and sometimes he battles you to test your worth. That’s because Bahamut takes his services seriously – he knows he’s awesome, and he’s just not going to work for just any loser who stumbles upon his cave – and he doesn’t care if you were just looking for a quiet place to use the restroom. His non-elemental attack, Mega Flare, deals a lot of damage and you never have to worry if the baddie is gonna absorb it, or be immune to it, or laugh in your face in the midst of it. You can always count on the king of the dragons to swoop in and deal some serious damage. His motto? Bahamut – kills stuff dead.

B is also for…

You can't poison anyone in any normal sport. Not legally.

"Greedo didn't shoot first."

Balthier – the loveable and suave sky pirate who charms everyone who plays XII, all while drawing more than afew comparisons to Han Solo.

Blizball – the very popular (and seemingly only) sport in X that is played underwater. Somehow the players don’t require any kind of breathing device and can practice by simply tossing a ball around on a beach. Oh, and getting poisoned during a game is commonplace. Still sounds better than soccer.

C is for…

Ass kicker and tea connoisseur.

Cid – If someone asks you who your favorite Final Fantasy character is, you’re totally safe if you just answer Cid. There’s been a Cid in every single Final Fantasy game in some capacity. Sometimes he’s playable, other times he’s just trying to help you from the sidelines, and other times he just wants you dead – not all Cids can be perfect, I guess. Here’s a Cid crash course – memorize this list and you can impress plenty of people, like…uh…okay, no one. You don’t need to memorize anything when you can access Wikipedia from your phone.

• Cid (FFI) – Consistently referred to without ever bothering to show up. Just like your friend’s new girlfriend.
• Cid (FII) – Basically runs a taxi service. Somebody has to cart your party around.
• Cid Haze (FIII) – Airship creator extraordinaire.
• Cid Pollendina (FIV) – Another airship related Cid – this one is the airship designer for the Red Wings and he’s also the first Cid who is playable at all, although only for a little while.
• Cid Previa (FFV) – Multifunctional scientist who gives you answers about everything from airships to crystals to what those two chocobos are doing if they’re not fighting.  He’s often assisted by his grandson named Mid. What kind of horrible naming tradition do they have going on in that family?
• Cid Del Norte Marquez (FFVI), Inventor of Magitek armor. Oh, and you can kill him by not feeding him enough yummy fish. Dude demands high quality sushi.
• Cid Highwind (FFVII) – The only fully playable Cid, and probably the most well known and popular. Cid is a pilot who was supposed to go into space before his friend/maid/girlfriend/verbal punching bag Shera screwed up. He also enjoys a spot of tea.
• Cid Kramer (VIII) – Quite possibly the worst Cid ever. The headmaster of Garden, when he’s not complaining or hiding he’s putting some rookie student in charge of everything. Because that’s what a responsible school official should do in times of crisis.
• Regent Cid Fabool IX (IX) This leader of Lindblum spends most of the game as an oglop and later a frog after committing some martial indiscretions.  He also gives you airships, so he’s continuing that tradition.
• Cid (X) The fully competent and never transfigured leader of the Al Bhed, he’s also Rikku’s dad. And he shows up in an airship.
• Dr. Cidolfus Demen Bunansa (XII) – Researcher, rich guy, and – spoiler alert – Balthier’s estranged dad. Oh, and he’s a villain. And you kick his ass.
• Cid Raines (XIII) – General and quite possibly the youngest Cid ever.

What can we look forward to in future Cid’s? I’d put my money on something involving airships.

C is also for…

Screw this. Let's just make it into jewelry.

Aw, they're cute when you're not forced to breed them.

Chocobos – These large birds come in black, red, green, blue, gold or standard yellow. They race, dive, fly, run over mountains and rivers, dig for treasure, eat grass, mate, enjoy special nuts, hang out in forests, dodge birds, and cry out kweh! These sometimes loved and sometimes loathed creatures are a staple of the Final Fantasy universe.

Crystals – So many of the early Final Fantasy games have plots that revolve around crystals (often named after elements) that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the stories were chosen by reaching into a hat filled with ideas of various stuff that could happen to crystals. Stolen, broken, exploded – enough! They’re pretty but they are not an endless source of entertainment. Thank goodness they finally moved on.

D is for…

Princess Machete would have been more bad ass.

Dagger – And I don’t mean the weapon – I mean the Princess formerly known as Garnet from IX who takes the name of Zidane’s weapon on as her alias. She even uses one to chop all her hair off. Good thing Zidane’s wasn’t carrying a musket. Because that would have made an unfortunate nickname. And it’s definitely useless for dramatically cutting your hair while standing in the wind.

D is also for…

Too bad there isn't a stop for the hospital.

Don't worry, in this game death isn't forever. Most of the time.

Death – I’m talking about the spell here, not all the characters who’ve kicked the bucket. It’s a standard spell in the Final Fantasy repertoire – especially the infamous LVL 5 Death. Either you’re laughing ‘cause it’s harmless to your party, or you’re screaming in agony because every single member of your party has a level that’s a multiple of 5 and it’s game over.

Deling City – The capital of the evil Galbadia from VII, it’s best known for the series of buses that take you around the city – from the shopping arcade to the hotel and even General Caraway’s house. What you say? It’s not normal for a military leader’s house to be easily accessible via public transportation? Well, how else are the hookers gonna get there?

E is for…

"I hurt everybody, stupid!"

Espers or summons, GFs, eidolons – whatever the game feels like calling them. I’m talking about your summoned monsters here, the pals you call in to do battle for you when you’re feeling a little overwhelmed or need some extra firepower. They’re only actually referred to as Espers in VI (where you can find one called Crusader that hurts the enemy AND you. Not a popular choice…) and XII (where they were sadly kind of a pain to use and I only summoned them the one time the game made me) but a summon by any other name is a still a badass looking monster/sexy goddess/robot/other assorted creature that shows up when, uh, summoned, to lay the smack down. My favorite summons? Well, you can’t discount trusty old Bahamut, who I gushed about above. And of course there’s the infamous Knights of the Round, which is well worth the chocobo breeding hell you must endure to acquire it. Also, any time a giant cactus wants to show up and toss a bunch of needles in my enemy’s face I’m fine with that too.

E is also for…

Turbo means it's better.

Also enjoys throwing herself parades.

Edea –The evil sorceress turned reformed orphanage matron from Final Fantasy VIII. How the hell did Cid Kramer nail this awesome lady down? Also, why does she never change out of her sorceress outfit after changing her ways?

Ether – You’re ready to heal up your party with a nice refreshing round of curaga, only to discover you used up the last of your MP summoning Ifrit. What’s a mage to do? Why you down a trusty bottle of ether, of course, and get that MP count back up. You might wanna use it sparingly though, because it’s not easy to get in every game.

F is for…

Looks a little too much like Edward from FF VI.

Faris – You want cross dressing? Final Fantasy V’s got you covered. Faris is a girl posing as a boy. And a pirate. You’re not kept in the dark about her true gender for too long, which has to make main character Bartz feel a little more comfortable about his sexuality considering how quick he is to lust after her. But if you think the surprises with Faris end with the whole male-pirate-is-actually-a-woman stuff, think again. She’s definitely the most interesting character in the game and it doesn’t hurt that she kicks ass.

F is also for…

This is gonna end in pain.

"You kids shut up or I'll turn this castle around!"

Figaro Castle – Anywhere Edgar from Final Fantasy VI reigns as king is automatically awesome, but the fact that it can bury itself underground makes it one of the coolest castles ever.

Flare – This high level spell might look like it’s fire based, but it’s actually non-elemental. Take that red dragons breathing fire in my face!

G is for…

Nobody at my school had a gunblade.

Garden – With three convenient locations in Balamb, Trabia and Galbadia, Garden is the place to get trained to become a sorceress fighting mercenary. In Final Fantasy VIII all the main characters have something to do with Garden, whether they’re students, teachers or mercenary hiring resistance groups. And while it might just seem like just another school with a cafeteria that’s consistently out of hot dogs, how many schools do you know that can turn into a boat? Less than five, I bet.

G is also for…

Ugh, who invited Gilgamesh!?

Unfortunately, he probably smells.

Gau – When you’re desperate for team members, you’ll take any weirdo that wanders out of the woods. Guess that explains Gau, a wild boy you basically bribe with food to join your party. Sure, he’s not the most eloquent speaker, but he’s still endearing. Plus he can learn enemy skills.

Gligamesh – This sword enthusiast keeps popping up in the series, often to be annoying. He appears as Exdeath’s persistent flunky in FFV, even though the guy treats him like crap. In VIII he shows up to replace Odin, and he’s a pretty poor replacement if you ask me. Instead of having a summon randomly show up to kill everything, you get one that randomly shows and maybe might kill everything if he feels like it. XII is by far the worst encounter, as you traipse after him through the dangerous mines in order to fulfill a quest and strip him of every last piece of his awesome Genji armor. Plus his dog likes to bite you, and who knows if his shots are up to date.

H is for…

A face not even a mother could love.

Hojo – Are you grossed out just by the mere mention of that name? You should be. Hojo is a character in Final Fantasy VII, where he serves as Shinra’s head of science research and development. So he’s the resident mad scientist basically. Emphasis on the word mad. And he’s not nice to look at either. Without spoiling massive amounts of the game (How have you not played this yet? Go play right now. I’ll wait. I’m not doing anything for the next 60ish hours anyway.) Hojo is in some way responsible for most of the bad things that happen to the characters in the game, either indirectly or by literally screwing with their DNA and/or affixing a claw where a perfectly good arm was. He’s not racking up too many fan club members is what I’m trying to say. I don’t think anyone approaches the end of this game going, “Oh man, I hope I don’t have to fight that cutie scientist guy! He’s a sweetie!” Heck no. More like, “I can’t wait to beat the crap out of his already revolting face.”

H is also for…

Oh, how this spell would be abused if it were real.

No, it does not make you high.

Hi-potion – A health potion that restores more than a potion. That’s why it’s a “hi” potion. Not because it’s greeting you. The boost you get from it varies from game to game, but usually it’s around 500 HP.

Haste – A spell that makes everybody speed up and attack faster so you can beat the crap out of the baddie before he even knows what hit him.

Coming up! More spells and summons and places and stuff!

FOUND HIM!

I’m pretty sure this is the exact sentence that came out of my mouth while I was browsing the Apple App store the other day: “I really don’t need any more games for the iPad…ohmygod they have one with Waldo!” Did I download it? Considering I have an excess of credit from a recent birthday and it was on sale for ninety-nine cents, you bet I did. I’m a sucker for a little elementary school nostalgia. And Waldo more than does the trick.

No. This article will not wait while you try and find him.

There's a whole Waldo gang! Even an evil Waldo! He looks like the love child of the Hamburgler and Wailuigi.

Found him again! This game is easy.

Mortal Kombat, a series started in the early 90’s, stamped its place in video game legendry with Scorpian’s spear, Sub Zero’s freezing, and a 4 armed behemoth named Goro.  Mortal Kombat ruled the arcade game world just as home gaming started to reach a level that could compare to arcade game play.  By the time Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 was released, the home video game market had blown up, and arcade games began falling by the wayside.  MK answered back with Mortal Kombat 4, and the introduction of the 3d fighting system.  And so the series continued, and unfortunately hadn’t released a respectable title since 2002 when they released MK Deadly Alliance.  (Mortal Kombat’s venture into 3D gaming however was far better than Street Fighter’s, who released 1 title, and the game was so awful it was unplayable.)  However in April of 2011, in conjunction with the release of an online series based on the Mortal Kombat Universe, Mortal Kombat (2011) was released, and as an MK nerd, I’m happy to say it is arguably the best console game they have ever released. 

Bringing back the old fighting system from the 90’s, Mortal Kombat (2011) does away with the 3D fighting, which seems like a minor thing, but in actually changed the game play completely.  In simplest terms, in 2D the only way to gay away from Scorpion’s spear was to block, jump, or duck.  In 3D, characters could also Side-Step.  So 3D gaming provided an entirely different element of strategy.  However, what it also did was drastically overly complicate the fighting system.  What also over complicated the fighting system in previous MK released was the “run” ability.  Basically this was just a chance to make a mad dash towards your opponent and pull off a combo.  With those two elements gone, Mortal Kombat (2011) had the framework for the original fighting system in place.  It then added a fun element of a gradually increasing power bar (much like in the recent Street Fighter releases), which allows you to power up enhanced power attacks, a combo breaker, or at full charge, a devastating X-ray move (which is basically a mid round fatality that takes massive damage…usually 40-50% of health).    

A huge highlight of the game is the single player storyline.  In most titles of Mortal Kombat, the single player is picking a character, and playing through a series of increasingly difficult opponents until you reach the two bosses (in the first, Goro and Shang Tsung).  In Mortal Kombat (2011), players have no choice on which character they play as, and play through a story switching between all the earthrealm warriors.  The story also takes place on al alternate timeline, so the story begins during the Mortal Kombat tournament from the original MK release.  The story does a fantastic job at explaining character origin, as well as build storylines around all the earthrealm warriors (even one’s like Striker who I never particularly cared for in the other games).  They created what I would describe as being one of the first satisfying storylines in fighting game history.  Most fighting games have a 30 second story, 15 before the fight, 15 when you beat the bossman.  But don’t worry, if you’d just rather pick a character and fight 10 people until you fight a boss, you can do that to. 

The game also includes a host of unlockables, including information on second fatalities, alternate costumes, and artwork for fatalities, damage, and board concepts.  Another bonus is the addition of the Challenge Tower, including fun mini-games from the original arcade series light “Test your Might” and “Test your Site.”  The game also features a complete move list for quick reference at any point in the game (which I found to be a huge help in the story since it constantly switches characters on you), and the addition of tag battles, a handy feature since next gen systems feature a minimum of 4 controllers. 

What really surprised me about Mortal Kombat (2011) was that after I beat the game, I felt something I’ve never felt when beating a fighting game…satisfaction.  The storyline really wraps you into the game and makes you interested in the story.  No other fighting game I’ve ever played has done that, or for that matter, tried.  But beneath that also exists a revamped throwback to what as a fantastic game.  Mortal Kombat is a must own for any fan of fighting games, even for those gamers who loved the old series, but were disillusioned by everything after 1996.

Saving? What Saving?

There's your time down the toilet.

As a kid, my parents didn’t buy me too many video games. I guess they wanted me to play outside and junk for some reason. But I did have the original Super Mario Bros, of course, and I spent many happy afternoons navigating Mario over Goombas and through pipes, under bricks and blocks and over the heads of those evil, murderous Hammer Bros. I probably would have spent a lot less afternoons doing any of those things if I didn’t have to start from scratch every freaking time I popped the cartridge into my NES. Since I was a little kid when I was first playing these games, I wasn’t very good. That first level where the Cheep Cheeps keep trying to take your head off was seriously the bane of my young existence. Simply beating one of those levels when you’re six and still struggling with your coordination is a big deal. So after you’ve been struggling past all those suicidal Cheep Cheeps, who wants to start over? Well, there was no choice to be had back in the day. It was play till you lost all your lives/got tired/mom called you for dinner and then plan on starting allllllll over again the next time you get a hankering for some plumbers and turtles. Imagine if you could have saved? I would have beaten the game a lot faster. I might have had time for other things. (At least I like to think so.)

Can you imagine if games were still like this? If every time you loaded an RPG you had to start from the beginning again? You’d be playing the same game for months, skimping on sleep and leaving your system running 24/7 until it bursts into a ball of exhausted mechanical flames. I don’t even want to think about a world where you still could never save in a game. I’m getting queasy just thinking about it.

Continue?

I know I don't have to specify which creepy faced freak I'm talking about.

Speaking of the NES, there was this little game called Bomberman where your goal is to blow up bricks trying to find the door to the next level. (And God help you if you blow up that door by accident.) During your journey you have to avoid a bunch of the creepiest looking enemies you will see in any game – including this one thing (there is no better term) whose smile basically steals your soul. These nasty suckers and their alien looking pals are out for your blood. Your only defense is to trap them with your bombs and blow them up, which isn’t easy when they’re constantly on the move. When you eventually fail and lose all your lives you will find you are free to continue…if you grab a piece of paper and a pen and jot down the ridiculously long continue code. I remember yelling at my poor sister many times to grab anything that could write – pencil, crayon, blood, whatever – and scribble down this code so I could pick up where I left off. You had to be quick because they weren’t leaving that code up on the screen for you to copy down at your leisure. So it was always a mad dash to get that ridiculous sequence of constants copied down before it disappeared. (Why I didn’t have paper and a pen always handy when playing this game is also questionable – maybe I was just always optimistic that I wouldn’t need it because I was going to beat the game without dying this time. Yeah. Let’s go with that.)

At least this one's short.

The continue code drama is true of Zombies Ate My Neighbors as well – a great SNES title where you need to rescue babies, cheerleaders, photo snapping tourists and the like from the clutches of the undead. If one too many zombies chomp down on you or all the archeologist dudes and random dogs are killed, it’s game over, man. But hark! All is not lost! Because you get a continue code you can use to keep going! But even if you do manage to get it all down (and legibly), you lose all your items when you restart. This is kind of important in a game where a single key can mean the difference between failure and defeat. As far as I’m concerned, continue codes are basically as bad as not being able to save at all. They’re good only once and then you wind up starting over anyway. And that’s not counting all the times you miss, lose or copy down the code wrong. I’m very glad I don’t have to see continue codes in games anymore, because I’m still seeing them in my nightmares.

