Cindy Lue Grue: Blog

Lost (Art of Great RPG Design) Odyssey

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:36:29 GMT

Finally! I've been waiting for this for so long, I started to think it was never going to happen again: the Japanese RPG market has spawned something really, really good! Hubby and I started playing Lost Odyssey a few days ago, and... wow. So many types of wow. This game is single-handedly (and quad-diskedly) restoring my faith in Japanese RPGs.

Of course, the game is beautiful; these days, that's practically a given. But even then, Lost Odyssey stands out with rich environments, amazing cutscene cinematography, incredibly unique cityscapes, and the sort of costume design that makes me wish I was twenty years younger and good at metalwork. Honestly, though, the game doesn't even need to be as visually magnificent as it is. I was already happy with just two things: the landscapes aren't made up of various shades of brown, and the main characters don't look as though they use 50 collective gallons of hairspray before leaving the inn every morning.

Besides, where this game really shines is in design and story; the gameplay evolution is right up there with the odd-numbered Final Fantasy games, and the plot is not merely passable but compelling. I'll rave and ramble more about the design and story when I have time to do the topic justice; for now, let's just say... um... wow. And for extra fangirlish glee, the game even includes the original Japanese language track, which is chock-full of superb voice acting. Not to jinx anything -- we're only ten hours into the game -- but so far, Lost Odyssey is doing absolutely everything right.

Some day, we'll get around to finishing Wild Arms 4. And Digital Devil Saga II. And Tales of the Abyss. And five or six other JRPGs that we've started but didn't have the burning urge to complete. That's just the sort of players we are. But for now, we're going to thoroughly enjoy the breath of fresh air called Lost Odyssey, and hope like crazy that the game bucks one more appalling trend and actually provides a really satisfying ending. Hope hope hope!

Diet update for week four
Because it's easier to stick to a weight loss plan if you humiliate yourself online by posting stats.

Miles walked: 4
Pounds lost: 3
Total pounds lost so far: 9
Pounds to go: 99

Diet update for week five
Miles walked: 5
Pounds lost: 0 (Valentine's week... I regret nothing! ^_^)
Total pounds lost so far: 9
Pounds to go: 99
Nastiest thing consumed last week in the name of "healthy eating": Quaker lower-sugar maple and brown sugar oatmeal. Next time you see an ad that claims Splenda tastes "just like sugar", laugh and call 'em liars.

BONUS: piccies!
Now that everything is all healed up and looking beautiful, it's time to post photos of our anniversary tattoos. I've been looking forward to this for ages, wheee! I'm so happy with how they turned out. ^_^

Here's my lovely raven tattoo...

...and here's Bren's adorable chocobo tattoo!

Once I've finished losing weight, I'm planning to have some background detail added to my raven, hopefully building it into a full backpiece with swirly clouds and gorgeous landscape and plants and flowers, oh my! I have an appointment this Wednesday with George from Laughing Buddha; we'll plan out what it's going to look like and how much I need to lose before we can get started!

A little slice of hell

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 22:22:51 GMT

Well, this sucks. I had an entire blog entry written, I hit the little button to add a photo, I got a pop-up thingie for installation, and WHAM, all my text went away. Half an hour's work, reduced once more to its component electrons. Now I get to sit here and try to remember everything I typed, including an entire recipe. Frankly, this is so high on the list of Monumentally Irritating Crap that many of today's other annoyances seem paltry by comparison. And no, that is not a good thing. >_<

Most of what I was griping about here was Wild Arms 4, and how it continues to disappoint. As I mentioned before, this otherwise RPG-style game has a jarring, obnoxious tendancy to descend into platformer action. And the more we play, the more obvious it becomes that the platformer sections are poorly designed. The game's camera is fixed, which frequently makes it impossible to judge distances: a bit annoying in RPG exploration, but a massive frustration factor in a platformer, particularly since the distances in question involve ledges, pipes, and spinny laser beams of doom. There's nothing like playing the same hallway ten times because you can't tell whether any given dark spot is a shadow on the floor or a yawning pit of certain death. Thank you, game. Thank you for giving me an excuse to indulge in some primal scream therapy. Thank you for breaking up all the chatty, predictable cutscenes with cathartic moments of overwhelming fury. Thank you for removing all emotional attachment I might have otherwise developed for these characters by making me want to slam their heads repeatedly into the ceiling or throw them to their deaths. You rock.

In other news, hubby and I have a habit of missing out on any given trend in popular media until the rest of the world is long since tired of it -- hence, our "discovery" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer two years after it was off the air -- and we are now cheerfully feeding this habit with a subscription to Netflix. Movies we missed, anime we didn't bother to download, TV series that sounded vaguely good at the time but we never got around to watching: Netflix is paradise for the second-run theater crowd. Our first happy Netflix find was the Film Crew movies. Seeing the MST3K boys back in action, together again, was practically a dream come true. I say "practically", of course, because my own dreams rarely involve grindingly bad B-movies. But we're so very happy to indulge in more good bad cinema with our favorite commentators!