Memory Cards

In case you forgot already.

I never thought memory cards would make this list. For a long time we all relied on our precious plastic cards to keep our game data safe. During the PSX and PS2 era, it was the only saving game in town. (Okay, the PS2 did have a hard drive, but please don’t tell me you were stupid enough to spend money on it like I was.) When you wanted to save all you had to do was choose an open slot, and then let the game do it’s thing. If there was no open place to put the data, it was either time to start deleting save files from those games you knew you were never going back to, or head to the store for a new one. When I heard the PS3 was going to rely mostly on a hard drive to keep the save data, I wasn’t thrilled. At the time I was thinking: a hard drive in my system isn’t portable. What if I want to bring my save to a friend’s house? Well, as this article is about saving innovations I DON’T miss, my thoughts on the issue soon changed. Why? Because I realized – hey, I’m an adult. Am I going to need to bring my saved game to my friend’s house after I take the bus to their house after school? No. And how many times had that happened in my life previously anyway? Not many. Also, you probably had multiple memory cards over the life of your PSX and PS2.

Because those monkeys weren't going to catch themselves.

You ever forget where a file was and then have to find it? Because it’s a pain in the ass, and goes something like this: “Is it on this memory card?” Flip, flip, flip. “Nope. Next.” Flip, flip, flip. “Nope.” And repeat until you finally find it or you remember you actually deleted it in favor of your new Ape Escape 2 file. Of course the new systems still give you the option to save to an external memory source if you wish, but not all files will transfer over, so that’s something to keep in mind. (I’m looking at you, Rock Band.) So while I can’t say that I ever really hated memory cards, I can’t exactly say that I’m missing the experience.

Unlike those other aspects of gaming that have evolved over the years, I’m not sure where saving can really go from here. Downloading directly to some kind of file in your brain? Maybe. But I think that’s a long ways off. In the meantime, I’m fine with the way things are now, especially when I look back and see what we as gamers had to suffer through over the years. As long as the industry has learned from it’s mistakes and promises to never, ever show me another continue code ever again – I’m good.

I firmly believe that I am falling in love with cinematic games. Graphics have never been better, Guillermo del Toro is hard at work on a trilogy, and although Alan Wake wasn’t as successful as it should have been, I believe it was a great example of a game genre that I have started calling Cinematic. If you take out the long strolls through the woods fighting possessed lumberjacks with a flashlight and a revolver, Alan Wake would have made a great, twist-happy film. The narrative was as engaging as any movie, but because it wasn’t a movie, it stumbled under the interactive and varied pacing of a player controlled game. The writing, although a tad abstract, seemed more expansive than the game mechanics allowed it to be, and if you didn’t soar through the entire game in one sitting a lot of the emotional investment tactics were lost.

Imagine yourself sitting at a campfire with a group of friends surrounded by towering trees and flickering shadows. You are listening to someone tell a totally gripping and terrifying ghost story. But partway through the story, the narrator gets up to eat dinner, go to the bathroom or hell, even leaves for work for eight hours and then comes back to continue the tale. The tingling, anticipatory feeling is sort of lost at that point and the story starts to look jumbled and confusing. Luckily, Enslaved doesn’t have this problem. Loosely based on an old Chinese allegory and co-written by Alex Garland, the literary genius who wrote 28 Days Later and The Beach, Enslaved’s narrative also has a cinematic quality about it, especially because the story is so much more engaging and fluid than the more interactive, mechanical elements.

Enslaved introduces you to Trip, a technologically inclined teenage girl (who also happens to be a ravishing redhead), and Monkey, a Neanderthal-like giant of a man that she takes prisoner via a headband intended to control slaves. Trip and Monkey live in what appears to be a post-Apocalyptic New York City, and bear marks and scars to support the hardships associated with it, but since a large part of the game looks like it takes place in New Mexico, I am going to assume that the United States split up the middle during the war against the machines and overlapped. After a devastating plane crash they both survived, Trip now needs to be escorted home to her village beyond the Wasteland (New Mexico), and has forced Monkey to protect her along the way via the headband.

Normally, escort missions are tedious and dull because following someone around means walking at their slow, NPC pace, but fortunately, as an AI partner, Trip is pretty nimble on her feet and the two work together extremely well. As the story progresses the two characters build a relationship that becomes tenderly dependent on one another, both physically and emotionally, forcing the player to invest the same way in them as you would while watching any great film. Cut scenes are delicious and highly anticipated. I won’t spoil anything, but a few of the intense moments of peril or decision making between the two made my romantic heart jump into my throat. I cared about the culmination of their journey just as much as they did, even though I wasn’t anywhere near the rust-covered landscape they are traversing. The writing is fantastic, and the voice acting even better. After playing the lugging, half-English, half-American, all horrible, monster that was Arcania, it is absolutely refreshing to listen to the banter between this unlikely duo.

Enslaved is set in a world where, absent of most humanity, Mother Nature has begun reclaiming the landscape. Whereas other games along the same theme show desolation, this one blooms with green grass, and red flowers wrap around old lampposts and creep up crumbling cement structures. Tiny blue butterflies flit about all of old New York and trailed alongside Trip and Monkey for awhile in the first few chapters. There is a serene beauty in the stillness of an abandoned concrete jungle that Enslaved captures perfectly. And because of their isolation, it becomes easy to imagine captive becoming captivated and vice versa.

So, cinematically Enslaved is wonderful. It has a protagonist, mechanical villains, a quirky damsel in distress, a captivating plot and an ending I didn’t see coming for miles. I actually teared up in Chapter Thirteen. But, just like Alan Wake, it’s beautiful qualities get bogged down in its mechanical and game play aspects. Monkey moves like a dream, but can’t jump off of a four foot platform unless you are standing in a particular spot. The camera lets you control it completely half of the time and gives you tunnel vision the other half, which is infuriating. The game requires you collect ‘tech orbs’ which are glowing red balls spread throughout the landscape that function as currency to upgrade your combat skills, health, shield and weapon, but every time you go off the path to wander around collecting them all, Trip is constantly calling out “Let’s get going, Monkey”, or “Come on, Monkey.” Um, I would, but the game wants me to incessantly collect these things, so I’ll be there in a minute.

The combat switches between melee bashing and tactical area clearing and is consistently simple; Monkey uses an electrified staff that stuns and bashes mechs from here to next Tuesday. His staff also has two ranged settings, electricity to stun and plasma to fire, which is actually fun and handy. Most of the central movement is platforming, which is ridiculously easy unless you are standing on something that is crumbling underneath you (remember, post-Apocalyptic). I found the most interesting trick up Monkey’s sleeve was his Cloud, a quick little hover board that could glide over toxic water and pebbled ground with ease. I am not ashamed to admit that I whooped a couple of times while sliding across the water under the bridge in Chapter Five.

With only fourteen chapters, Enslaved isn’t terribly long-each one takes about an hour or so. Despite my problems with the camera and some of the controls, I was quite satisfied with the experience and would highly recommend anyone with a love for quality story-telling and character development in video games to spend a day with Trip and Monkey on their journey to the west.

For more of Jessica’s writings, check out her blog at: http://www.itallstartedwithchronotrigger.com

So I picked up my 3DS last Sunday like a lot of other people. But unlike a lot of other people, I don’t pick up any games. Why? Well, none of them really appealed to me. (Because… A. I suck at anything involving flying B. Want to pick up the new Lego Stars Wars for the PS3 at some point C. Do even football fans want to play it on a handheld? D. Not into fighting games. E. Fool me once, Nintendogs…)

Shown here: what actual dog ownership is like.

Anyway, with no actual game to play, I explored what the system had to offer. One of the games that comes with it is called Face Raiders. What is Face Raiders? Basically you snap a picture of your face, which the game then uses to create creepy versions of yourself that come breaking out of the walls of the room you’re sitting in and attack you. They also laugh creepily at you from a slit that might not necessarily be where your actual mouth is. There’s something that just feels wrong about flinging balls at little helicopter type contraptions with your mug on them. Oh, and I tried to Google image search the game so I could give you an idea of what it looks like if you’re unfamiliar, but – I’m sorry – you’re on your own if you have a strong stomach. All that turned up in my search results were a bunch of images suitable for a horror movie. Seriously, I’m pretty sure one of them was of the melty faced guy from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Thanks for that, Google.

No. No. I will not do what Google image search does. Enjoy this adorable bunny picture instead.

The worst part is that the pictures taken by the system’s camera are not at all flattering in the first place. And once the system snaps the photo it immediately judges your sex and age – which can be horribly inaccurate based on the amount of light in the room. The first time I tried it, it judged me as a young female, which is accurate. The second time I tried it, however…I was sitting in very dim lighting. Huge mistake. Because not only did the game say I had an infant face…they also said it was male. Yup. A male infant face. I don’t think it gets much worse than that. Unless it called me melty face from Raiders straight out.

Yeah...no... Still not going there. I decided this picture of a baby otter was more appropriate. And adorable.

Am I the only one who doesn’t want my face used in a game? I wouldn’t even be thrilled if it was being used for a hero, nevermind some Viking-helmeted boss creature I’m beating to death in my own living room. Games are supposed to be a departure from reality. That means I don’t want my face anywhere near any of the characters. And you can keep my living room out of it too. Because now I’m only waiting for some horrific dreams where I’m under attack in my house by little flying aliens that come out of the walls and look like vaguely evil versions of me. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because I also used a photo of him off the cover of a magazine just to see if it would work. And it did. Oh, it did. And it was the most nightmarish of them all.

I TRIED TO WARN YOU!

Check out more of Lauren’s stuff @ her blog, Sephiroth’s Tutu.

聖剣の（凡例：ファイナルファンタジー外伝 (Legend of the Holy Sword: Final Fantasy Gaiden) - June 8, 1991 (Japan) - November 1, 1991 (USA & Canada as Final Fantasy Adventure)

Hello fellow geeks and welcome to the next installment of the Far From Final Fantasy series. In this installment, I’m going to cover a game that is not only important to Final Fantasy, but to the company of Square as well: Final Fantasy Adventure. First off, I have to get some meta out of the way. If you read my article on Final Fantasy III, then you’ll remember that I said that I was going to write this article as a test run to see if readers would like  it if could review one core FF  game and then three games (made by Square or Enix) that were either tangentially or directly related to the series. I came up with this concept mid-way into writing the article on Final Fantasy II, and I found it very challenging to pick and choose from over a hundred titles. In the end, however, I opted on writing about this game next. While researching as much as I could about the game, in addition to playing it for quite a while, I was stunned to find out that this was actually the first game in a series that is loved by a  number of RPG fans: the Mana series (that Secret of Mana is apart of). After learning that, I realized that the similarities this game has to the Mana series is unmistakable, but I ‘ll get into that later. But without further ado, let us actually begin this article.

Believe it or not, this game was actually in the pipeline for Square long before they ever considered making Final Fantasy, however this was a time before Square faced imminent bankruptcy in late 1987. Square trademarked the the name Seiken Densetsu (roughly meaning Holy Sword Legend): The Emergence of Excalibur in early 1987 for use in a future game project for the Famicom Disk System.

The Famicom connected to the Famicom Disk System

As an aside, I feel I should explain what the Famicom Disk System is. In Japan, the console that eventually became known as the Nintendo Entertainment System over in the States was known as the Famicom (a portmanteau of Family Computer). With few exceptions, it was essentially identical to the NES. When the Famicom exploded in popularity at an all-time high, so too did game developers’ ambitions. They wanted to make bigger and longer games, but the measly amount of memory in a Famicom cartridge was not enough. To sate developers’ needs, Nintendo released an add-on known as the Famicom Disk System. This was an add-on you attached to the bottom of the system and from then on, you could play Famicom games written on a Famicom Disk. A Famicom disk was essentially a floppy disk that would allow you to read and write data on it (whilst in America we had battery back ups or password systems). Because of this, it was now possible to both save your game or make a game that could span 2 or more disks. Interestingly enough, many of the games we got in America were actually released on the Disk System first. Titles that originally called the Famicom Disk System home were The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Castlevania I; to name a few, but I digress.

This project was going to be an RPG that would have been made a year after Enix made Dragon Quest (April 1986); the latter of which both sold like hotcakes and subsequently opened the possibility to have RPGS on a console instead of a computer. It would have spanned a whopping 5 Disk System disks which is almost unthinkable as no game had ever, and still has not, needed that much physical media. Hironobu Sakaguichi gave the project to an employee known as Kazuhiko Aoki where he would have produced it. You readers might not know Aoki’s name, but you’re most likely familiar with his work. Aside from doing various odd-jobs on several Final Fantasy games, his biggest claim to fame is being the main producer of the legendary Square & Enix collaboration known as Chrono Trigger. The most important developmental aspect of this game featured the debut of a developer who would become both essential and invaluable to most of the future Final Fantasy games: Yoshinori Kitase. This was his first actual project on Square and he was the one who wrote this story. This man would later go on to be the writer of the masterpiece of Final Fantasy VI and director of games such as Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and more. Currently, he is head producer of Square-Enix after Hironobu Sakaguchi left Square-Enix in the late 00′s, but that’s a story for another day.

When the fiscal monster known as  bankruptcy revealed its ugly head in October of 1987, Square immediately pulled the plug on the project…just after they both advertised and approved the game for pre-order. Customers immediately had their orders canceled and refunded, along with an appropriate letter of apology to each and every person who pre-ordered the game. Aside from the apology in the letter, a postscript made of suggestion of using their refunded money to buy a game that would be released in December…Final Fantasy.

Lets skip ahead to early 1991 where Square is now a company to be reckoned with, they were in no danger whatsoever, and could practically do whatever they wanted with all the yen they were raking in. Around this time, they had become somewhat proficient in making games on Nintendo’s wildly successful portable system, the Game Boy. Previously, they had released two Game Boy RPGs (The Final Fantasy Legend and Final Fantasy Legend II, both of which will be reviewed) that had a fair amount of success. Square’s next project was also on the Game Boy and it was called Gemma Knight. Originally it was going to be a stand-alone game unrelated to Final Fantasy. Although nothing is known about how this came about, someone must have suggested to revive both the name and the concepts of Seiken Densetsu and make that on the Game Boy.  By fusing both Seiken Densetsu and Gemma Knights together, the finished product was Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden which was released in Japan on June 8,1991.

By far the most iconic shot of the game

A Sample of FFA combat

The story of Final Fantasy Adventure is very easy to explain because, on the whole, it is a very simple story so I’ll try to keep the focus on it at a minimum. The story chronicles the adventures of a hero and a heroine fighting against the Dark Lord of Glaive and his sorceror assistant, Julius. The Dark Lord and Julius seek to destroy the immortal Tree of Mana at the top of Mt. Illusia. The Tree of Mana is the life-force of the hero’s world and said world would die should the Tree be destroyed. It’s up to the hero and the heroine to triumph over all their adversities, defeat the Big Bads, and save the world from destruction. The hero was once enslaved by the Dark Lord as a gladiator, and was forced to fight beasts solely for the entertainment value for the citizens of Glaive. Through some rushed plot (its hard to follow because of how quickly things happen), the hero escapes and meets a girl who has some mysterious connection to the Tree of Mana. Eventually, the hero learns he is the Gemma Knight (i.e. The Chosen One) who will wield the Mana Sword and protect the Tree of Mana from the Dark Lord. For the time, its fair to say the story was fairly complex, but at the same time it sort of suffers in that regard due to how cliched this kind of story has become in modern times. A lot of the elements that would be recurring themes in later Mana games all had their first appearances here: the Mana Sword, the Tree of Mana, the Mana Forest, Mana-exclusive monsters (Rabites, Chobin Hoods, and Mushbooms; to name a few), and more.

Even though it had the name Final Fantasy in the title, its connection to Final Fantasy is very loose (but then again most spinoffs are the same way to some extent). Just by looking at the screenshots, most gamers will immediately make the distinction that this was obviously inspired by The Legend of Zelda, which might or might not be true. However, for the record, Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (the first Zelda on Game Boy) was not released until 2 years after this one was. One could possibly make the argument that Link’s Awakening took some influence from this; but further elaborating into that would completely derail this article.

Julius, the Sorcerer and lackey of the Dark Lord.

Now, if any of you readers are familiar with the Mana series, then most of you probably know that, at its core, the Mana series are traditionally action-RPG games. Despite the fact that this is the first game in the series, it bears little resemblance to its descendants which was probably due to both the limited space Square had to work with on the Game Boy and the fledgling series not finding its own voice at the time. By today’s standards, the gameplay is nothing special and fairly straightforward: you have a top-down view of the game map, you control a hero in the cardinal four directions, you face monsters that give you gold and experience points when defeated, and you go to towns where you can either rest in inns or buy stuff at shoppes. Because this game, in my opinion, is essentially a hybrid of The Legend Zelda and Final Fantasy, I find that the only way to give a  fair & complete review of this game is to note the similarities that this game that this game has for each one. Lastly, I’ll go into aspects that are unique to this game alone.