We've also started watching Eureka, as if you needed any more proof that we're a couple of geeks. We saw the pilot for this show when it first aired, and thought it looked like fun, but we're monumentally bad at catching anything when it airs on TV. Now that we can sit down to an episode whenever we like, we're both really enjoying the show. Okay, yes, the characters are mostly one-dimensional or stereotyped. But the dialogue is witty, and you just can't beat pseudoscience for amusing plot fodder. We look forward to seeing more!

Diet update for week three

Because it's easier to stick to a weight loss plan if you humiliate yourself online by posting stats.

Miles walked: 4 (getting better)

Pounds lost: 1

Total pounds lost so far: 6

Pounds to go: 102

Nastiest thing consumed last week in the name of "healthy eating": baked spaetzle. I had this crazy thought that I could oven-bake spaetzle until crunchy, instead of frying it in a whole stick of butter like I usually do, and it would still be tasty with chicken and gravy. FAIL.

BONUS! Diet-y recipe:

Magnificent 350-Calorie Meatball Sammiches

The cornerstone of my theory on successful dieting is that you should never eat anything you don't like. Most actual "diet food" is so nasty that eating it for an extended period of time constitutes a form of self-inflicted psychological torture: after a month or two, only the hardiest of souls (or those without taste buds) can avoid a breakdown and resultant diet-ditching. Hence my experimentation into lower-calorie and portion-controlled versions of meals that I really, really like. And this week's resounding success is the meatball sammich.

3 pounds uber-lean ground beef (4% fat, such as Laura's Leanest)

4 eggs

2 slices white bread

1 big-ass sweet onion (or 2 smaller ones)

1.5 TBSP basil

1.5 TBSP oregano

1.5 TBSP parsley

1.25 TSP garlic powder

2 TSP salt

dash pepper

hot dog buns

ketchup

Early in the day, toast two slices of white bread and set them aside; they should be nice and stale for the evening's meatball-making frenzy.

When you're ready to start cooking, crack the eggs into a large mixing bowl and beat until well-blended. Finely dice the onion and add it to the bowl. Place the stale toast slices into a plastic bag and crush them into crumbs with a rolling pin, then add the crumbs to the mixing bowl. Add the spices and stir everything well. Now add the ground beef, roll up your sleeves, and start mixing!

Once the beef and other ingredients are thoroughly inseperable, divide the mixture into three lumps. Then divide each of those three into three smaller lumps. Each of the nine resultant meaty blobs can be further divided into eight meatballs. Roll the meatballs between your palms to get the right shape, then place them into two large rectangular glass baking dishes (36 meatballs per dish).

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, then place both dishes on the lower center rack and bake for 20 minutes. Once the meatballs cool, you can portion them out: place six meatballs each into 12 plastic baggies and freeze them for the future. Then, whenever you have a jones for beef, you can thaw out a set, reheat them in the microwave, drop 'em onto a 100-calorie hot dog bun, slather 'em in Heinz ketchup (another 50 calories), and voila! A 350-calorie meatball sammich from heaven.

If your diet permits a bit more excess, you can substitute leanest ground beef (7% fat) in the meatballs, and your sammich will still be a mere 400 calories. Yum!

What to do, what to do?

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:16:05 GMT

Now that I have this whole weight-loss thing truly underway, I wanted to set a few bribes for myself at various points along the process. My original thought was that every twenty pounds, I'd have a bit more background detail added to my back tattoo (I'd love some pale blue, swirly cloud shading, for instance). But after talking with George Long, the tattoo guru at Laughing Buddha, I discovered that the image would likely warp too much as I continued to lose weight. He suggested waiting until I was quite close to my goal before I have any more tattoo work done. Obviously, I'll take his advice; a tattoo is forever, so there's no sense in risking the outcome by being hasty!

But that does leave me with the question of what to do to reward myself for weeks of hunger and grumpiness. Buying fancy new clothes is out, since I'm just going to continue losing weight until I hit my goal. Obviously, going out for a gourmet dinner and decadent dessert would be foolishly counterproductive. Considering how many unplayed games and unread books we have stacked up, shopping for new ones is more an exercise in guilt than a treat.

Frankly, I'm stumped. Anyone else have some suggestions?

Diet update for week two

Because it's easier to stick to a weight loss plan if you humiliate yourself online by posting stats.

Miles walked: 2 (yep, still lame)

Pounds lost: 2

Total pounds lost so far: 5

Pounds to go: 103

Nastiest thing consumed last week in the name of "healthy eating": nonfat blue cheese dressing, which is a semi-congealed liquid reminiscent of runny egg whites, with even less salad appeal than Bacon Salt

The price of carelessness

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:30:35 GMT

Well, that was stupid.