Here are a few of the similarities this game has with The Legend of Zelda. This game is on only one map (with the exception of the various dungeons) that is fully interconnected with each and every area and transitioning to each one is seamless which is rather nice and fluid; especially considering this is on Game Boy. Again, like Zelda, the battles are not random encounters on an overworld, they are fought in real time and require reflexes instead of tactical thinking to win and you can use a variety of weapons to slay your foes such as a sword, spear, axe, and so on. Puzzles are abundant in this game, ranging from simple switch puzzles to devilishly hard ice cube puzzles. Although some Final Fantasy games have instances where solving puzzles are required to move forward, this is a trait more commonly associated with Zelda than with Final Fantasy. The last trait I’ll talk about regarding similarities to Legend of Zelda is the charge bar. As everyone who has ever played a Zelda game knows, you can get a more powerful attack if you hold the attack button and charge your sword up. The same principle applies in this game as well…only it isn’t relegated to the sword; every single weapon has a devastating charge attack when fully charged.

Now that I’ve got the Zelda similarities out of the way, I’m going to go into the Final Fantasy similarities right now. As I mentioned before, an overworld and random encounters do not exist in this game; yet it still retains enough to where I would kinda accept it as Final Fantasy title. Like in Final Fantasy, you had HP and MP to keep track of and to make sure it didn’t drain. The MP is used exclusively for magical spells that you learn throughout the course of the game; some of which include Nuke, Sleep, Ice, Cure, and so on. Even though switching between weapons and items is a hallmark more related to Zelda, what Zelda usually doesn’t take into account are statistics such as strength and defense; which is exactly what Final Fantasy Adventure does. Like Final Fantasy, you also have an array of items ranging from various medicines which cure status conditions such as petrification or poison (even one where you turn into a Moogle) to various combat items such as fireballs or ice scrolls (which cast Fire and Ice respectively). What really makes this so close to Final Fantasy for me personally are the various cameos of creatures that show up in this game. You’ll all be pleased to know that Moogles are not the only creatures present, but the ever-popular Chocobo invades this world with it’s awesomeness and convenient ability as a horse. At one point, you can get to own  a Chocobo with cybernetic legs, appropriately dubbed the Choco-Bot.

A Choco...Bot?! DUDE SIGN ME UP!!

Since I have finally gone over the comparisons between the two, I’m gonna get into the two major traits that make this game unique than the previous two games I compared. Like in most Final Fantasy games, many weapons come into your possession as time goes on and more monies are earned. Unlike Final Fantasy however, many of the weapons you possess have an secondary function. Examples: tall grass will prevent you from going forward unless you have a scythe, stumps menace you unless you have an axe to chop them away, and some cliffs are unreachable unless you have a chain whip to attach onto conveniently placed poles which pull you across. While you could say this is yet another Zelda trait, many of the items that do things like this aren’t always used as weapons.

Using an axe to clear away rubbish

Actually, one of the more game-changing aspects about this game isn’t necessarily characteristic of the game or even the series itself; I’m talking about the entire Game Boy platform. This was among one of the first Game Boy games to save your progress ever (albeit in only one slot). Before playing this game, I as a gamer, originally gave that accolade to Metroid II: Return of Samus; needless to say I was pleasantly surprised and relieved I didn’t have to use an archaic password system. While game-saving may be an after-thought on most portable systems nowadays, you have to remember that this was a time before memory sticks and even save slots via battery backups were the norm (both on the GB or on the NES), so something like this must have been a big selling-point in the portable market.

On release in both Japan and America, it gained unanimous praise as being an innovative Game Boy title like no other. At that point in time, no Game Boy title had pushed the boundaries as far as this one had and I really have to give it props in that regard. To this day it still is given a lot of praise as one of the better games on the original Game Boy and there have even been requests of a remake on the DS (or the 3DS more recently). In Europe however,  the story was a little different. It wasn’t that the game did not have any success (far from it), its that it couldn’t be called Final Fantasy. No Final Fantasy game at that point had ever been released in Europe, so Nintendo had to retitle the game to make it marketable. The name they eventually chose was Mystic Quest which isn’t really the best choice in naming and if you’re a Final Fantasy super-fan, you’ll know why I said that. To the uninitiated, the name “Mystic Quest” is always associated with a game that is often considered the Blackest Sheep/Bastard Child of the Final Fantasy series: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. I won’t comment on it now, I’ll save it for an upcoming article. Suffice it to say, I have a lot to say about that…that…creature. If any of the youngsters want to play this game and not be blindsided by the age of it, there is a way you can do so; on the GBA no less.

Sword of Mana - Final Fantasy Adventure's Enhanced Remake

In 2003, Final Fantasy Adventure was given an enhanced remake on the GBA that a lot of you might know as Sword of Mana. It’s a much more tolerable way to play the game, especially since it has much more in common with other Mana games (the enhanced power bar, the ring menu, etc). I’ll review Sword of Mana at a later date, but suffice it to say; its a great game and you should all play it.

Here are my closing thoughts on the game. Throughout this article, it might sound like I’m being dismissive of the game; but that really is not the case. In all honesty, I don’t think this is a bad game at all, I just think this game has not aged very well at all. Portable gaming has evolved by gigantic leaps and bounds and what defines portable games are now completely different than they used to be over 20 years ago.  This game is a time capsule; by that I mean that this was one of the granddaddies of action-RPGs and it shows due to how…by the numbers it is. I’m trying to be as subjective as I can be on this, but since more Action RPGs have come out and have done more innovative things with the genre, I can’t help but feel neutral towards it. Overall, I would rate this game about 3 stars out of 5. It’s a good game, but it isn’t the kind of game a modern gamer would really get into. I’m sorta split between whether I’d recommend it or not. I think I ‘ll settle that by saying to just play it for a few minutes to understand where not only Action RPGs, but where portable gaming was back in the early ’90s.

That’s all the time we have today If you enjoyed this article or have feedback on how I can make this series better, leave some comments or send me an e-mail at geoffino04@gmail.com or tweet me at lordyupa12; I’m all ears. Also don’t forget to check out all the other fascinating and fun articles present on this site as there are a lot to go through. Thank you for reading my article(s) and farewell until next-time.

Next time I’m to cover a game in the Final Fantasy series that seriously needs no introduction as it is one of the few games in the series that is widely considered to be one of the masterpieces of the entire series…yet one that I’m sure that a lot of modern gamers have not played yet. Not only that, it is the very first Final Fantasy game that I ever played and one of those games that one can hold the deepest nostalgia for.

Next Time:  One Borne of a Dragon…Bearing Both Darkness and Light… – (Final Fantasy IV – Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Famicom)

Church & State: The Church in the Dragon Age universe is represented by an institution called The Chantry. The Chantry for all intensive purposes is the Catholic Church. They have their hands in political discussions, the carry large quantity of influence across the land, and people follow their word unquestionably even when their orders are malicious or violent in nature. Really the only major difference is most of the clergy in the Chantry are female, which is not something represented in the Catholic Church. What surprised me about the story lines revolving around the Chantry was that the Chantry is most often the villain in the game. Many of the villains in the story line I progressed through (which is specific to key choices you make in the game mind you), the Chantry was the subject of corruption, negative influence, and murderous plots. Additionally, the Chantry repeatedly tries to influence the government, and often does successfully. Much of the population considers the Chantry’s word above that of the actual King of Kirkwall, and many of the King’s struggles in the game revolves around how to not upset the Chantry’s followers. The parallels between the government in the game and modern day religious conservatives are numerous. Conservative Political leadership in is afraid to ever speak out on something that would be antichristian without fear of losing a large chunk of their base. Additionally, the Chantry often sides with the control of Mages (though non-violently).

Mages: Mages in the game represent various things, all of which happen to be anti-church, and anti institutionalized religion. One of the main characters in the game, Anders, is openly homosexual. His lover in the game is made “tranquil” which in the story line is basically a magic lobotomy. But specific to Anders, his lover is basically given a “gay cure” through the Chantry. This of course causes a rift between Anders and the Circle of Magi / Chantry, and he swears revenge. Another character in the game, Merrill, is a Dailish Elf, whose magic is largely nature based. She is representative of various eastern / alternative religions. Her methods are considered “dangerous.” There are clear parallels between the Dailish in the game and Native Americans. The Chantry often attempts to convert them, and when the Dailish stick to their ways, the Chantry’s military arm comes to try and push them off their land. In the storyline I played, Anders in a revenge plot actually destroys the Chantry with a spell that murders everyone in the Chantry outright in revenge. Yet, the storyline allows you to justify his behavior and back him up in his course of actions. Players of the game have actually spoken out on this directly to BioWare saying that the game actually alienated straight male players. (You can read BioWare’s response here: http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/25/dragon-age-2-writer-responds-to-complaint-about-bioware-neglecti/)

Radical Extremism: In what was maybe the most surprising to me storyline wise was the addition of a group of monsters called the Qunari, who are giant horned creatures, violent in nature, who are misunderstood by every other group in the game. Their religious zealotry revolves around following “The Qun,” which are their moral principles. Now here is where this really gets sensitive. The Qun in the game is pronounced in a way where I thought they were saying Qur’an a few times. Additionally, the Qunari release their wrath on Kirkwall in an extremely violent, radical extremist way, and the explanation if which might as well have contained the verbiage “infidels” a few hundred times. (It didn’t, but I promise you everyone who has played this game thought it at least twice). The Qunari are flat out supposed to be Radical Muslims. And they are portrayed in the game as MONSTERS. Qunari Mages (again, Mages being synonymous with homosexuals in various ways in the game) are chained and bound by the Qunari. They are called Saarabas, which translates to “Dangerous Thing.” And they are basically controlled for their own good. It is indicative of how Middle Eastern cultures are so intolerant of those who not of their belief systems, as well as women and homosexuals. The most radical groups actually kill those who don’t believe what they believe. Of course, that is in the most extreme cases, which would basically be the equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church in Western culture. The Qunari storyline only indirectly touches the homosexuality story line in the game, while the Chantry storyline directly interacts with it. Ironically the Qur’an in real life doesn’t speak out against homosexuality, just certain sexual acts common in homosexual relationships. The Bible however does speak out against homosexuality specifically, like the Chantry does in the game (however those passages in the Bible were written in the Bronze Age, and are written on the same page as scripture stating any man without sideburns should be stoned to death. However, I may be editorializing a bit too much here). Admittedly, that last bit may be me reading way too much into it, but I found it to be an interesting comparison.

The Qunari storylines in this game are what I really found to be the most surprising. Sure, religion and homosexuality are certainly topics that will upset people, and those two things are in the forefront the most in the Anders and Chantry storylines, but the Qunari storyline is very clearly supposed to be relative to Muslim Extremists. And that storyline perpetuates so many Muslim stereotypes within the Qunari culture I’m really surprised the writers went down this avenue with the game. Anyone who has ever followed anything about Muslim culture after 9/11 can so easily draw so many comparisons between them and the Qunari that I really think the writers knew what they were doing when they authored the storyline here.

What is really so impressive about the adult nature of Dragon Age 2 is that it transcends the violence and sexuality of the game, but it really appeals to individuals who understand world events and culture. For that reason, Dragon Age 2 is a game FOR adults, not just a game with content only appropriate for adults. However with that ability I believe comes some responsibility. Just as I have editorialized a bit in this article, so do the writers in the game, making their feelings clear on certain institutions and lifestyle choices in the game. You can only go so far supporting one side of a adult conversation before the other side of it starts beating down your door.

I was fortunate enough to attend PAX East in Boston this past weekend, and besides seeing a lot of people rocking construction cone hats and scoring a bunch of free video game themed t-shirts, I had the opportunity to check out some cool gaming stuff that will be coming to a shelf/network near you in the coming weeks and months. But with all there was to see and do at the convention, my favorite thing was actually the first thing I was able to get my hands on.

There I was, just loitering around the Nintendo booth, taking in what they had to offer – namely the 3DS – when one of the reps asked me if I’d like to give it a whirl. Now, I love Nintendo and while I planned to purchase a 3DS eventually, it was not an immediate “must own” for me. I wasn’t super excited about it. Why? Because I couldn’t care less about 3D. I don’t see what all the fuss is about when it comes to slapping on some glasses and have stuff pop out at you. And this might make me sound like some cranky old grouch yelling for those pesky neighbor kids to get off my lawn, but I am not impressed by 3D anything. I’ve seen multiple (quality – I’m not talking about Avatar: The Last Airbender here) movies with those special glasses perched atop my nose and didn’t see any effects worthy of those extra few bucks they made me fork over. And 3D TV – are you serious? If I’m gonna pay that much for glasses, they better give me x-ray vision. So my lack of enthusiasm for the whole 3D phenomenon in general was what held me back from preordering a 3DS. Still, here I was being offered a chance to try it out, so I jumped at the chance. Of course. I’m still a gamer and a Nintendo fan. Plus I was naturally interested to see what all the fuss was about.

I didn’t get the opportunity to play one of the “real” games for the system, instead I experienced one of the games that sort of ‘pops out’ from one of several cards that comes with the device.  You set one of these cards down on a table, perform a couple of quick actions to make sure the 3DS recognizes it, and then it’s time to play. Basically a 3D game just pops out of this card. Of course it’s all virtual, but that didn’t stop me from peering around the system anyway, just to double check.

Pictured: ...I have no idea.

Right away I saw the 3D effect – there’s no straining like with those stupid 3D “magic eye” posters that used to be popular for some reason. And you can even adjust the effect to your liking using a slider on the side of the console. In the game I played, targets started popping out at me that I had to hit – which may sound boring and uninspired, but this isn’t your standard aim and shoot. In order to hit many of the targets properly, I had to actually physically move the system. At one point I even had to walk up to the table where the card was perched and peer down into a hole where my next target had appeared. Yeah, where the card was in real life appeared as a hole containing a bulls eye I had to hit on my screen. The demo ended with a battle against a dragon I had to walk around in order to find its weak point. And the whole time I’m holding this thing in my hands I’m beside myself with just how cool, fun and different it is. From really having no expectations and dismissing it as just another product of the 3D fad, I walked away impressed. And needing to own one as soon as possible. So now I’ve got it preordered. Congratulations, Nintendo. You will soon have even more of my money.

So to those who might share in my old wary mindset – it’s impossible for me to truly describe just how unique the 3DS is. It’s something that really has to be experienced. I don’t know anyone who played it at the convention and didn’t come away impressed, including my husband, who is no Nintendo fan boy and doesn’t hesitate to trash talk Mario and friends. (I know – why’d I marry him, right?) This system is something special – once again Nintendo has set the bar of gaming innovation. And by now they can probably buy some kind of yacht with the amount of money I’ve spent on their products. Oh well. As long as they keep making cool new products I’m happy to begin my contributions to the matching jet ski.

I'm on a boat.

Check out more of Lauren’s stuff @ her blog, Sephiroth’s Tutu.

I play a lot of video games. Naturally, this is bound to happen if one of your main hobbies is writing about video games. Sometimes the experience is brilliant, engaging the player with great mechanical qualities, such as the fluid movements and controls in Bayonetta or The Forgotten Sands. Or maybe what grabs the player is a compelling story or beautiful graphical elements, such as Assassin’s Creed or Dragon Age. But sometimes I find games that are captivating based merely on their simplicity.

I can sit for hours and play mildly strategic puzzle games like Luxor, Hexic or Jewel Quest because doing so creates a sort of mindless zen-like atmosphere where my hands do more work than my brain – the perfect way to end a stressful day at work. These games are more instinctual, reactionary and, tragically, usually come shipped with repetitive, uninspired background music that you can’t help but tune out after a few minutes. When diving into another ball shooting session in Zuma or a gem switching marathon in Bejeweled, my first ritualistic step after turning on the game is to switch on the music in our personal library via a media server and listen to such lovelies as Air, Conjure One, Oceanlab and We Have Band to add a multilayer of enjoyment on top of a single dimensional experience. I am blissful, I am euphoric, I am combining elements to achieve personal satisfaction. But now I have Chime.

Chime was released on XBLA at the beginning of last year by Zoe Mode with the help of OneBigGame, who aids in the development of games for charitable organizations. Until last November, when you purchased Chime a portion of the money went to the Save the Children and the Starlight Children’s Foundation. If you didn’t know this prior to playing (and I didn’t), you will be clued in by the generous 50G Fairy Godmother achievement you receive just for starting the game. Real karma points! Chime plays a bit like Lumines, a Tetris-like puzzle rhythm game that combines the act of building with an ever-heightening musical accompaniment. Chime is more like Tetris than Lumines, however, with a variety of different geometric shapes falling onto a grid and interlocking much the same as the classic Russian game. Your objective is to create squares or rectangles on the grid while an activation line creeps across your screen in time to the music and clears away blocks with a flourish of butterflies and spiral shapes. And as you build, the music grows from a simple melody or voice into a full symphony of sound as you cover the entire grid. The music crescendos and flows perfectly as you reach the end of the level.

Chime’s five different songs all fall under the ambivalent genre of electronica, with a selection by Moby and one by a member of Orbital being my personal favorites. The PC version includes ‘Still Alive’, Jonathan Coulton’s mega-popular credit song from Portal. Instead of the bubble gum chewing, headache-inducing techno pop combinations in Lumines or the uninspired background music in Bejeweled, I now have a puzzle game full of music I would actually listen to. And being an avid Tetris player (I was a master in my youth, touting a Tetris watch and a belt pouch for my GameBoy with the Tetris cartridge tucked away in a side pocket at all times), the combination of puzzle game, score multipliers, competitive ranking and gorgeous ambient electronica carefully built together in what is ultimately a simple experience has captured my undivided attention for an entire week (and counting). Maybe you aren’t the type of person who can listen to the same music over and over again for hours, even if you think it’s brilliant, but when the instinctual, quick reaction puzzle mechanics of Chime drive you to continuously consider your choices from every geometric angle, you will be thrilled that it is happening in a place where such engaging music moves with you, adding layer upon layer to create a sweeping, fully interactive combination of hand movements and aural delight.

Zoe Mode recently announced on their website that a new version of the game, Chime Super Deluxe, will be available on the PSN sometime this spring and feature a multiplayer mode and additional songs. So it looks like I wasn’t late to the party after all, I was just in time for more.

For more of Jessica’s writings, check out her blog at: http://www.itallstartedwithchronotrigger.com

But there have been so many great games released on the DS over the years, so you don’t want to let it go just yet. (And I’m not even counting the fantastic rereleases like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy IV.) Here are just five of the many great games (or series) that you should definitely not miss before you start to let your DS collect dust for good. (And yeah, the 3DS plays DS games, but I don’t think too many people will be focusing on those when there are 3D games to be had.)

The Professor Layton Series

Apparently you can also brew poison.

1.       Because no one else can rock a stovepipe hat like he can. (Take that, Lincoln!)

2.       Because you need to feel stupid sometimes. Or smart. Puzzles are a two faced mistress.

3.       Because Luke and the Professor have a special relationship few other apprentice/teacher duos can match.

4.       Because few other games can boast they feature minigames involving hamsters, tea time and colorform like story books.

5.       Because each of the games has a story that will keep you playing until you’re fired/divorced/dead.

Super Princess Peach

We women can't help but cry all the time and make random vines grow.

1.       Because for once she does something besides get kidnapped by Bowser. This game was a long time coming.

2.       Because even though some of her powers might be kinda sexist, most of them are cool.

3.       Because of two words: talking parasol. (What? Mario had a glorified talking squirt gun.)

4.       Because while the standard Nintendo games are great, you need to recognize when they focus on a character that doesn’t end in “ario” or rhyme with “stink”.

5.       Because you kind of wanna know if she’ll be told Mario is in another castle for once. How you like it, honey?

The Phoenix Wright Series

Look at that bunch of freaks.

1.       Because you know there was at least one hour in your life when you wanted to be a lawyer.

2.       Because you can scream “Objection!” at the game and get weird looks from everybody else in the room/bus/church pew.

3.       Because they feature a myriad of engaging and engrossing murder cases that will keep you clicking for clues.

4.       Because it quite possibly features the most varied, interesting and hilarious cast of characters ever.

5.       Because everybody likes investigating crime scenes, otherwise there wouldn’t be 20 different spin offs of CSI.

The World Ends With You

Yeah, but will you take the credit card Richard Gere gave me?

1.       Because you finally wanna know what those player pins everybody keeps sporting at cons are all about.

2.       Because the music will annoy the crap out of you at first, but you’ll slowly start to secretly groove to it.

3.       Because it has one of the most original RPG stories ever. Seriously.

4.       Because the gameplay is fun, easy and customizable.

5.       Because you can go clothes shopping and play dress up and even get trash talked by snooty clerks like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

Kirby Canvas Curse

Or you can make him dizzy.

1.       Because the pink puffball is always a good time.

2.       Because it makes great use of the touch screen, which is kinda the whole point of the system – yeah, I’m talking to you, lots of other games that don’t!

3.       Because the beauty of a simple line can keep Kirby from certain death.

4.       Because it’s a pretty original concept with retro Kirby touches.

5.       Because it’s out of print, so finding the game is half the fun!

ファイナルファンタジーIII (Fainaru Fantajī III) - April 27, 1990 (Japan) - November 14, 2006 (US & Canada)

Hello readers and welcome to the next installment of the Far From Final Fantasy series. In this installment (a somewhat shorter one than the previous one albeit), we’re going to cover what I consider to be the true sequel to the original Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy III. I  say “true” because it has much in common with the original and does not have anything in common with Final Fantasy II. With that out of the way lets get into the development history of Final Fantasy III. Hironobu Sakaguchi knew that while Final Fantasy II sold a lot of copies and made them a lot of money (largely based on people buying it because they like FFI), most people who played it hated it and preferred the original. He then realized that his attempt to move the franchise along via the changes made in Final Fantasy II was a huge mistake, and decided to go back to the system they made in the first game and improve upon it. As such, they went back and somewhat overhauled the system and made it different, yet similar to the original. This would take 2 years to tweak until Final Fantasy III would see a release anywhere, and released it was on April 27, 1990 in Japan.

The story of Final Fantasy III is quite good, but is actually a little weaker than the story in FF2. That isn’t to say it is bad  (it isn’t), but it just didn’t go to the depth that the second one went to, yet it still had enough for a gamer to sink their teeth into. As a matter of fact it really feels like, in many ways, a re-haul of the story found in Final Fantasy I, but with much more meat and content added. You start out with four Onion Knight (your default class), orphan children (that you yourself name) who have found themselves trapped inside a cave nearby their home town of Ur. As they make their way through the cavern, they stumble upon a chamber which houses one of the four Elemental Crystals: The Wind Crystal. As soon as they reach it, they are attacked by a demonic creature. Barely surviving as they defeat it, the Wind Crystal tells them that it is dying due to an evil pestilence that stole it’s power. It furthermore tells them that they have been chosen as Light Warriors (not unlike The Warriors of Light in FFI), bestows them with the last of it’s power, charges them with a holy quest to protect the remaining three crystals in the world, and subsequently shatters due to this transferal of power. Thus begins the journey of the four orphan children who have the fate of the entire world on their shoulders…

Final Fantasy III Battle Screen

Final Fantasy III Menu Screen

Because the system employed in Final Fantasy III is (for the most part) largely the same on the surface, I’m just gonna go over a quick little checklist of themes and mechanisms present in-game.

• Random encounters on the world map
• The ability to switch your characters’ position in battle via the menu
• The ability to put your characters either in the back or front lines.
• Equipping various kinds of armor and weapons.
• Different maps for Overworld and any given town, dungeon, etc
• Ability to use recovery items both in battle and on the field.
• An open battle screen showing the names of both  your heroes and your foes
• A system of earning gil dropped by enemies at the end of the battle which can be used at Inns and Shoppes
• The very same level system that raises itself the more EXP points your allies gain from FFI.

Despite these similarities, there are many, many differences that Final Fantasy III has that the original did not; and practically all of them were for the better. I’ll start with the big ones and work my way down. The first and biggest thing I want to talk about and is most definitely the highlight of the entire game: the newly revamped job system. As I explained in my article on Final Fantasy I; you could choose your job at the beginning of the game for each of your four heroes which allowed for a wider range of customization. The job system here is the same in terms of choosing your job, but you could now choose jobs and change them whenever you wanted. The way you obtained these jobs were through the powers of the crystals you encounter during the game. The six basic jobs that were present in the first game (as well as Ninja and Master) have made a comeback. However, along with those initial jobs (excluding the default Onion Knight job) are a staggering amount of 15 new ones!  This point brings me to the next major upgrade in this game: job-specific commands. Aside from Mages who have the command “Magic”, many of the new jobs have their own special commands that allows them access to helpful abilities in battle. I’m going to list them all in the following job list along with both whatever special command they have access to and whether or not they reappear in some form in the series ago. In addition I’ll list the eight returning jobs, but won’t say anything about them (except in one or two instances) as they have already been said in Part 1.\

The jobs present in Final Fantasy III were the following…

1st Crystal Jobs

- Warrior – Other than the name change, he is still the same as the Fighter in FFI. For the most part, however, he is still a tank.

- Thief – For the most part the thief is the same nimble, knife-wielding party member. The game-changing aspect about this Thief comes in two differences. The first is that this is the first time that a thief (or anyone for that matter) has the Steal command. With this command he can steal items that enemies are holding. For the most part they are potions or other common items, but once in a while they were items that could not be bought. The thief also has another command called Escape, which is simply a much a better version Run that has a better chance of escaping.

- White Mage – Still the same mage that can cast White Magic.

- Black Mage – The very same mage that cast Black Magic in Final Fantasy I.

– Monk – Other than the name change from Black Belt to Monk, there is not much to say about this class.

– Red Mage – This Red Mage is the same jack-of-all-trades that he was in FFI.

2nd crystal Jobs

Knight - A much more powerful version of Warrior. The major difference between the two is his special command: Cover. If one of your allies is on the last bit of their HP, a Knight will shield your ally and take the hit intended for them. Knights and Warriors are essentially the same class and they are used interchangeably throughout the series.

Geomancer – A very different kind of class that is neither a magic class or a physical class. Depending on the kind of terrain they stand on, they can use it against their foes which sometimes give status effects to your foes by using the Geomancy command. As an alternative, they  can use bells which function as weapons (seriously). No buying spells or other such items are required as they know all their skills innately. This class would reappear in some form here and there in the series.

Scholar - A class that doesn’t have a lot going for it in terms of uniqueness. They use mystical books to attack and their special ability known as Peep. Unfortunately it doesn’t allow you to actually peep (nudity is still a problem in gaming unfortunately), it instead shows how much HP (both current and maximum) a foe has. While this is a useful ability in and of itself, White Mages have a spell called Libra which essentially has the same effect. This class doesn’t reappear again due to the developers’ decision to just keep Libra and abandon a class exclusively built around it.

Ranger – A class that is the first to wield bows and arrows. Unfortunately, the bow doesn’t have unlimited ammo and you must purchase more arrows should he run out; making it an expensive class to have. Strangely enough, his special ability is White Magic (but only up to level 3 magic). While the class Ranger wouldn’t appear very often in future games (if at all), bows and arrows would appear in every subsequent game as a main weapon.

3rd Crystal Jobs

Dragoon - A class that would become a staple character archetype for the rest of the series. Both in terms of abilities and aesthetic choices in armor, they seek to emulate the legendary dragons. They were the first class to use the new Spear class of weapons. Their special ability is one that would become synonymous with Dragoons: Jump. Jump allows you to leap into the sky (as the name implies) out of the battle screen temporarily, and come crashing down like a thunderbolt. They would appear in the majority of the games for the rest of the series.

Bard – A frail man who uses musical harps  instead of weapons to fight enemies. This class has two special abilities that are essentially  boosters in battle. The first ability is called Scare, and when used it either lowers your foes accuracy or causes them to flee in fear. The second ability they possess is called Cheer, which ups the party’s hit rate and speed; essentially equivalent to the White spell known as Haste. Bards would appear in many games to come, the most famous being in the game that will be reviewed after a few more articles (more about that at the end).

Viking – Think of this class as the next step up from Knight. While they have no actual combat command to speak of, they can equip axes and use them better than any other class. Just use him as a tank and for nothing else. Vikings never appear again in the series as playable characters, though several NPCs such as Dwarves and actual vikings appear later on.

Evoker – Even though this class is not that great, this is the first time in the series’ entire history that the staple magic type known as Summons (later known as Eidolons) ever appeared. Unfortunately this class is not the greatest class to summon beings with, because unlike the later job known as Summoner, the summons Evokers uses are  split into Black & White magic and any given summon will activate either type of magic. My advice is to skip it and wait until you get Summoner.

Magic Knight – This is a knight who (as the name implies) can use magic as an ability. However, like the ranger, he can only use up to Level 3 White Magic. The difference here is that he has both recovery magic and just as much power as a knight; a deadly combination. Except for a few circumstances, the Magic Knight rarely showed up again.

4th Crystal Jobs

Summoner – This is the real first appearance of the summoner. Unlike Evokers, the Summoner uses summons that only have one ability (e.g. Bahamut has Mega-Flare, Ramuh has Judgment Bolt, etc) that they use to great effect. From then-on in the series, Summoners and Summons always appear in the same roles. Usually, Summoners are mysterious characters with foggy pasts they can’t recall and the Summons themselves sometimes have roles outside of battle.

Ninja – The same Ninja from Final Fantasy 1 that wields every single weapon in the game.

Black Belt – Although I stated above that the Master reappeared in the game, this is the Master but for some reason they flip-flopped the names (Black Belt was the first class and Master was the upgraded one in FFI). This time around, they have a new special ability called BuildUp, which stores energy for one turn and uses that energy to hit harder for more damage. Unfortunately, this is not something that can be done an infinite amount of times, as using more it than thrice will both hurt you and cause you to lose that stored energy.

Devout – This class is essentially the ultimate White Mage, because they can use every single White spell. The amount of MP they have is through the roof which makes them worth having on your team. Devouts themselves never appear again, as White Mages themselves took on the ability to learn higher levels of magic; making this class redundant.

Sage – Sages are the end all and be all of magic. Period. Sages can use every spell in the entire game (from Black Magic to Summon Magic) and should absolutely be in anyone’s team by the end since they nearly have infinite MP by this time. Every now and then, characters that were either outright Sages or had the same abilities would appear in the series; but not too often.

Magus – Like how Devouts are the ultimate White Mage, a Magus is the ultimate Black Mage of the game. If, for some reason, you didn’t want a Sage, then Magi are worth it. Magi never appear again, instead having Black Mages just getting to their level.

In conclusion, the revamped job system was a revolution and it allowed the entire series to continually improve because of it. A great majority of these jobs that were introduced here became staple jobs in the series.

For one thing, many of the items that fans of the series are familiar with make their first actual appearance here (items that do similar yet different functions appeared in Final Fantasy II). Ethers (Restores MP), Phoenix Downs (Revives a KO’d Ally), Hi-Potions (Better Potion), Elixirs (Restores Large Amount of Both MP & HP), and Mallets (Cures Mini status) all made their first real appearances here. Every single Final Fantasy game since III has featured these items as essential ingredients to a good supply bag on the road.

An example of a combat item in action (albeit AntarcticWind mistranslated as SouthWind )

Starting in this game is the first new kind of item other than Key Items and Recovery Items: Attack Items. If used on the battlefield, these attacks simulated spells that Mages could normally cast. Such items included Antarctic Wind (Blizzard), Zeus’ Rage (Thunder), Hourglass (Haste), and more. As a stylistic choice, the developers changed the once completely black menus and windows shown whether you’re talking to somebody or selecting items to the blue ones that everyone knows and loves; something that would become a series trademark.

Perhaps one of the more major additions was the addition of visible numbers during battle. In past games during a battle, whenever somebody cast a spell, hit a foe, etc; the action was displayed in cascading windows at the bottom of the screen (e.g. GOBLIN TAKES 450 DAMAGE). The problem with this was that it drew the players attention away from the battle screen and to the menus below making it something of a chore to keep moving your attention back and forth. The developers greatly simplified everything by putting the text on the top of the screen and showing tiny little numbers near the appropriate target after an action was taken which denoted how much HP was lost, how much HP was restored, and so on on the respective sides; something that continues to this day because of said convenience.

This is also the first game where random people act as temporary party members to fill in a party member slot. Such temporary party members in-game include the forgetful warrior Desch, the White Mage/Water Crystal protector Aria, and the outspoken Prince Alus. This feature would remain in the future, yet the ability to alter their equipment was added on later. One gameplay aspect unique in this game that never returned (thankfully) was intentionally putting status effects on your party to continue. To be more specific, there are certain sections of the game  that will not allow you to continue through normally (e.g. a miniature hole or a passage underwater). In order to reach these areas you had to use spells such as Toad or Mini to allow your party to access these areas. However, there is a price to pay in the form of random battles that will completely destroy you if you attempt to fight back. It really adds to the difficulty of the game and is a bit of a shock if you don’t know what to expect.

As mentioned in the Evoker and Summoner class listing, this is the first game in the entire series to feature summons. Many of the summons represented elemental powers based on mythical beings from different pantheons of mythology. Here is a very quick list of the summons that appear for the first time

• Ifrit: A Satan-esque creature from Arabian mythology that is a fire elemental. He uses the ability Hellfire to send your foes into an inferno
• Shiva: A icy woman from Hindu mythology that is an ice elemental. Her ability is Diamond Dust, which freezes your enemies.
• Ramuh: A wizened old man from Hindu mythology that is a lightning elemental. His ability is Judgment Bolt which zaps your foes to oblivion.
• Titan: A giant straight out of Greek mythology that is an earth elemental. His ability is Earth Fury which creates an earthquake.
• Leviathan: A sea monster of Christian mythology that is a water elemental. His ability is Tidal Wave, which creates an unavoidable wave of doom.
• Odin: A warrior astride an eight-legged horse named after the King of Norse mythology. His ability is Zantetsuken, which causes instant death.
• Bahamut: A dragon who is often considered the King/Holy Father of all Summons. He carries the ultimate power known as Mega-Flare.

And that covers all the summons who all made their first appearances in this game. Many more summons would join the pantheon in later games.

Other than the job system, I’ve been saving the best contribution in the series for last. If Chocobos are the mascot of all of Final Fantasy, then these unforgettable creatures are 2nd place in terms of mascots and the first thing you think of when Final Fantasy is mentioned.

KUUUUUUUUUUUUPOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

HOORAY!!! Moogles made their very first appearance in this game and have never, ever, been denied a spot in a Final Fantasy game (be it core game or spin-off). How much importance they have to the plot ranged from cute little cameos to characters that are either supporting or main characters. Their catchphrase has always been “KUPO”…why they say it is a complete mystery to me. In Final Fantasy III, they are in the uncharacteristic role of bodyguards for the all-powerful sage Doga. They share very few similarities to the creatures fans all know and love, but over time they evolved into the beloved creatures in Final Fantasy canon.

Final Fantasy III for the DS...the first North American release of the game

This game was also one of the “Forgotten Final Fantasies” that didn’t make it over to the states until very early in the 21st Century. Final Fantasy III was released in Japan in early-1990, long before any Final Fantasy made it to America. In fact, the very first Final Fantasy was translated just 3 months after III was released in Japan. Unfortunately, Nintendo of America completely passed over Final Fantasy III in America and ignored it.  While there isn’t an official response from Nintendo as to why they completely passed over Final Fantasy III, it is a highly debated subject. Several people have come up with various theories such as Nintendo of America thinking the game would be too hard for Americans, the North American RPG market not taking off until Final Fantasy VII (I’ll talk about that sometime in the future), or the upcoming release of the SNES completely taking up NoA’s interest. In my opinion, I believe the lack of release in America is due to a combination of problems that entailed Final Fantasy II’s planned English release (you can read all about that in my previous article) and RPGs generally not being very popular outside of Japan.

Nintendo's maps that they packed for the American version of FF1

In the former case, they wasted enough time on that project and when N0A suddenly pulled the plug on all that hard work, and they probably didn’t want to even bother with another translation of  a game that would most likely suffer the same fate. In the latter case, this is something I should have commented upon in Part 1, but I feel now is a time to where it must be brought up. When NoA brought Final Fantasy over, they knew that console gamers were not really used to RPGs (with the exception of the relatively niche Dragon Quest/Warrior series), so they wanted to make the barrier to entry both as easy and as attractive as possible. When FF1 came out in America, they packed in two additional pieces of paper (in addition to the booklet) that were fold-out maps. One map was of all the dungeons in the game as well as a little box where you could write down all the treasures you found. The other was a world map that had the eponymous world map on one side, and a helpful list of items and weapons one could obtain in the game. Gamers back in the day might remember similar tactics used for not only this game, but also the Dragon Quest/Warrior games as well. Suffice it to say, even though it did actually help players out, it really didn’t work out so well in the long run. What I mean by that is that even though these goodies simplified things; the average gamer most likely felt that there were too many things to keep track of; which most likely was a turn-off.

Whats interesting about this game is that unlike most entries in the series, this wasn’t ported to another console until the mid-2000s. Until then, the only way Americans could play Final Fantasy III was by pirating a rom that was fanslated (a portmanteau of fan and translated) by a rom hacking group. I won’t link to the rom or tell you where you can find it or hint at its location, as I don’t want to support illegal activity on this blog. For those who didn’t want to take a law-breaking path, they would have to wait 15 years until Final Fantasy III would finally see a full remake released on the Nintendo DS (on November 16, 2007). Although the game is essentially the same as the original Famicom version on the whole, there are many differences between the two; but I’ll go into those in a future article.

Overall, I loved playing this game and I thought it made amazing contributions to the series that I’m already familiar with having played future games in the series. When playing it, its really cool to see where all the little aspects and quirks you are familiar with from future games came and gives you a sort of “present at the creation” kind of feeling. In terms of the story, it is highly enjoyable, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the epic sagas that would come about in future games. Overall, I would rate this game 4 stars out of 5 due to the intricacy of the job system, the good story, and (once again) the additions to the series which became staples and the gold standard that most Final Fantasies needed to take cues from.

Before I wrap up this article, I need to shortly go into the meta and make an announcement concerning the article series. After about a week of writing and brainstorming, I’ve decided and created a system regarding what kind of content you will be expecting in future articles. After this article, I will not be going into Final Fantasy IV just yet, instead I have a plan that will consist of me writing three articles that cover three spin-offs in the series and then move on to the next core game in the series. Some of the “spin-off” articles (so-to-speak) will consist of comparisons of ports/remakes of core games, other games Square or Enix has made over the years you should check out (either having  or not having a tangential relation to FF), and a variety of spin-offs of the core series (e.g. Tactics, Chocobo Games, and more). This will be a repeating cycle and it will allow for a little more spice in the series as you’ll never know which game you’ll see me review next. However,  I don’t want to put this three-article beat into motion just yet, so I’ll be writing one article as a test-run. This is where all you readers need to help me out; I want to hear feedback about the spin-off article and I want to know if this is what you want me to do from now on, or if you just want me to write about the core games.

Well…with that out of the way, thus ends the coverage of Final Fantasy III. If you enjoyed this article or have feedback on how I can make this series better, leave some comments or send me an e-mail at geoffino04@gmail.com; I’m all ears. Also don’t forget to check out all the other fascinating and fun articles present on this site as there are a lot to go through. Thank you for reading my article(s) and farewell until next-time.

Next Article: Far From Final Fantasy Part 4 – The First Final Fantasy Spinoff…and the Beginning of the Mana Series… – (Final Fantasy Adventure – GB)

ファイナルファンタジーII (Fainaru Fantajī II) - December 17, 1988 (Japan) - April 8, 2003 (USA & Canada)

Hello all and welcome to next edition of the Far From Final Fantasy series of articles. In this installment we’re going to be covering the originally unplanned sequel to Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy II. As a warning to all you readers out there in Internetland, this is going to be a LOOOOOOONG article because there is much to talk about concerning this game. The billions  of yen earned from the original Final Fantasy was both a complete shock and a very wonderful thing to have happened to Square. Realizing they could stay in the business if they made more Final Fantasies (or RPGs for that matter), they realized a sequel would both be inevitable and have to be made. One thing Hironobu Sakaguchi wanted to make extremely clear was that he did not want this company to become a one-trick pony (essentially meaning Square would be a Final Fantasy factory and nothing more), and so wanted to make other games in addition to Final Fantasy games.

After FF, Square dabbled in two genres tangentially related to RPGs (dungeon crawlers and Real Time Strategy to be specific) and made two games that came out. for the Famicom. Meanwhile, the bulk of Square worked on Final Fantasy II. The big snag in that game was that Final Fantasy was not originally meant to be a series, and as such the game was written to where no loose ends were left and a sequel couldn’t be made from it. They decided that the sequel should be an entirely different game with a different setting, different characters, and a different overall experience; something they would continue to do for the rest of the series; with few exceptions to that pattern (I’m looking at you X-2). Another thing that quickly became apparent to them is that if they wanted this series to continue, they would have to change the format because if they made the same game over and over again; fans would eventually stop playing due to staleness. Therefore, they rewrote the entire game from the ground up, making a completely new game this time around. Returning to the team again were Sakaguchi, Yoshitaka Amano, and Nobuo Uematsu in their respective roles. After roughly a year of work, Final Fantasy II was released on December 17, 1988; one year after the original was released…

I mentioned before that Final Fantasy II was different from the original Final Fantasy; that is both too kind and bears repeating. Final Fantasy II is nothing like the original (both in good ways and in bad ways). This time, the story was much, much more developed and involved. If Final Fantasy was the first modern RPG in terms of gameplay mechanics, then FFII is the first modern RPG in terms of storytelling as no game had ever told this deep of a story when it was first released. Unlike Final Fantasy I, this game does not give you the ability to choose jobs, instead the characters’ jobs for the first time (and certainly not the last) are locked in for the purposes of telling the story. But that didn’t mean you could not become what you desired, but I’ll get into that later.

I’m gonna give a basic summary of the story and stop at a certain point, because I don’t want to give away the entire story. Essentially, this story revolves around four orphaned young adults (by that I mean they’re roughly about 16-19): Firion, Maria, Leon, and Guy. The story starts out with them being chased by Black Knights of the barbaric Empire of Palamecia.  After being nearly murdered by the Black Knights, the four of them are saved by Princess Hilda; Daughter of the now-deceased King of Fynn and leader of the Wild Rose Rebellion; a rebel group who fights against the evil Empire of Palamecia. Only Firion, Maria, and Guy were rescued; Leon was nowhere to have been found. Wanting both to have revenge against Palamecia and to find Leon, the three plead with Hilda to let them join the Rebellion; to which she at first refuses. After learning that the three kids have nowhere to go and are orphans due to Palamecia’s brutality; she  relents and lets them join. After much journeying, they learn that Leon is indeed alive but has been transformed into The Dark Knight (not that Dark Knight) by the hands of the monstrously cruel Emperor of Palamecia. They learn that the Emperor is building a gigantic metal ship with vast powers of destruction at the push of a button called, the Dreadnought. Princess Hilda is eventually captured by Leon and our heroes must get onto their own airship, defeat Leon, rescue the Princess, and destroy the Emperor of Palamecia before he rules the world.

The main characters are the following…

Firion - Protagonist of the Story and Fighter from Fynn

Firion – A humble Fighter who hails from the town of Salamand. His parents died soon after his birth and was taken in by adoptive parents to the city of Fynn: Capitol City of the Kingdom of Fynn. Disaster struck when the northwestern Empire of Palamecia laid siege to Fynn (eventually capturing it) and killed his parents. Together with his childhood friends, Maria, Leon, and Guy; they escaped Fynn and were eventually saved by Princess Hilda. After learning  that Leon was not found along with them; all three decide to join the Rebellion to find Leon and take revenge against Palamecia. He acts as the protagonist of the story and is interesting in the fact that his magic skills are on par with his fighting skills; making for a very balanced character.

Maria - Beautiful Mage of Fynn and Leon's Sister

Maria – A beautiful and cautious Mage from the city of Fynn and Leon’s sister. She grew up together with Leon, Firion, and Guy. Her and her brother’s parents are also causalities of  war during Palamecia’s invasion of Fynn. Along with the others, she too fled from Fynn and was nearly killed by the pursuing Black Knights, but was luckily saved by Princess Hilda and the Rebellion. She is devastated upon learning that Leon wasn’t found when she and the others were rescued. Still believing that he is alive, she joins the Rebellion along with Firion and Guy to both strike back at Palamecia and find her brother. She acts as the Mage of the game (Black or White; it doesn’t matter) and is quite fragile in battle (unsurprisingly).

Guy - Silent Warrior of Fynn

Guy – A very dim and silent Warrior from the City of Fynn. He grew up along with Leon, Firion, and Maria; and have become close friends because of this. After Palamecia took over Fynn and killed his parents; he escaped along with the rest of his friends. Just as he was about to die at the hands of Palamecia, Hilda and the Rebellion came and saved him, Firion, and Maria. Along with Firion and Maria, he too joins the rebellion and aids them in their quest. This guy is a straight up tank and fighting is the only thing he is truly capable of.

Leon - Brother of Maria and The Dark Knight of Palamecia

Leon – A morally conflicted Knight (later Dark Knight) and Maria’s older brother. He grew up alongside Firion, Maria, and Guy. After Palamecia took over Fynn, he escaped along with the gang. Unlike the others though, he was not rescued by Hilda. Instead, he was captured and taken back to Palamecia where he was at the mercy of the heartless Emperor of Palamecia and eventually is tortured into becoming the Emperor’s Herald: the Dark Knight of Palamecia, and the most recurring antagonist our heroes fight against.

You barely ever get to play as Leon and he only permanently joins the party 3/4′s of the way into the game. The fourth spot for most of the game is taken up by players who come and go. Specifically those characters include Minwu: a White Mage who acts as the right hand man of Princess Hilda, Josef: a Monk who fights with you only to protect his family, Gordon: a passive Prince, Ricard: the last dragoon, Leila: a spunky bounty hunter and pirate, and Scott: the brother of Gordon and an honorable Knight.

The all-new battle screen of Final Fantasy II. No game in the series has since strayed from this fundamental design.

I’ll go into more about the story later because that is directly tied to my opinions overall. For now though, let us go into the gameplay mechanisms because they are different and need to be addressed.

There are two specific features in this game that make it stand out (or become the black sheep of the series depending on your point of view) and this is what the meat of the article will focus on. The battle system was entirely different in Final Fantasy II. Gone were the barriers between the enemies and the players. Instead of being squared off in separate boxes, all the information was contained at the bottom. This is the first (and only) game in the series to completely abolish the experience level system that everyone is familiar with. Instead, every single attribute you have is metered by an experience level for each individual stat. Let me explain, based on the actions you take in battle such as attack, getting hurt, using magic, or evading attacks; that attribute would be leveled up. For example: if I were playing and decided to hurt myself intentionally; my HP and Defense would raise higher. If I were to only use my weapons in a battle, my skills in that particular weapon would raise higher and I would be more proficient with that weapon. There is no limit to who can do what as any character can use any piece of equipment in-game; be it spell or weapon.

Magic is also another thing that is greatly affected by this new system as well. You can buy a spell at a magic shop in town, but that one spell has it’s own experience level that gets more powerful the more you use it. It’s essentially a cause and effect system. However, there are consequences should you concentrate on a specific attribute that I will go more into detail on in just a minute. I’ll make a listing of the attributes in-game and what has to happen in order to make it raise. However I’m not gonna comment on the attributes with percentage signs next to them because it would derail this entire article and make it only about the combat system instead of the entire game.

Overkill much, Sakaguchi?

• HP – I don’t really need to explain what this is. In order to make this raise, you must make sure your character is hurt badly and survive the fight by the end.
• MP – In order to make this raise, make your character primarily use magic and win the fight.
• Power – The strength that your character possesses which affects how much damage your character inflicts with a weapon. In order to make it raise, you need to have used the Attack command 100 times. White Magic’s effectiveness is lowered if too much concentration is put in.
• Agility – Agility determines how well you can dodge enemy attacks.
• Endurance- This is raised the same way as Hit Points are. Vitality is sometimes lowered by casting Black Magic.
• Weapon Type – This attribute determines how effective you are with a certain type of weapon. They are the following: Fists, Knives, Swords, Staves, Axes, Spears, Bows, and Shields.
• Intelligence – Intelligence determines how effective you are with Black Magic. How much is raised is dependent on how often you use it in battle. Frequent use of physical attacks weakens your Intelligence growth rates.
• Spirit – Spirit determines how effective you are with White Magic. How much is raised is dependent on how often you use it in battle.
• Magic Power – Magic Power is raised in the same way you raise MP and determines how effective you are with magic overall.
• Magic – Not to be confused with Magic Power. This is a stat found in every spell an determines how well you can hit with it and it’s level of power. Leveling this up is the same as how you level up weapon skill.

Confused? I know I am, and I’m the one reviewing this. Because of how open-ended and customizable this system is, it unfortunately had a lot of bugs in it that many players were able to take advantage of to cheat the battle system. In a battle, if you used a command that defined a certain attribute (Magic and Power in particular), you could enter it and move onto the next party member. However…you can backtrack to the previous character and no amount of experience would be lost because the system had written your “command” to memory. In essence, you could use the Battle Command 100 times without actually having attacked once and that still would have signified a level up. I could gain 20 levels in 1 battle if I exploited this system enough. I can understand why they put this system in here, because it allows for a much more customizable and personalized journey than any other. This one feature is the reason why this game is my most hated in the series. The reason being that this system was too complex and obtuse for its own good. Even with the exploits you can make to this system, it takes way too long to fully accomplish what you set out to achieve, and you waste so much precious time in doing so. While the idea is nice on paper and seems like it could be effective if implemented properly, this game is living proof of a good concept that is completely flawed in execution.

An Example of the Word Memory System

The other thing that makes this game stand out from the rest is how you talk to people and how you progress the story along. While talking to people is more or less the same as in any FF game, the difference here is that there is a conversation system employed called “Word Memory”. To be more specific, there will be certain things or words that characters say that you can put in a word memory box. Some characters won’t say a word to you or refuse to allow you to proceed unless you use the correct word or item on you. While I understand that this was probably done to have much a more in-depth experience in the story and make it as if you (the player) are talking to the NPCs, the problem is the same as the combat system (though not to that degree): it’s too complex to actually be something of any merit. When playing through for the first time, you have no way of knowing what NPC will respond to which item or which phrase. In fact, there are certain instances (I won’t say which, since they’re spoilers) where there is no way of knowing unless you recall one little factoid in the hundreds of conversations you’ve had in-game or use a FAQ. However it isn’t a fatal flaw like the combat system, it’s more of a major annoyance and hindrance (and yes there is a difference).

Another thing I really feel the need to mention itself is the story itself. While I did give you a brief summary of the plot, I want to ask you a question: Does this remind you of something you’ve seen before? Maybe it has stars in it?  Did a couple wars take place? Perhaps there is a giant ball in space? If you haven’t guessed by now (if you really haven’t…what the hell), the plot is almost completely derived from STAR WARS: EPISODE IV!! This isn’t a situation where there are some elements of Star Wars are incorporated or there are a few similarities that this has with the movies..no! There are so many similarities to Star Wars, including plot devices and character archetypes, that the comparison cannot be ignored. Whether Sakaguchi blatantly plagiarized George Lucas or not is highly up for debate, but the my money is on the affirmative. I’ll make a list of items and instances that I’ve noticed that both have in common with each other. Overall, I’ll let you be the judge in the end.