The postman just stopped by to bring me a package with beautiful, beautiful videogame sketches in it (thank you so much, Dawn; they're amazing and you're wonderful!). Looking back on this rather pivotal moment -- safe and ordinary as it seemed at the time -- I realize that I should have locked the cats in the bedroom instead of closing the front door nearly all the way to prevent them from escaping. And I realize that I probably should have been wearing shoes. And I realize that I need to carry my cell phone even when I'm just slacking around the house.

Hindsight really is 20/20, isn't it? But Foresight is legally blind, and Fate is a slapstick comedian. So of course, the instant I stepped out onto the porch in my pyjamas, the door latched firmly shut behind me.

It was like stepping into a cosmic punchline. There I am, barefoot, wearing flimsy sweatpants and the world's ugliest yellow shirt, standing on my porch in near-freezing rain and looking for all the world like the biggest idiot who ever lived. Yay me. A quick enumeration of my options yielded little of value: all of our windows are locked (of course, I checked a few anyway... that's human nature), there's no spare house key hidden under an unrealistic plastic rock in the garden, the nearest pay phone is four blocks away, and we barely know any of our neighbors. The notion of showing up on somebody's doorstep with my unkempt bed-hair and garish PJs and begging to use their phone to call Bren did cross my mind, but was reluctantly quashed. I'm telling myself I ruled it out because walking across the cold, wet street in bare feet would be courting pneumonia. In all honesty, there was probably also a certain amount of self-image involved. But mostly... mostly, I was just bloody cold.

Anyway, while my yard may be lacking the ubiquitous key-in-a-fake-rock, it has no shortage of real rocks. Since our front door is made of fifteen little glass windows, I employed a chunk of decorative sandstone on the panel nearest the doorknob and let myself in. (Have I mentioned that our house was built in the 1920's? Most of the glass is still original, and they didn't have safety glass back then. One solid whack with the rock sent dagger-like shards flying everywhere.) I rather figured it would take forever to get someone out to replace the pane, so I covered the hole in cardboard, vacuumed the floor, then set about calling glass repair shops.

It is now an hour later, and thanks to the folks from Glass Doctor, the only remaining evidence of this morning's misadventure is a bill for $177.38.

If I had it to do over, I would have immediately gone to a neighbor's house instead of spending five minutes trying to open windows that I knew damn well were locked. But then, if I had it to do over, I wouldn't have locked myself out in the first place. One thing's for sure: I'm going to buy pyjama pants with pockets, so that I can carry my cell phone around the house. Lesson learned.

And now we know the exact price of carelessness. $177.38, plus my pride.

RPWOPSG = Role-Playing With Obnoxious Platformer Sections Game

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:47:53 GMT

Well, I'm still not done with Beautiful Katamari (one item and two presents left!), but there's really only so much rolling a person can do before permanently injuring their thumbs. So when my hubby finished replaying Neverwinter Nights, I leapt at his suggestion of playing a console RPG together. If I was handed a giant cosmic whiteboard and asked by some divine power to stack-rank my favorite things in the universe from one to ten, "a comfy evening playing console RPGs with Bren" would be way up there. And since our careers at Microsoft Games provide us with more money than free time in which to do anything with it, we always have a stack of purchased-but-unplayed games sitting around looking forlorn. So with some vague notion that the games on the bottom of the stack weren't getting any younger, prettier, or more cutting-edge, we dug straight to the deepest geological strata and pulled out Wild Arms 4.

Two evenings and about five playing hours later, I can safely say that this will not be standing out as our favorite installment in the series. As always, the story and world are intriguing, the characters passable, and the combat enjoyable enough. True, the soundtrack wanders from genre to genre and style to style like a grab-bag of musical leftovers from other games. No, the game does not include its original Japanese language track, and yes, the English dubbing seems to have been voiced by a handful of game testers and the producer's brother-in-law, recorded in a closet, and edited by drunken marmosets. But these are sins we've reluctantly forgiven in other, better games. Wild Arms 4, on the other hand, suffers from a major gameplay problem, and thus it annoys us enough that the other flaws seem all the more apparent.

Now let me preface this complaint by saying that some RPGs have very successfully managed to hybridize themselves with a second genre. The Suikoden series, for example, features traditional RPG-style play interspersed with tricky tactical battles. Mass Effect -- gorgeous bastard of a game that it is -- successfully marries RPG exploration and dialogue with shooter-genre combat. Quite a few RPGs mix in puzzle, casino, card, or action elements: the Final Fantasy series is practically notorious for including mini-games from a dizzying array of genres. But Wild Arms 4 eschewed each and every one of these potential secondary genres and chose instead to punctuate their RPG gameplay with... jumping puzzles.

Riddle me this: a mage, a badass swordswoman, an artificially evolved lifeform and a kid with a nanotech super-gun are trapped on a flying fortress and need to get to an escape craft. Do they: A) blow a gaping, jagged hole in every wall between themselves and their goal, B) take the nearest soldier hostage and use his keys, or C) crawl like idiots over the surface of the ship, leaping from ledge to ledge and pipe to pipe, activating a ludicrous series of timed platforms, and frequently falling to their deaths? If you think C sounds like fun, then Wild Arms 4 is the game for you.

Sadly, being the bad-guy junkie that I am, we'll probably finish this game anyway. The villians are as colorful a bag of assorted freaks as you'll ever see. But I reserve the right to grumble all the way through.

Diet update for week one

Because it's easier to stick to a weight loss plan if you humiliate yourself online by posting stats.

Miles walked: 1.5 (yah, yah, I know, lame)

Pounds lost: 3

Total pounds lost so far: 3

Pounds to go: 105

Nastiest thing consumed last week in the name of "healthy eating": Bacon Salt

Par for the course

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:01:11 GMT

Wow. Here we are, only two weeks into the new year, and I've already blown that resolution about regular blogging. How embarrassing! Of course, not much has changed in my world since December 31, but still, that's no excuse.

On the upside, I've started working towards my "stop shopping in the fat section" resolution. I started using our treadmill again over the weekend, and I have the amusing gimpy walk to show for it today. I'll be doing another mile or so tonight after work, hopefully with less painful results. Also in my immediate future is a lunch consisting of Healthy Choice soup, a small salad, and a 100-calorie pack of Cheetos. I have to say that the latter is a brilliant idea: instead of making a "healthy" (and therefore tasteless) version of the finger-staining, cheesy-good snack, they simply packaged up a small portion of ball-bearing-sized regular Cheetos. You end up thinking you've eaten more than you actually have. And, as far as I'm concerned, the handful of tiny Cheetos is a self-bribe and necessary reward for my consumption of the salad. It's not that I hate vegetables, it's just that I really love blue cheese dressing, and salad without it is a pathetic, naked thing.

I do, however, plan to try something rather odd today with my salad. Over the weekend, while hubby and I were at the grocery store, buying the fixings for a week's worth of uninspiring diet food, an end-cap display caught my attention and left me gawking like a freakshow visitor in front of the dog-faced boy. "BACON SALT", it proudly proclaimed. "Because everything should taste like bacon!" Further perusal of the product container taught me that Bacon Salt is "a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian, kosher-certified seasoning salt that makes everything taste like real bacon."

Ooooookay. First off, it seems... well, just wrong, somehow... to make a product that gives vegetarians and Jewish folks an appreciation for bacon. But the real question here is how you can possibly make something taste like bacon without including any derivative of actual bacon. The ingredients list on the container is no help: "natural and artificial flavorings" could mean anything at all. Is there a laboratory somewhere in the heartland of these United States, filled with lab-coated professionals who scurry around with their beakers and their pipettes, tampering with the natural order of things in their ceaseless quest to create an artificial pig? Or is this some alien technology passed down to Earthlings by the Alpha Centaurian equivalent of PETA? And the biggest question of all: does it actually taste like bacon, and will it make an otherwise-naked salad bearable to consume?

If you'll excuse me, it's time for lunch. And for the baconless bacon powder experiment.

I have fear.

ADDENDUM, one hour later

Bacon Salt final analysis: tastes like salt and artificial hickory smoke flavoring, not so much like bacon. In fact, I fail to detect even a hint of bacon. I'm not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved.

But I think I'm going with relieved.

ADDENDUM, PART TWO, fifteen minutes later

Can you really call something "Beef Pot Roast Soup" when it contains only four barely discernable pieces of beef?

ADDENDUM, PART THREE, half an hour after that

Mmmmmmm, Cheetos...

One weird year

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 05:10:32 GMT

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

I seem to recall that one of my New Year's resolutions for 2007 was to blog more often. Despite the fact that I haven't posted a thing since mid-September, I can still claim to have achieved this goal: after all, "sporadically" is still technically more than "barely ever", which is what I managed in 2006. I shall hereby correct my wording for 2008's resolutions, and hopefully be a bit more reliable with the entries!

Best three things about 2007

The status quo, the Columbia City Alehouse, and my new tattoo.

Seriously, I have a magnificent life. Wonderful husband, awesome family, nice house, adorable cats, great friends, generally good health, and a job in the videogame industry. The fact that nothing much changed in my little world between last year and this year is everything I'd hoped for and probably more than I deserve. But just to make things even better, my hubby and I discovered a fantastic pub mere minutes from our house, with some of the best food and friendliest employees in town. And of course I love the ink I got in honor of our fifteenth wedding anniversary.