The Final Fantasy II/Star Wars Episode IV Similarities List

• There is an all-powerful Emperor who wants to rule the world with an iron fist.
• Said Emperor employs a being who represents darkness as both the heavy and his main way of exerting his power.
• The protagonist is an orphan.
• Said protagonist’s home and everything that was dear to him was completely destroyed in fire and death.
• At some point or another, a bounty hunter or thief of some kind helps you get closer to the empire.
• A princess is seen as the dominant figure in a rebellion to topple the Empire.
• A gigantic, metal ship is used to menace over the good guys and is practically impossible to destroy.
• A princess is taken as a hostage by the Empire
• There is only one specific method that must be accomplished in order to destroy the behemoth of a ship that is The Dreadnought.
• Somebody (or several characters) die(s) for the greater good.
• Everything representing the Empire is either big or many miles in width, representing the Empire’s long reach.
• The protagonist breaks onto the Big Bads’ ship to rescue the princess.

Well…I have nothing more to say in that regard.

While most of the game is either bad or unsatisfying, there are some good things to take away from it. For one thing, it introduced many things to the series that have since become unbreakable traditions that truly define the series as a whole. In the original game, you had to go on a quest to find a sunken ship in the desert. It lost its power to fly, and could only take flight again if  you found the Levistone, a stone that gave back the ship its ability to fly. In this game, you eventually meet a rowdy and likable airship engineer named Cid who acted as your mechanic. From II on, there would be at least one character named Cid who usually was either directly or tangentially related to airships in some fashion (with a few exceptions). Perhaps the most important contribution can be summed up in the picture following this sentence…

CHOCOBO!!!!!! SQUEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

That’s right, this is the first game ever to feature Chocobos!! These avian horse-like mounts acted as the main way most people traveled across the land. If you were lucky enough, you could stumble upon one of the many random Chocobo Forests where you could find and catch one of these adorable birdies. If you caught one (it’s not hard at all), you could then temporarily use one like a horse to quickly travel across the overworld (but only on the continent you found him on) with no possibility of random encounters. However once you got off, you couldn’t get back on and the Chocobo would return to the forest from whence it came.

Original, marketing advert for the unreleased English version of Final Fantasy II, dubbed Dark Shadow Over Palakia

This game is also notable as one of the “Forgotten Final Fantasies”, meaning that it did not make it across the pond to America after FFI proved to be a critical success. There were actually plans for it to be released under the name Final Fantasy: Dark Shadow Over Palakia.  It even got fully translated, complete with packaging and advertising, and was set for a release approximately around Christmas of 1990. However the entire project was canceled at the last minute. This was most likely due to the fact that the SNES would have been released at least 3 months after the game came out, and Nintendo felt that an RPG on the NES would be completely ignored due to interest primarily being spent on waiting for the SNES. They instead opted for a translation of Final Fantasy IV which was half-way through development back in Japan, but we’ll talk about that in a later article. Suffice it to say, American never got the chance to play this game until 2003 when it was remade and translated into English in the PS1 compilation, Final Fantasy Origins.

My overall opinions of this game were mostly explained throughout the article. If you haven’t guessed by now, it’s apparent that I really don’t like this game at all. In fact, I think it’s the worst game in the series and is so unlike Final Fantasy in many, many ways. In fact, it reminds me more of an old-school RPG along the lines of Wizardry or Ultima in terms of the fact that it forces you to become deeply immersed in the world and converse with characters in a specific manner to progress (e.g. typing/selecting commands during conversations in hoping you could proceed). If it were a straight-up RPG like the ones I mentioned above, I wouldn’t be so hard on it. But, the fact that it has the name Final Fantasy means that I have specific expectations based on previous experiences that were (in some way or another) similar to each other, and none of those expectations were fulfilled at all. Between the extremely flawed combat system, the unnecessarily and overly complicated conversation system, and the practically ripped-off plot of Star Wars, there are many more  reasons to say why I hate this game so much, but I’ve gone on long enough and will stop right there. 1 star out of 5, ’nuff said. What’s mind blowing to me is that as bad as this game is, it somehow has been given ports to eight different consoles ranging from the PSP to iOs devices. In conclusion, don’t actually play this game for real (or some other reason like needing to play all of them to say that you have) as it will only frustrate you. I would say only play it unless you want to experience all that I’ve related to you in this article for curiosity’s sake. Tune in next time when I will be writing about a game that isn’t bad and allowed the series to continue improving consistently for many years.

If you enjoyed this article or have feedback on how I can make this series better, leave some comments or send me an e-mail at geoffino04@gmail.com; I’m all ears. Also don’t forget to check out all the other fascinating and fun articles present on this site as there are a lot to go through.

Next Time: Far From Final Fantasy Part 3 – Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and…Um…Did I Forget to Mention Jobs? (Final Fantasy III – FC/NES)

ファイナルファンタジー (Fainaru Fantajī) - December 17, 1987 (Japan) July 12, 1990 (USA & Canada)

What is there to say about Final Fantasy that hasn’t already been said by any self respecting gamer or gaming blog? It is both one of the most famous and lauded RPG franchises in video game history, it set the gold standard for what defines a modern RPG in the current era, and it was a revolution in gaming on the whole. One question that many people ponder is the title itself: why is it called Final Fantasy and why does it still keep that moniker to this day? In this first installment in what I hope will become a series, I will be reviewing any and all Final Fantasy games that I can get my hands on which includes (but is not limited to): spin-offs such as the Tactics series, the Chocobo games, the Crystal Chronicles series, and other obscure games (coughmysticquestcough) and more. The format of how these articles will consist of the following.  I will usually start off an article with its development history or other interesting stories that influenced the making of a game as that can provide a lot of context for the overall experience of a game. After that I will get into the nitty-gritty aspects such as gameplay, story, things I liked or didn’t like, aspects that stuck out, etc. At the end of the review, I’m going to give a standard rating of 1 to 5 stars and any other final notes or mentions I feel are necessary to make.  So let’s kick off this series by discussing where it all began…back in 1987.

Before worrying if you had enough gil to buy enough Phoenix Downs or Potions to beat that one boss ever was a concern to gamers, there was a bigger problem on the minds of the heads of a small video game company known as Square: bankruptcy. Before Final Fantasy ever came out, RPGs were not the  forte of Square, they made an assortment of games across various genres like most companies at the time were doing. In fact, Square was not a big company at all, they were just another blip on the map that didn’t stand out at all. Some of the games they made included 3-D World Runner, King’s Knight, and a side scroller based on the blockbuster movie Aliens (released only in Japan). None of these games made enough yen or U.S. dollars to keep the company afloat. Having money to only make one more game before they went under, President and Producer/Director of Square: Hironobu Sakaguchi decided to take it upon himself to make (what he thought would be) Square’s last game. When asked what kind of game he would make by Daily Famitsu, a Japanese periodical that focused on things such as anime and video games,  he responded by saying “I don’t think I have what it takes to make a good action game. I think I’m better at telling a story…”

Seeing that he had nothing to lose, Sakaguchi took a gigantic risk of making an RPG. Before he even started writing the story, he began to examine and study the RPGs that were selling like hotcakes both in Japan and across the pond.  Dragon Quest, Ultima, Wizardry, and Dungeons & Dragons were just some of the titles he studied. Believing it to be his last game, he named it Final Fantasy. Sakaguchi hired two people in particular to help him make the game, these two would eventually work on almost every other Final Fantasy title soon afterward. Rising manga artist, Yoshitaka Amano designed the characters and monsters that inhabited the world. Famed video game music composer, Nobuo Uematsu would lend his musical skills to creating the soundtrack of the game (his 16th score at the time). The original fantasy itself was released on December 17, 1987 on the Nintendo Famicom in Japan (later receiving an English port and translation in mid-1990). The basic premise of the story was simple: the 4 elemental orbs (earth, water, fire, and wind) started to die due to the intervention of Four Fiends and their will to destroy all life on the planet. From out of nowhere, four brave heroes dubbed The Warriors of Light carrying 4 small shards of the orbs, set out on an epic journey to kill the Four Fiends, restore life to the orbs, and save the Earth from destruction. While it may seem like an extremely primitive and cliched story (especially by today’s standards), this was one of the most advanced at the time and almost completely unheard of in video game storylines.

Now we come to the actual review of the game itself. I’m going to presume that many of you who are reading this are quite familiar with the series, so it’s going to be really hard to talk about the aspects that make this game tick as if they were new, because, for the most part, they are the bread and butter of every game that follows. Like most RPGs of the time, you had the ability to equip weapons such as swords, axes, knives, etc; and buy spells to either menace your foes with or support your allies if things get a little hairy on the battlefront. The huge aspect that set this game apart from every single RPG on the market at the time can be summed up in one word: jobs. This was the first game where the player could choose what jobs your four main characters could be, whereas every other game had the jobs preset and locked in.

The jobs present in Final Fantasy were the following…

I like swords.

Fighter: Your basic battle tank that wielded powerful blades or axes, wore heavy armor, and basically made every living creature that wasn’t dead…dead.

HADOKEN

Black Mage: A magician that specialized in using magic that either caused your foe to die or suffer a horrible and slow death.

White Mage: The polar opposite of a Black Mage, in that they used spells to either heal & support your allies, or destroyed all that was unholy (e.g. zombies or ghouls).

Black Belt (Monk in later revisions): A warrior from the mountains that only relies on his fists (or martial arts weapons) to kill his foes.

Your GP or your HP.

Thief : A man who is quicker than lightning and can use a cut things with his knife quicker than a chef can. Unfortunately lacks the ability to steal items off their foes.

EXCELSIOR!

Red Mage: This is the jack-of-all-trades class that doesn’t really have any strengths or weaknesses that stand out. They can use a limited range of magic, as well as equip swords and shields.

You could choose any combination of four classes to take with you on a journey. If you are smart and wanted an evenly balanced party: you would take Fighter, Black Belt, White Mage, and Black Mage. If you were daring (or stupid depending on how you look at it): you could take four White Mages (It’ll never work). Another thing that made the game stand out was the lively and brilliantly animated battles. Random encounters were nothing new to RPGs at all, but never before were battles as active as this.

Believe it or not, this was hot shit back in the day; primitive as it might appear today.

All your personal information (HP, name, etc) was contained on the right side of the screen. While all the information of your foes occupied the left side of the screen. Compared to every other RPG back then, you never saw your player character and every battle was completely static with inanimate action. You would take your party and travel the world on a gigantic overworld, free to do whatever you wanted to do. When you came into contact to a castle, settlement, or town; you would immediately switch to a map of the town and enter buildings such as towns, inns, and shoppes where you could rest your wounded heroes or upgrade your equipment. At first  you were limited to one continent on the map, but as you traveled, you gained access to vehicles that could get you to areas you previously couldn’t reach. Such vehicles included the canoe for traveling over rivers, a boat for sailing the sea, and the ever-famous airship for taking to the skies and going everywhere and anywhere you wanted.As if choosing your jobs wasn’t game-changing enough, you could even upgrade your jobs to more powerful jobs if you undertook an optional quest by the King of Summons himself, Bahamut. If you succeeded, you could change the Fighter into a Knight, Thief into Ninja, White Mage into White Wizard, Black Mage into Black Wizard, Black Belt into Master, and Red Mage into Red Wizard.

Yes...hidden, rare, enemy encounters that could kill you in one move were there from the beginning.

One other thing to note about this game is the difficulty. This was an era before Phoenix Downs existed, so if one of your allies died in the heat of combat; you had to backtrack all the way to the nearest church (heart shaped clinic in the American version) and have him revived by the kindly priest who ran it. One of the more jarring things about this games is the complete absence of MP for your mages to revel in. Instead you had a specific amount of magical charges you could use before you could not use magic, if you ran out…well…um…sucks to be you. You have to realize that this was the first game of it’s kind and many of the mainstays of the series that most are familiar with are completely absent (Cid, MP, Chocobos, Moogles, etc).
My actual opinion of this game is very, very mixed. I can appreciate that it was the first game in the series and the first modern RPG overall, but the difficulty in this game is absolutely unforgiving to any modern gamer who grew up on much more softer games. This is a classic example of a term that is thrown around by the retro-gaming community: Nintendo Hard. This game isn’t all sunshine and rainbows; it is a mean, nasty experience that will beat you to your bloody knees if you let it. If you can get past the relatively big learning curve, you can breeze through this game; however don’t expect knowledge of any other RPG or Final Fantasy title to save you as it will only hinder you as very few RPGs (if any) are made like this at all anymore. Also, if you are expecting this game to have a massively epic story on the level of Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy IV, you will be extremely disappointed as it’s a very bare plot and no named characters to connect with.  Overall I will give this game 3 stars out of 5 due to it’s importance to the series (being the first) and a good game in and of itself (despite all it’s shortcomings). The only reason to actually play this game, at least in my estimate, is to get a sense of perspective of how far the series has come from it’s humble roots in the 8-Bit Famicom.  So popular was this game, that it has been remade and ported at least nine times: from the Japanese MSX computer to iOS devices such as the iPhone and the iPad. Contrary to Sakaguchi’s expectations, the game was an overnight success, selling out like crazy. So much so, it allowed Square to stay in business and continue making games. This proved that the fantasy that Sakaguchi created was anything but final…

If you enjoyed this article or have feedback on how I can make this series better, leave some comments or send me an e-mail at geoffino04@gmail.com; I’m all ears. Also don’t forget to check out all the other fascinating and fun articles present on this site as there are a lot to go through.

Next time: Far-From Final Fantasy Part 2 – Conversation Systems, Cheatable Battle Systems, and Blatantly Derivative Plots! Oh My! (Final Fantasy II – Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System)

I saw this book featured in a slate.com article a few months ago and thought a-ha! This book will entertain me-it is relevant to my interests! But…

There were so many things about this book that offended me.

First of all, I would say that if the author’s thesis was to explain why video games matter, he sure did a piss poor job. The highlights for his argument were lost in a jumble of ten dollar words and arrogance, which serves to turn off even the most avid gamer – or reader. In fact, I would say that reading the parts of this book that aren’t just rambling summaries of video games and interviews with developers and designers-the sections that are truly just the author’s voice – just convinced me that video games only matter in terms of keeping people away from them because they are addictive and manipulative.

Bissell spends an entire chapter pontificating about his brief obsession with cocaine and GTA IV. When he walks into Ubisoft and sees a lot of attractive women sitting at desks and walking around he wonders if their success has lent them the ability to have models or escorts hanging around. Oh good, misogyny and elitism, what an admirable combination! This seems like exactly what the video game world needs less of right now.

The author spends most of his time trying to dig into the ‘meaning’ of video games in such an over analytical way that you wonder what he gets out of the experience at all. He seems to hold games to some sort of outrageous standard and pulls all sorts of people in the business into the book to give credence to his almost tantrum – like arguments about video games as art forms and how this or that didn’t quite reach the astronomical expectations he has for his games-the same games he repeatedly talks about ruining parts of his life because of his own obsessive nature. He even mentions casually telling a BioWare employee that he spent 80 hours inside of Mass Effect and got a raised eyebrow of surprise – even the designers felt like that was a lot. Video games as ‘art form’ has been a hot topic in the news for awhile, and although Bissell seems to be an apologist he also appears to think that nothing has quite reached this level yet.

I also got totally lost in his overuse of SAT words. I have a fairly high vocabulary and haven’t had to consult a dictionary in a LONG time while reading a book, but I didn’t know the meaning of about 50 words in the first several chapters. I don’t think this is a player fail, it seemed almost counter-intuitive to what he was writing about in the first place. When you are talking about Resident Evil in an awkward second person voice and describing a surprising moment where the monsters don’t ‘disappear’ after killing them, do you need to start the next section by trying to violate your readers with twelve syllable words? The contrast is a little startling and alienating. I can almost see some people liking it because it appears that he is elevating their favorite hobby to an intellectual level, but if you read closer he is almost always talking about how or why it failed to meet his expectations. And if I never heard the phrase ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ again, it will be too soon.

I did like listening to the game company representatives talking about games, however. The author has enough of a right mind to ask detailed and interesting questions – the interviews with Jonathan Blow and Peter Molyneux were brilliant (even if the Molyneux Q&A was placed in the Annex). Occasionally he would rise above (or below, because I kept picturing him on some floating cloud of video game self importance) his own thought process and say something insightful or noteworthy. Finding out that BioWare employs more writers than designers in their Edmonton office was something I didn’t know previously (but should have, considering how much I adored Dragon Age for its creative inter-character relationships and lauded them repeatedly for it), so that was a positive note. And he mentions here and there the rise of the indie scene, which is near and dear to my heart.

Ultimately, if you aren’t a gamer you might find a lot of this book ridiculously boring. Occasionally the author spends several pages of a chapter summarizing a game in that monotonous ‘this and then this and then this’ chronology that can bog down any game reviewer. So if you’ve played them (Fallout 3, Far Cry, GTA IV, Mass Effect, for example) you might find this comfortable and interesting as a comparison (he thought this, I thought this). And his devotion to gaming is admirable, as well as his completionist nature (I am the same way about games I love). But his premise of ‘why video games matter’ was never fully actualized-I sort of learned why they matter to him, but never why they should matter to everyone. Calling the book Extra Lives: My Unhealthy Lifelong Obsession With Video Games would have been a better title.