Worst three things about 2007

The loss of my uncle Mel, the awful news about Terry Pratchett, and Final Fantasy XI.

There were actually a lot of contenders for "bleh" in the past twelve months. I needed another round of laser surgery on my right eye. I gave myself tendonitis by playing videogames. I ignored a cold until it turned into walking pneumonia. I stepped badly off a curb and did something unspeakable to my ankle. I misjudged the dimensions of my computer desk while vacuuming underneath it, stood up into the edge, and knocked myself out. I saw a couple of movies on the Sci-Fi channel so bad that I'm still speechless on the subject of exactly how bad they were. I not merely failed to lose weight, but ended the year a few pounds heavier than I started it. I had to ditch my Xbox LIVE account and start over with a new gamertag, losing my previous gamerscore and achievements. But really, these were just annoyances.

The loss of Uncle Mel to Alzheimer's, the diagnosis of my favorite author with the same terrible disease, and the inexplicable, boggling, ongoing lameness of Final Fantasy's massively multiplayer game, on the other hand, were bloody tragic.

Favorite games of 2007

Casual: Bookworm Adventures on MSN Games

Spelling game meets RPG, with added cuteness. What's not to love?

Classic: Castlevania on Xbox LIVE Arcade

Haven't played a Castlevania game since the very first one launched on the NES about a zillion years ago. Couldn't resist snagging this as soon as it was available on LIVE Arcade, and loved every second of it. Even though I had to play it three times. But hey, I got every single achievement!

Puzzle: Portal on Xbox 360 or PC

*singing* "Now there's no use crying over every mistake; you just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake. And the science gets done, and you make a neat gun, for the people who are still alive..." If you haven't played Portal yet, play it. Play it, play it, play it. I'm serious!

Family: Beautiful Katamari on Xbox LIVE Arcade

Wheeee! This Katamari Damacy pseudo-sequel is pretty much the same as the other games in the series -- including reusing most of the art assets from the previous Playstation 2 game -- but it has achievements, online multiplayer (cookies!), additional downloadable levels, and some of the King's most amusingly bizarre monologues to date. I'm at 99% of the main collection, 93% of the extra collection, and still short three presents. Not stopping until I have 100% in all of 'em!

Action/Shooter: Bioshock on Xbox 360

I know, I'm going to get slapped down hard by somebody for choosing Bioshock over Halo 3, but I just loved the whole concept. From story to art to level design, it was positively brilliant. And at times, it creeped me out so badly that I actually found myself shivering. That's genius.

RPG: Mass Effect on Xbox 360

Wow. This is the first year in more than a decade that my pick for favorite RPG wasn't a Japanese import game, and sadly, it's not even because the game I chose blew a bunch of other great RPGs out of the water. The offerings from Japan were just underwhelming this year. Add that to a dearth of domestic releases, and you get a despondent RPG fan trying to remember even a single stand-out moment from the year's gameplay. In the end, I'm going for Mass Effect mostly because the dialog was exceptional and the game was drop-dead gorgeous. Of course, the story was a thinly-disguised retread of Lost Universe, and the combat system was dismaying to those of us who suck at shooters, but hey, you can't have everything. Particularly this year.

Strategy: *very embarrassed look*

Okay, this may sound improbable, but I actually didn't play any of the year's big strategy releases. I kind of got into a rut with them over the previous few years, and burned out a bit. The closest thing I played to strategy games this year were a couple of "guns or butter"-style casual titles and Westward, a cute little casual RTS. On the upside, when I go back to playing the big stuff, there'll be a bunch of really good, now-discounted strategy games waiting for me. Honestly, I don't see the downside.

Handheld: Rocket Slime on Nintendo DS

A simplistic, incredibly addictive little game from the Dragon Quest folks, starring an anthropomorphized slime. You just have to love the Japanese.

Massively Mulitplayer: Ultima Online Kingdom Reborn on PC

I've been playing UO since the first day it released, ten years ago. Not continuously, of course -- there are far too many great games out there to focus just on one -- but every couple of years, I go back and play for another couple of months until I've seen all the new content. Couldn't resist checking out the completely rebuilt client this year, and despite the bugs and graphical oddities, I think they're on the right track to keep the game competitive for another ten years.

New Year's resolutions for 2008

To blog once a week, without fail, even if I'm on vacation or sick as a dog.
To lose enough weight that I no longer fear mirrors.
To read reviews before I spend fifty bucks on a new game.
To squeeze as much enjoyment out of life as possible, since that's what makes it all worthwhile!

"Ho! Ha-ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!"

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:56:52 GMT

I was in the middle of writing this blog entry -- which I swear was going to be mostly game-related -- when I got the coolest possible piece of news; I am therefore hijacking my own missive to gloat about something.

It is an unfortunate fact that no American woman has ever medalled in two events on the same year at the World Veteran Fencer's Championship. Until last week, at the 2007 tournament in Sydney, Australia, when Ellen O'Leary of Atlanta, Georgia snagged bronze medals in both the sabre and foil categories. Ellen is an inspirational woman: she took up fencing as a way to be social and stay active after the loss of her second husband, and with a lot of hard work, she became really, really good at it. Within a few years, she was winning local tournaments, then traveling across the country to compete. This past year, she was the top-ranked US fencer in her age category. And now she's showing the rest of the world how it's done. She also happens to be my mother-in-law, and I'm damn proud of her.

CONGRATULATIONS, ELLEN!

Akira Toriyama has lost his cotton-pickin' mind

So, my husband came home from work a few days ago with a copy of Blue Dragon, the first big Japanese RPG for the Xbox 360. I've been jonesing for this game ever since it was announced: the very thought of its three visionary creators working together left my fangirlish heart racing like a hot kid after an ice cream truck. Game design by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the original creator of Final Fantasy. Character and monster design by Akira Toriyama, art guru of Dragon Quest fame. And music by Nobuo Uematsu, the composer whose all-too-catchy Final Fantasy themes have haunted my psyche for years. It's like... it's like when the 12-year-old geek in front of you at Wal-Mart is explaining to his equally nerdy friend that the world needs a movie in which Batman, Captain Picard, and a half-naked Dana Scully all team up to fight Darth Vader... only it's actually real.

Anyway, these three haven't made a game together since Chrono Trigger in 1995; given how magnificent that one turned out to be, let's just say that I've been keen to play Blue Dragon. And from the very first scene of the game, which included a cute, none-too-subtle dig at what the Final Fantasy series has become (Shu, the main character, pulls out an improbably massive sword to face down the enemy, but it's instantly snapped in half), I figured we were in good hands.

Now that I've had a few days of playtime with the game, I'll say that -- while it's no Chrono Trigger -- it's definitely a charming and likeable adventure. It's very much a Final-Fantasy- or Dragon-Quest-style system, although a bit simplistic and definitely easier than most: multi-character party, turn-based combat, changeable classes which must be trained up separately, extremely linear plot... basically, a Japanese RPG. It doesn't advance the genre at all, but that's not necessarily... um, necessary. It's a fine example of the field. If you like Japanese RPGs, you'll like Blue Dragon. If you don't, you won't. Simple as that.

There is, however, one really odd thing about the game that bears mentioning: everything in the world must be made of gold, poo, or both. I'm serious. Walk up to anything -- a pipe, a piece of wood, a glowing flower, a chunk of crystal, anything at all -- and poke at it, and you're likely to be rewarded by finding gold. Check out a vase? Free gold. Somebody's shelf? Free gold. Tree stump? Free gold. How about that rock over there? Free gold. It's pretty cool for the first few screens, but eventually there'll be an unhappy moment when you realize that the game contains innumerable little random thingies and in order not to miss any loot, you're going to have to prod your way across the entire planet.

Oh, and the poo. Much as Dragon Quest has its slimes, Blue Dragon has poo monsters. The very first monsters you'll encounter are poo snakes, which are basically a large, coiled, deliberately cute animal dropping with a snake head on the top. Not too much further along the way, you'll be fighting poo hermit crabs, which would of course be a hermit crab sticking out of the bottom of the aforementioned large, coiled, deliberately cute blob of excrement. So why poo? Couldn't tell you. My best guess is that Mr. Toriyama got really drunk while designing the monsters and decided that if gamers would accept cheerful slime, they'd go nuts for animated fecal matter. And wait, there's more. Sometimes, if you kill a monster, it will leave behind "a small poo". This is basically a scatological treasure chest: squish it a bit and you'll usually find... yes, it's more gold.

Gold and poo, poo and gold. You know, I have two cats, and to the best of my knowlege, the only thing they crap out is solid poo. If they did start producing gold, not only would I clean the litter box every day, but I'd adopt about a dozen more cats. But then, if life was like Blue Dragon, I'd already have made my fortune by wandering around the neighborhood prodding every car, stone, tree, light pole, fire hydrant, mail box, yard gnome, sprinkler head, and graffiti-emblazoned garage door until money fell out.

In short: good game, with added weirdness. I have to admit that somewhere, buried deep in my soul, lives a thinly-disguised 8-year old who just loves a good, over-the-top poo joke, and she's getting a huge kick out of Blue Dragon.