For more of Jessica’s writings, check out her blog at: http://www.itallstartedwithchronotrigger.com

Believe it or not there’s yet another Mario Sports title coming out this month. In this one Mario and company get to enjoy hockey, basketball, volleyball and dodgeball. Yes, I said dodgeball. As satisfying as it is to picture Peach chucking a big, red bouncy ball right in Daisy’s smug little face, you can tell they’re starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel when it comes to sports they can force these characters to play. Dodgeball is fun enough in real life, if you like being pelted in the stomach with stuff, but I don’t think there’s too many people desperate to get their hands on a virtual version. It sounds more suited as a minigame in something called Super Mario Middle School, rather than a dedicated sports game. (Bowser could be the principal! And Kamek can be the mean math teacher who’s always yelling and brandishing his trusty yard stick. And naturally everything – and I mean everything – in the cafeteria has mushrooms in it.)

Snowball fighting is a sport also, apparently.

Anyway, Mario’s kicked, run, served, batted, swum, glided and swung his way through a ridiculous amount of sports over the years, including off-beat selections like bobsledding, table tennis and even curling. And while a few mainstream sports have yet to be tackled, (Lacrosse! Badminton!) I have a few unique suggestions for future Mario sports games – and I’ve even made sure to think up the cons of letting the Mario gang tackle these sports. Because, really, they’re more important than the pros.

Dock Diving – It’s a sport more than kart racing is! And pudgy Mario barely has to do anything for a change. In this event, the owner throws an object into the water as far as they can. Then the dog jumps in after it and his landing is recorded. Farthest jump wins. Mario could partner with Yoshi, chuck one of those berries he’s obsessed with into the water and then munch on a slice of pizza while the dino does all the work. And it’s no worse than any of the minigames we’ve endured playing Mario Party over the years.

Then Again… Yoshi kinda flutters, which could be considered cheating if the judges aren’t properly bribed. There was also that irksome trait Yoshi had in Super Mario Sunshine – where he kind of dissolved into globs of flesh and organs any time he touched water. Also, I’m not sure who else he could compete against. Goombas can’t jump, and Paratroopers would put Yoshi’s already unfair advantage to shame with their wings.

Wrestling – No, Super Smash Bros. does not count. Last time I checked gladiatorial combat went out of fashion along with togas. Wrestling seems like a pretty common sport. There are several different types of wrestling: Greco-Roman, Sumo, the type that Hulk Hogan used to do before he got a reality show, and probably other types I don’t know/care about. Sumo wrestling might suit the

Even his tail brings death.

physiques of certain characters (Wario…) better than others. (Waluigi. Pretty sure he can be snapped like a twig.) A variety of comic effects could be added to liven up the matches. Like power-up mushrooms could be used to grow larger and really give your opponent the beat down. And banana peels are always a classic. Hey – no one ever said these sports had to maintain realism. Anytime you throw mushroom headed creatures into the mix reality pretty much goes out the window.

Then Again… Bowser is covered in a ridiculous amount of spikes. He would totally end up impaling someone. And King Boo would be difficult to pin. You know, because he’s a ghost. And you really can’t touch ghosts. On the other hand, he’s the only one who could safely fight Bowser. And by fight I mean fly around until the Koopa King collapses and is carried off to the hospital with extreme exhaustion.

Ballroom Dance – Hey, Dancing with the Stars is one of the most popular shows on TV. So why not? They could call it: Dancing with the Super Mario All-Stars. (See what I did there? It’s something anyone with four seconds to spare could have totally thought of.) All the dances could have “clever” names, like the Mushroom Mambo, or the Frog Suit Foxtrot. (Wearing an actual Frog Suit, of course. The fact that they’re barely functional on land should make trying to dance an experience.) You could do the waltz with Waluigi, swing around with Donkey Kong or tango along with Toad. (Try not to step on him.) It doesn’t even have to be a controller based game – surely those Wii Fit boards need some dusting off. (I know mine does.)

Even toad deserves a girlfriend, I guess.

Then Again… There really aren’t enough girls to go around. Someone’s gonna end up with Birdo. I guess there are other places you could dredge up female characters from the Mario universe (that chick from Galaxy, Bowser’s daughter, throw some of the Donkey Kong girls in there – slap a bow on a piranha plant), but they’d really be reaching for filler material. (Which they already do enough – I’m looking at you, Toadette.) Of course the male characters are no prizes themselves. Would you want to partner up with Wario? That wouldn’t be any showy dip move at the end of his dance – it’s actually his partner collapsing from the pungent garlic smell emanating from his every pore. And there’s that whole can’t- touch-King-Boo-because-he’s-a-freaking-ghost problem again. Not to mention the lack of dance shoes in Petey Piranha’s size. (But I’m sure he and his bow wearing female counterpart, Petra Piranha, would be stunning out on the dance floor. Until they ate somebody.)

Ultimate Frisbee – I always thought my gym teachers made this game up, but I guess I was giving them too much credit. Believe it or not it’s a real sport – although it’s simply called Ultimate, because Frisbee is a copyrighted name. (Am I the only one who finds it

I hate ur face.

amusing that a game played with a flipping Frisbee is called “Ultimate”? It’s a bit of an over exaggeration, isn’t it? Like if the N-Gage had been named “Useful”.) If you’re not familiar with this sport known only by an adjective, it’s basically like soccer with a Frisbee. (Or flying disc. Or whatever they call it.) It’s a team sport, which Mario and friends seem to enjoy. There’s plenty of opportunity for special moves too. (AKA fancy cheating.) Yoshi could grab the Frisbee with his tongue. Or trip people with those eggs he mysteriously poops out. And Luigi could…uh…do…stuff. He’s capable of coming up with something. (I love Luigi, actually. He’s just an easy target.) Also, it’s another sport that has the possibility of Daisy getting hit in the face with something. And no sport with that possible attractive outcome can be overlooked.

Then Again… How long before Toad gets trampled? Or Koopa gets kicked around? Not to mention how useless they’d be trying to grab something out of the air with way taller characters around. Nobody likes playing Monkey in the Middle. (That’s why it didn’t make this list.) And, just like me in gym class, there’s the possibility that the players might just stand there and do nothing. Because Ultimate is not nearly as exciting as the name might imply.

Freeze Tag – What? Don’t laugh. The franchise is headed in this direction anyway. Maybe it could be in another compilation type game, along with Red Light/Green Light. And Red Rover. (Red rover, red rover send Shy Guy right over!) You could run around freezing and unfreezing everybody against a number of various Mario universe backdrops: desert, airship, lava filled castle. (That could get dangerous.) Under water is also an option. (As long as they go back to the good old days when there was no such thing as drowning.) Plus you could actually freeze your opponents using your trusty ice flower.

No contest.

Then Again… I don’t suppose there’d be much demand for a video game featuring a game where all you do is run around and tag people. And what would stop Mario and the gang from freezing Bowser and walking away to do something else? Something better. Like race karts, perhaps. Because let’s face it, why would they waste their time with any of these other sports when they could be out running people off cliffs and laughing together over the flaming wreckage? Now that’s what I call fun.

Read more of my insanity @ my video game blog, Sephiroth’s Tutu

And it’s freaking cute. Like… I made a very high-pitched noise when I first used magic. The Pink Knight’s triangle magic is rainbows and peace signs. Just like in the above image, when you hit someone with this magic, it makes them stop and give a peace sign. And then it sparkles. The circle magic is even cuter: you throw round creatures of immeasurable cuteness at your enemies, and then the round creatures puff away in a cloud of pixelated hearts.

Yes, it is cutesy. Yes, it is bordering on ridiculous. But if this game wasn’t already girlfriend-friendly, it is even more so now. Just in time for Valentine’s Day! So call your girlfriend, fire up your PS3, and buy the Pink Knight Pack: it’s only $1.99, and 100% of the revenue from sales go to breast cancer research.

In short: this is the most lady-friendly game add-on in the universe. Do it now.

I’ve written here previously about playing video games, specifically Castle Crashers. I love playing certain games, but sometimes, I just want to be a voyeur.

That’s the case with Dead Space 2. My boyfriend recently got the game for a belated Christmas gift (it came out February 1) and started playing the second he opened the package. I knew I wanted to watch him play, since we’d watched Dead Space: Downfall a few months ago. Creepy space stations? Weird human/alien hybrids? Unsettling music? Check, check, check.

I don’t want to play Dead Space 2 myself. That might seem strange, until you realize that watching someone play a video game is sort of like watching a sweet movie where you (the player, the audience) get to make decisions about the main character’s path. Stating the obvious, a video game is like a modern Choose Your Own Adventure book. (But you can’t peek at the endings like you could with those books.) I like the art in Dead Space 2. I think it’s a well-written, well-designed game that isn’t just interesting to play, it’s cinematic in its entertainment value. It’s better than a movie, even. If this video game was turned into a movie, there would be more dialog, more dramatic background music, and less time spent with the main character. As a player or observer of the game, you get to know Isaac even though you are controlling him. You spend a lot of time in relative silence, exploring the ships. Isaac’s reactions to the death and gore around him are disturbing; aside from a few choice phrases when he’s stomping the life out of a Necromorph, he’s quiet and doesn’t show his disgust at his predicament in any way. It’s super creepy and understated, and it makes the loud, gory parts that much more shocking.

Andrew spent 16.5 hours playing Dead Space 2, and I watched probably 10 of those. It was never boring, even when he had to go back and replay certain parts because he wanted to get trophies. Again, a good video game, or at least the best video games to observe, are like movies you control.

There have been a few other video games I’ve enjoyed watching, and they all seem to be of the same type. Dead Rising, the zombie game that took place in a mall, was one of them. I actually tried playing that one and failed miserably. It was incredibly amusing to watch my roommates dismember zombies with random detritus. I also have been enjoying watching Andrew play Silent Hill: Homecoming, and in the past, I’ve watched people play Fallout and Left 4 Dead.

Violent, story-based video games, for me at least, are awesome to watch, but I am absolutely pathetic when it comes to playing them.

Just in case you weren’t scared by the first Dead Space, the development team took the extra step of hiring a team of psychologists and experts on fear to make the game that much more horrifying, not only from a storyline point of view, but also on gruesome topics like human deformation.  If you don’t think this would actually make a difference for you, trust me it does.  Take it from me, i dated a Psychologist for 14 months, they are experts at messing with your head.  The result is an upgraded Dead Space 2, not just in game play, but also making sure the game gives you nightmares.

The game play is largely similar to Dead Space 1.  If you played the first, you can really jump into the second without skipping a beat.  The only major change to the game play in the antigravity portions.  In the first, antigravity puzzles were solved with your character (Isaac) jumping from platform to platform confusing the floor with the ceiling.  In Dead Space 2, your suits are equipped with mini jets that allow you to navigate, stop, and turn in mid air.  This also comes with the addition of a few antigravity mazes through big gears and lots of things that can chop limps off if you fly through them wrong.

What has also changed is that there are a wider variety of weapons, some of them actual guns (the first game the weapons were all drilling equipment…which was awesome).  However it is also impossible to get all the weapons on the first play through, nor is it possible to level up all your weapons and suits on the first play through.  This is something that causes you to really think about how you spend your credits, and what to level up, because spending credits loosely can get you to a point in the game where you are out of ammo and there are a ton of necro’s trying to eat your face.

One of my favorite aspects of the game is that Isaac in the first game is a faceless character with no personality and is a complete errand boy.  This game Isaac has his own agenda, makes his own decisions, and has a personality.  You learn to actually care for Isaac, and you are concerned for him, because on top of dodging flesh eaters, he is also having a psychological break, and is still morning loosing the love of his life.  The story telling in this game surpasses the first game, and leaves you clamoring for more.

All in all this game surpasses the first, and met my expectations for a sequel.  The only thing that it didn’t improve on the first was the length of the game.  Both games you can play through in 8 hours.  Which means i spent more time day dreaming about the game at work thinking about faking sick and going home to turn on my xbox than i actually did playing it.  I thought this game would be different, as it is two disks, but no, I played through it in 8 hours.  Luckily, the replay value on this one is high, and the second time through you get to keep all your weapons from the first go around.  All in all, despite its length, it’s worth buying.  Power up your saws and cut off some limbs kids.  You won’t regret it.

Rob DeSantis is a Comedian and Writer (not to mention video game nerd obviously).  Follow him on twitter here: www.twitter.com/RobDComedy

After many, many hours traversing a landscape destroyed by war, riddled with spooks, deserted by dinosaurs and guarded by robots, I finally finished the second Deathspank, Thongs of Virtue. And although I am 100% complete, I must admit that I am only about 87% pleased. To me, a sequel is something that improves upon the original after taking into account audience feedback and the cash acquired from the original. Since TOV was designed alongside the first game, the only changes made were in narrative and landscape. Now, if you loved the first one to tiny bits, like I did, this doesn’t sound like a problem; it sounds fantastic! But sadly, I found myself getting a little bored near the end with the dialogue and the quest monotony.

The same basic menu applied, with the ‘auto choose best armor’ option checked-if they would have asked, I would have recommended adding a second box entitled ‘destroy armor after removal’ to ensure that I wouldn’t spend a lot of pointless time putting discarded gloves and necklaces in the grinder (I suppose someone may want to keep the adorable lion headpiece as a novelty, but its totally impractical to wear if you are holding something superior). TOV indulged in the same irreverent dialogue, which was adorable in the first game but quickly got old partway through the second-not because it wasn’t funny, but because it was the same kind of funny the whole way through. Picture me laughing at first, then giggling softly, and then finally skipping the dialogue completely and reading the quest log instead and this would be a fairly accurate visual of me on my couch between 10pm and midnight for two weeks straight. Maybe it was because the new and shininess of the original had worn off or because the release dates were too close together, but I was definitely 13% less entertained by TOV than I was by Deathspank.

So now that I have said that, 87% of me was quite pleased. I loved the new landscapes-especially the North Pole, where you must visit a bitter and disenchanted Santa Claus and persuade him to give up his underpants for the greater good. Both games introduced you to some great characters, but my favorites are the pirates of Scurvyville (a homage to Monkey Island?) and Tina, the woman who runs the taco stand. Tina reminds me of the stereotypical customer service employee, asking you if you want fries with that in a monotonous and totally apathetic tone. This time around she is forced to sing a ridiculous birthday song for you, which cracked me up. Madam Primp, who I mentioned in my screenshot blog, is a lady of the night with a heart of gold…literally. Between the pirates and disgruntled service workers there are also robots, cannibals, orphans, monks, ghosts, aliens, bandits and of course, crazy chickens. Overall the NPC’s give you 100+ quests, taking you from a French Town to a Destroyed City, a dinosaur bone yard to the Blood Mountains, where you travel via outhouse to complete them all (if you want).

About three quarters into the game you acquire a pirate ship. I LOVED MY PIRATE SHIP. Now, admittedly, there isn’t much to do with the ship once you have it because you are assumedly almost done with the game, but I probably spent about 150% longer than I should have sailing the curlique seas. With the Jolly Roger displayed proudly on the sails and Deathspank singing a variety of sea shanties, what’s not to love? I found Hothead Island. It contained orques.

Beyond the pirate ship, though, I think one of the more entertaining elements of Deathspank is the monster killing. Although I bemoaned the item menu above, I actually found choosing weapons delightful. In the first game your ranged weapon was a crossbow, but in the second game its a gun. About halfway through I acquired a fairly powerful ray gun with unlimited ammo (unlike all of the other higher level choices) that required a brief cooldown after two shots. Combined with a giant ice tusk for those pesky fire immunities, a fire dagger for those irritating ice immunities and a giant level 20 axe, I was an unstoppable machine. My ray-gun killed space marines with one shot-they would float off into space with a tiny groan as I moved on to the next victim (insert maniacal laugh). The monsters are the true stars of the show here-mad pirates, swamp donkeys, dark forest leprechauns, ice spiders…it’s the biggest grab bag of creative characters I have seen in awhile (I did miss the unicorns). And choosing the right kind of weaponry for the slaughter is delicious fun. A small bit of grinding helps a lot in Deathspank-that way you get a lot of one shot kills instead of having to get close enough to pound away at them while still being far enough away to eat a plate of beans and rice. Learning how to effectively use the invincibility spheres and armor potions helped a lot. I was able to kill a few levels above mine due to creative itemwork.

I hope they make another Deathspank…but not for at least a year. Although the story of the thong may be over (or is it…) I am sure there are more tales to tell about our Vanquisher of Evil.

For more of Jessica’s writings, check out her blog at: http://www.itallstartedwithchronotrigger.com

There’s nothing you can do to stop it, so it’s best to just accept it and try to deal with it the best you can.

If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll still have time to sleep. Or eat. Or care for your children and/or pets.

Oregon Trail and Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego are coming to Facebook next month.

This one is dropping February 2nd.

I have so many fond memories of playing this game. And dying…so…many…times. You know, I’ll be honest – in the original game, I never freakin’ made it to Oregon. Ever. Not once. Any settlers headed westward were doomed under my control. I always thought it was rather unsettling that you write your own tombstone after your untimely demise. I guess you can justify it by saying it’s other members of your beloved wagon train that take the time to honor your memory by carving you a proper tombstone, but more likely they’d be too busy dealing with their lame oxen, dwindling rations, and bartering with Native Americans for safe passage across the river to deal with your probably diseased corpse. Most likely they’d dump you beside the road enroute to the next fort. At least if they’re not the Donner party.