Yes, I'd love butter on that, but you haven't had any since 1978, you lying bastards

Bren and I aren't really big on public entertainment venues. By and large, going out to a movie means paying an egregious sum of money to eat bad popcorn and listen to some inconsiderate jackass coughing like a coal miner for two hours. This is why our basement contains a big-screen TV, some Martin-Logan speakers and an exceptionally comfy couch. There's also a box of Black Jewell in the pantry. But every so often, the lure of a new movie is simply too shiny to resist, and we venture out once again. I've probably seen more movies in the theater over the past few months than I had in the four or five years before that and, indeed, practically every experience left something to be desired in the social muzzling department. In my parents' day, theaters had ushers who could remove disruptive kids, chatty adults, and the aforementioned phlegm-spraying disease vector; sadly, these have been replaced with a politely stern admonishment at the beginning of each film. Because, of course, just asking people to behave like civilized human beings instead of self-obsessed baboons is so effective.

Anyway, here are some recent movies in a nutshell:

Ratatouille

Plot: totally enchanting, and it honestly made me feel just a tiny bit guilty about the rats we killed in our basement last year. In hindsight, though, if they'd been standing around the kitchen, whipping up something tasty for dinner instead of hiding out in the bathroom walls, producing nothing but feces and more rats, things would have gone differently. Entirely their fault.

Visuals: nothing less than magnificent. Pixar's technical expertise is beyond question, of course, but there's a big difference between making computer-generated imagery look realistic and making it look good. And this movie looked good. Particular favorites were the critic's coffin-shaped office and the fact that the rats, while anthropomorphized, still moved like rats.

Most memorable part of the movie: "I hate to be rude, but... we're French." That line nearly killed me. Given that this movie avoided the usual cultural stereotypes and showed Paris and its people in the best possible light, even a tiny and good-natured dig at European perceptions of the French attitude was unexpected and thereby much more amusing than it would have been otherwise.

Most memorable part of the theater experience: realizing the cruel irony of watching a film about a rat who eschews garbage and embraces the joy of fine cuisine while I was dining on stale theater popcorn with a foul coating of butter-colored grease.

Transformers

Plot: pointless and predictable, but hey, who cares? It's a movie about giant sentient robots beating the living heck out of each other and causing as much collateral damage as possible along the way. The fact that it also had some sort of cliche'd little storyline with three times as many characters as it actually needed, although mildly annoying, was irrelevant.

Visuals: mecha-licious. For the true giant robot fan, the battle at the end of this movie was practically a religious experience. When I first saw the trailer for Transformers, I assumed that they'd pulled the usual Hollywood trick of including every one of the best effects scenes. Ohhhh, I was wrong. Better still, they didn't make you wait half the movie before pulling out the good stuff. It was probably less than fifteen minutes before the first mech appeared. Yay!

Most memorable part of the movie (in a good way): that goofy bit where the autobots were trying to hide outside the main character's house. Remember that thinly-disguised eight-year-old that I said lives somewhere in my soul? Yeah, well, she adores stuff like this.

Most memorable part of the movie (not in a good way): ewwwwww... at the very end where the so-called hero and his new girlfriend are making out on Bumblebee's hood. Dude, that car is alive, and you are one sick little freak.

Most memorable part of the theater experience: discovering two weeks later that an employee at the Cinerama had been busted for videotaping one of the stalls in the ladies' restroom, and praying to every deity I could imagine that it wasn't the one I used.

Dragon Wars

Plot: if possible, even more pointless than Transformers, but with the same caveat. The massive dragons-versus-military fight through the streets of Los Angeles at the end of the film made everything -- from the stilted dialogue to the ridiculous plot elements to the classically Asian unsatisfying ending and yes, even to the $10 ticket price -- absolutely worth it.

Visuals: oddly disjointed. The effects scenes were incredible, with giant serpents, winged dragons, and dark soldiers riding -- I kid you not -- some kind of huge, stumpy lizards with missile pods on their backs (imagine a cross between a shell-less tortoise and a Mad Cat battlemech). The flashbacks to ancient Korea were well-filmed and visually beautiful. The rest of the movie, though, seemed oddly amateurish. The overall feel was of two different movies that got all tangled up in the editing room and then spliced together. But I wouldn't have cared less if they'd accidentally mixed it up with Weekend at Bernie's, so long as there were plenty of dragon fights.

Most memorable part of the movie: ginormous serpent eating an elephant. 'Nuff said.

Most memorable part of the theater experience: not the wretched little child a few rows in front of us who coughed about every thirty seconds through the entire movie, but the fact that his father, sitting right next to him, so clearly didn't give a crap. I don't blame the kid, but if it wasn't illegal, I'd have slapped the heck out of that dad for being a contemptible prat.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Plot: basically "meh", but a nice wrap-up to the Bourne storyline. I can't say I'd really been lying awake at night, wondering how it is that some shadowy government agency would go about turning an ordinary person into an amnesiac assassin, but it was nonetheless interesting to see how they explained it. Much like giant robot and dragon films, action movies don't really rely on plot, and that's a good thing.