Later, when computer graphics improved beyond the realm of what an Atari was capable of, I got another version of Oregon Trail. This one I was capable of completing – no problem. This time the game was suddenly easy. You just had to be sure to leave in the right month so you weren’t buried in snow, purchased the right amount of rations, (Don’t go crazy buying too many clothes – out there in wilderness everybody smells bad) but, most importantly, you chose to be a doctor. Screw farmer or blacksmith or whatever other olde tyme jobs you could choose from. Doctor was where it was at. Not only did you get more money, but most importantly, when your party eventually got dysentery, fell off the wagon and broke their leg (how hard is it to stay on the wagon?!), or got bitten by a snake (how hard is it to stay away from snakes?!) – which you knew they would – repeatedly – they would be less likely to, you know, die. In fact, using this tried and true method, I made it to Oregon without any member of my party dying! (That and never, EVER choosing to caulk the stupid wagon and float it. Why not just drown yourselves and get it over with?)

That version of the game also had voice acting when you interacted with other travelers at the forts or other stopping points – Independence Rock, Soda Springs, etc. If you wanted to trade you had to listen to their sob stories before they’d cough up the bullets or wagon wheel you desperately needed.  Yeah, buddy, we’ve all had a hard journey. Junior here’s been bitten by five snakes. You’d think he’d learn to stay away by now, but apparently the kid must have brain damage from all the times he fell off the wagon. You gotta wagon spoke or not?

And hunting always made you a little sad, didn’t it? Either you came away with the 10 lbs of meat provided by 5 squirrel carcasses which will keep your family full for like a day at best, or you shoot a buffalo and can only carry back a small fraction of its enormous bulk, leaving the rest to rot in the sun while a Native American probably cries somewhere off screen.

Carmen Sandiego has the worst henchmen though, doesn’t she? They apparently can’t go anywhere without asking for directions and blabbering on about their weird quirks: “Yes, hello. Which way to the airport? Also, I love to play Llama polo. Which is a real sport. …Or it will be. …Someday.” You’d think these professional criminals would be able to get around without being detected and chatting up random people on the street. Try a map, buddy. Then these detectives won’t be able to come along and follow your trail of clumsiness to your next destination.

Did you ever actually catch Carmen Sandiego? With all the time I invested in the game, I still never got there. Makes you wonder how many hours of your life you had to dedicate to that game before you got to go after the head of VILE herself. And she is a woman who gets around. She’s already conquered the globe, and time itself – what’s next? The universe?

Well, whatever the future brings for Carmen Sandiego and her band of thieves, I’m on the trail!

I know, other munchers. I'm also horrified.

Wanna check out more of my insanity? Check out my blog, Sephiroth’s Tutu.

Fun times.

Sure, Magic’s Fun…When it’s Not Killing You

Don’t lie, you’ve probably fantasized more than once in your life what it would be like to use magic. It would have many useful applications in everyday life after all – you could light up the fireplace without having to heave yourself off the couch. Vanish would come in handy for teenagers wanting to sneak back in after curfew. (Let’s not even get into the criminal applications.) And confuse would let you convince your boss that it was Johnson he wanted to come in on Saturday – not you. So with all these practical uses for the stuff, who wouldn’t want to inhabit the world of an RPG, where casting magic is as common as owning a cell phone?

Because everyone has a freaking cell phone. That’s why.

Next it's gonna stomp on your face. Hold good and still.

You and your band of loveable misfit do-gooders aren’t the only ones with access to these sweet spells. Pretty much everybody’s got at least a spell or two – including Johnson, who’s itching to get you back for having to miss his flag football game. And that squirrel out back who’s giving you the crook eye – he’s got a level 2 thunder spell with your name on it. What I’m trying to point out here is that other people (and squirrels) have magic too – and they’re just as eager to use it. (Maybe more so – Johnson’s team was going for the championship.)

He only wants to cuddle. ...Before he rips your face off.

And what about summons? You only want those behemoths showing up when you’re the one calling them. Bahamut’s scary enough when he’s on your side, thanks. I don’t want to be on the wrong side of his firey fury. I get it, Bahamut! You’re terrifying and very powerful! Now just let me clean up this puddle of urine totally unrelated to this situation and get the hell out of here!

Think long and hard about the RPG’s you’ve played and the offensive spells your poor characters have had to endure and survive again and again. Thunder messing up your carefully spiked hair. Tornado also screwing with the gobs of hair gel you need to hold this ridiculous style . Meteors pelting you in the brain. …And also mussing up the ‘do. Does any of that look fun? Would you really want to be on the business end of an ultima spell? Does twitching on the floor with your last clings to life sound like a good time? It shouldn’t. Unless you’re a masochist. Just remember this – it’s all fun and games until somebody turns into a frog, people.

Like this guy. Without the awesome mustache.

Which brings me to my next point.

Status Effects are the Devil

Too bad he's gonna attack us and not start doing ballet or something.

You know, sometimes I don’t mind elemental magic. Blizzard? It’s just frozen water, right? Fire? Eh, it’s cold  in the snowy mountains anyway. Quake? Bring it. I don’t mind the elemental magic when the scarier magic starts coming out – spells like confuse, stone, blind and poison. Nothing can screw with you more than status effects – especially when a cure isn’t readily available or you’re hit with more than one of these nightmares at once. How helpless do you feel as your jacked main character starts  taking whacks at his own teammates after he’s been hit with confuse? Makes you start regretting equipping that badass sword, doesn’t it?

I'd be scared regardless.

Do you really want to live in a world where your significant other can cast silence on you just to make you shut up during a fight? Or where you have to keep remedies for mini or toad or pig rattling around in your purse? Never knowing if that pretty statue is a work of art or some poor schlub with no access to a soft… You might as well live in the Twilight Zone and have Rod Serling narrating your every move. If you really can’t see how living in a world of jerks with access to nasty disease causing, mind altering spells would be hell maybe being locked in a room with a confused Chuck Norris would change your mind.

The World Is Awful

A typical Tuesday in RPG-ville.

Now, we do not, by any means, live in a perfect world. In fact, there is a lot of room for improvement here on our little planet. But at least there’s no evil entity trying to screw with time and rip the very fabric of existence. A giant monster doesn’t come out of the sea and snack on people like they’re Pop Tarts. We don’t list amongst a monster producing fog. And there’s no terrifying alien clown trying to destroy everything. So that’s good, at least. Can’t say the same for the suckers who live in RPG’s. Their worlds all suck – why do you think they constantly need saving?

Just using Final Fantasy VII as an example – would you want to live under Shinra’s mantra of act now and deal with the bodies later? Almost every town in that game has got some Shinra related sob story attached to it. Not to mention the giant meteor coming to crush everybody and the highly destructive WEAPONs running amok. Forget about spending your weekend chilling with your friends and your famous nachos – you’d likely be moving your family to some cave to live out your final days after WEAPON danced on your house.

I'm in ur world screwin' up ur life.

Honestly, once you start to play a lot of RPG’s and the stories kind of start to get jumbled in your head. Why? Because many of them have the same basic storyline: evil whack job is out to destroy a planet full of miserable people and/or existence. (Maybe the universe, if he’s real ambitious.) Hero and some collection of wronged/bored/stupid people and/or creatures journey to stop it. Stuff burns down, people die, there are wars and plagues and battles and giant monsters and a mini game or two when the heroes have some time to kill. They eventually succeed – the end. God forbid if there’s a sequel.

And think about how your life is in the hands of these weirdos who have taking all the world saving upon themselves. Most of them aren’t really qualified for battle – they just get swept up in the craziness and are kind of along for the ride. Put it this way – you really want to be living in any world where something like Cait Sith is in charge of your destiny? His limit break can murder all his friends instantly. Then what? That cave’s not gonna protect you when meteor comes to crash your grubs-and-last-bottle-of-water party. I’ll take my changes with this planet and it’s non-magical issues.

You’re Constantly Getting Attacked

Even the plants are chasing us now?!

As you venture outside your home on a lovely spring day, you wander by a small rabbit grazing in the grass. What normally happens next in your everyday life?

A.    You continue on your way, perhaps commenting on the cuteness of the animal who barely notices you.

OR

B.    You ready your weapon as the rabbit bounds angrily for the artery in your throat, gnashing it’s piranha-like teeth.

Pretty sure sword beats carrot.

If you chose B, I’m sorry, but you live in an RPG. (I’m also sorry about that crazy guy stealing all the world’s crystals in his quest to become overlord of your planet. That’s gotta be rough.)

In an RPG you can’t walk anywhere without being attacked, even by creatures that otherwise look friendly. Sure, most dragons don’t seem like the lap dog type, but what about these yans?

Aww! Snuggly.

Look harmless, right? Like something some rich girl might tote around in a purse? That is until it starts casting comet on you. Nonstop until it dies. Or you die. (Which is the scenario it prefers.) The world is packed with violent, nasty critters all thirsting for your noble, world saving blood. (Or maybe your money. It would explain a lot.) If you knew you could get mauled by any number of wildlife by just taking a step out of your house, you would never leave it. No wonder no one seems to travel much in these games besides your band of crazies. Where are these people gonna go? There are monsters to the North, an ocean to the West and the town to the East is on fire – again. And don’t even think about going South. Everyone who’s traveled to that forest has never been heard from again. Legend says they’ve been eaten by murderous mushrooms! (Or maybe they actually found a better place to live and never looked back.)

You Have To Walk. Everywhere.

Um...somebody brought the umbrellas, right?

Most likely, you don’t walk everywhere. You rely on cars, trains, subways, planes etc., to get you where you need to be faster than your feet alone could manage. It’s nice to be able to hop in your car and head to the store, or take a plane across the country to visit grandma on the farm. Well, if you lived in an RPG you’d have to hoof it to grandma’s. And hopefully she hasn’t sold the place and moved to the beach by the time you get there.

Oh, sure, there’s access to transportation in these games – but most of the time you can’t have it. They’re all broken or taken or the stupid token drippy girl has ‘morals’ or something and won’t let you steal one. So instead you have to pay your dues and march from coast to coast until your feet wanna fall off. Deserts? Endless fields of ice? Dragon guarded lava cave? By the time you’re finally on that airship you’ll have experienced every kind of exhaustion, bite or disorder a human body can possibly endure. Instead of buying hats that will increase your magic by one, you should be buying shoes by the gross to protect your broken, blistered, probably disgusting feet. Even Dr. Scholl’s doesn’t make enough padding for the kind of walking your party’s doing. When the team finally does score that airship they should be kissing the deck and weeping tears of joy by the bucketful.

This is what freezing to death looks like.

Of course there are sometimes other method of transportation you use before gaining that precious, precious airship. There are cars – some of which still let the monsters in for some reason, like it’s some kind of drive through safari – boats, giant birds, floating schools – the usual stuff. RPG teams are pretty resourceful for the most part. They work with whatever they can get. But while they will trudge through every kind of body battering climate and sleep in tents on top of seven other rank smelling companions – most of them won’t cross a river or even a mild looking stream unless they find a bridge. That’s just laziness is what that is.

You’ve come this far – come up with a plan! It’s not like no one’s carrying a sharp object that can cut down a tree! Nobody can swim? In the whole group? Odds say at least one of you can manage a doggy paddle – perhaps the dog-like creature you’ve been lugging around since the last time the baddie showed up to taunt you and drop a clue to his next location. You can’t be afraid of getting west – you walked five miles in the rain to get here. And ruining your clothes? Please. If you cared about your clothes you would actually change them. Ever. At least occasionally. And your shoes definitely already have holes in them, so they’re destined for the trash heap anyway. Come on! So you also don’t want to live in an RPG because apparently the sight of water makes people dumb. Meanwhile the folks from Oregon Trail could do it on meager rations while battling cholera, snake bites, broken legs and bad water. And they just wanted to move across the country, not save the planet from exploding as the sacred crystals create a time paradox that puts sorcerer bad guy back in time to do it all over again.

Of course, Oregon Trail is based on things that happened to real people. In real life. In the real world.

…On second thought, you know…maybe there is a game that would be worse to live in.

Based on a true story.

Last year, indie developer Ska Studies made big waves in the Xbox Live Indie Marketplace with I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1, and now they are back for more.  The formula was simple: make a top-down run-and-gun shooter, add some zombies, write an incredibly catchy so-bad-it’s-good background theme and sell it all for a buck.  Over 300,000 copies later, it’s time for round two but now with 100% more Pterodactyl.

As a follow-up to the original Zombies and Pterodactyls 2009 (ZP2K9), the new ZP2KX is a marked improvement. Assuming you’ve never played the first title, though, let’s go over the basic gameplay elements. To get a quick picture of the Zombies and Pterodactyls series, picture Super Smash Bros. mixed with Halo. It’s a frantic multiplayer combat experience played from a side-scrolling platformer’s point of view.  The combat, however, resembles a shooter much more than a fighting game. The game modes reflect this as well, giving players the choice of deathmatch, team deathmatch, king of the hill, capture the flag and zombie hunt (which we’ll cover in a bit). For the full picture, think of a competitive multiplayer Gunstar Heroes.

Players are all jetpack-equipped, and the selection of weapons is both wide and humorous, so the competition is fast and frantic. You have your choice of standard weapons such as swords, grenade launchers and rail guns, but you can also delve into the offbeat by using the oversized Cloud sword, the shrink ray and even the AK-47 that shoots cats. Yes, the cats do run around the stage causing damage. Perhaps it’s the Ska Studios version of releasing the dogs in Call of Duty? Regardless, it’s hilarious and can also rack up the kills [Full list of weapons here].

Looking at the screenshot above, you may be asking “where are the zombies and pterodactyls?” Well the short answer is that there’s not too much of either. Although they each do make an appearance, the game’s name is more of an ironic reference to the shovel-ware that so often embraces fad themes such as dinosaurs or the undead. The game is not full of theme since it’s meant to be a pick-up-and-play multiplayer, but here’s the summary. Pterodactyls have arranged these deathmatch arenas as entertainment venues where they can pit humans versus zombies.  The Pterodactyls are limited to delivering new players during spawning, but the zombies sometimes play a much larger role. In the “zombie hunt” game mode, the humans are handicapped for their greater mobility and more power weaponry by having their vision greatly restricted.

One thing this game has going for it is that it’s incredibly deep for an indie title. There’s a full experience and leveling system incorporated that allows players to unlock multiple classes, skills and outfits. The class system is a particularly nice touch, as it allows players to create pre-set combinations of skills.  Each class is allowed three of these skills: one offensive, one defensive, and one modifier, all of which fit under the general theme of that class name, whether it be an assassin, a tank, or a samurai.

When it comes down to it, ZP2KX is just a ton of fun and it’s only a dollar. You just don’t see this much game for that little money. The great part is that you really don’t have to justify any flaws of this game by touting its low price. This title has some real polish. Multiplayer games are often only as fun as the friends you have playing them, so ZP2KX may not hold your long-term interest unless you’ve got other friends playing. If that’s the case, though, tell you friends to stop being so cheap and just buy this game!

For more information, here is one of the most humorous press releases I’ve ever read, released by Ska Studios in late November to announce the release of ZP2KX:

Pterodactyls To Release Human Recruiting War Game: ZP2KX
Pterodactyls – hell-bent on creating human versus zombie war for their own twisted enjoyment – will be releasing ZP2KX to Xbox LIVE Indie Games this December as a means of recruiting new human participants.

Pterodactyl’opolis – November 24, 2010 – Fearing a shortage of combatants for their real-world human versus zombie “death matches,” pterodactyls convinced developer Ska Studios to create an indie game that some are calling “outrageous war propaganda”. Zombies and Pterodactyls 20XX (also known as ZP2KX) is the controversial game that pterodactyls hope will entice gamers to join their wildly entertaining, highly unethical humans versus zombies battles. ZP2KX will release to Xbox LIVE Indie Games during Indie Games Winter Uprising the week of November 28th for 80 Microsoft points. And even though the pterodactyls’ main objective is to recruit new combatants, their decision to charge 80 points was made because they too have to earn a living.

Just released ZP2KX documentation reads as a sale pitch that is clearly marketed to appeal to gamers. The documentation reads: “Players can take their jetpacks online to splatter fools with blades, guns, grenades and other instruments of mayhem, all in a world where rainbows are deadly weapons and Africanized bees are used as ammunition. Game unlocks, character customization, earned XP and special skills are just a small sampling of what ZP2KX has to offer, so don’t miss out on this Xbox LIVE enabled kill fest of FUN! VIOLENCE! DESTRUCTION!”

When asked about their controversial involvement in the development of such war propaganda, Ska Studios responded; “We’re in the business of creating the finest, most immersive indie games ever. That has always been and will forever be our goal. ZP2KX is just that, a quality indie game that is pure entertainment and we cannot be held responsible for what gamers do outside of that experience. All hail the Pterodactyl King.”

For more information on the controversial, pterodactyl-financed ZP2KX, gamers are encouraged to visit www.zp2kx.com. All hail the Pterodactyl King.