Visuals: vertiginous. Those of us who suffer from motion sickness when trying to play first-person shooters are not designed to watch this film. I'm uncertain whether the cameraman was suffering from Parkinson's or was just too cheap to buy a tripod, but either way, I found myself wishing I'd skipped that stop at the pub for a pint before the movie started.

Most memorable part of the movie: none, really. Not only did the whole thing really run together in a swirling stream of indistinct action and intrigue scenes, but twenty minutes after I left the theater, I was already having trouble remembering whether specific bits were in this film or the previous one. The Bourne Identity stands apart in my mind, but Supremacy and Ultimatum... well, not so much.

Most memorable part of the theater experience: realizing that, by god, there actually is one good theater left in Seattle. Good enough, in fact, to redeem my bleak and hopeless opinion of American movie theaters. Yes, the tickets are still pricey, and there's always the chance that some pinhead will leave their cell phone on or bring a crying child to the film, but the very atmosphere of this place seems to ooze old-time charm and respect. It's a small neighborhood theater in a vintage building, up a flight of stairs: only one screen, good sound, very comfy seats, and fresh popcorn with real, honest-to-god butter. I have discovered theater nirvana, and I plan to remain uncharacteristically silent on the name of the place: I still fear it will vanish like a mirage and I don't want to jinx myself.

Needless to say, now that we've found a decent theater, I'll probably be going to more movies.

And this entry is getting way too long. I also wanted to talk about Bioshock, Young Frankenstein, and a place in Tokyo called the Bee Bar, but I guess I'll wait until next time. For now, I'm off to play more Blue Dragon!

The most important thing in the world

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 04:57:51 GMT

It might surprise some of you to know that, indeed, I am still alive. It’s not that I haven’t had time to blog; it’s not even that I’ve hit a case of writers’ block. It’s just that I haven’t done anything interesting enough to inspire a blog entry. I did spend about two months playing Final Fantasy XI before finally shelving it as a big, steaming pile of unrelenting boredom. I started Oblivion again, in the hopes of raising my gamerscore. I found a great recipe for pot roast (omit the rutabaga). We had our front porch rebuilt, and a new roof put on the house. Not really exciting stuff.

But one wonderful thing did just happen, and I can’t resist talking about it. On August 30, my hubby and I celebrated 15 years of marriage.

Bren and I have idly thought about getting tattoos for several years, but we never could figure out what sort of design we’d want to keep on our bodies for the rest of our natural lives. But when two old friends of ours, Dave and Monica, got each other’s astrological symbols tattooed on their necks, it gave us an idea. What’s the only thing that neither of us could ever get tired of? Us. So we each chose an image that really represented the other person, commissioned our magnificent artist friends to create original designs for us, found a good tattooist at a reputable studio, and made appointments for the day before our anniversary.

Of course, we also watched a few episodes of Miami Ink, to get an idea of what we were in for. I actually developed a bit of a fondness for that show, as it was fascinating to hear the stories of why other people were getting tattooed. Being a bit of a wimp at heart, I was also secretly relieved to see that people of all varieties were keeping their seats in the tattoo chair instead of fleeing at the first touch of the needle. However, now that my own experience with tattooing is over, I have to say that once again, reality television doesn’t exactly convey an accurate picture of, well, reality.

So here, for your edification, are a few of the insignificant little facts you might not learn on one of those tattoo TV shows:

Being tattooed feels like a hot knife slicing slowly through your skin. And that's just the outlining. Once they start shading, you’d think the tattooist has decided to dig for buried treasure in your flesh. I've heard people liken the experience to "bees buzzing under your skin" or "a thousand tiny kitten claws", but do not be fooled: getting tattooed frickin' hurts, and no amount of cutesy euphemism will make your time in the chair any less painful. Now, I'm not saying it's unbearable, and I would never, ever regret going in for my beautiful tattoo. I might even choose to have it embellished someday with additional work. But still, ouch. On the up side, the pain vanishes as soon as the needle lifts away from your skin, which is an odd sensation in and of itself. <geek> Come to think of it, that must be how Wolverine feels. </geek> Oh, and the next morning, you’ll wake up with a dull ache in the bone under your new tattoo. That'll linger.

You can't cheat by chowing half a bottle of ibuprofin before your appointment. In fact, you have to sign paperwork indicating that you haven't taken any painkillers in the past 24 hours. Ostensibly, this is to prevent excessive bleeding. But when you think about it, wouldn't somebody need at least a small streak of sadism to be interested in tattooing as a profession? I'm not saying that they get a thrill of satisfaction every time you wince -- suspect, yes; accuse, no -- but I am kind of wishing I'd scarfed an Advil or three and lied on the form.

Your skin's going to peel like a world-class sunburn. Two or three days after the ink goes on, that entire area is going to start flaking, and the skin is going to itch. Ohhhhhh, yes, it will itch. And to scratch it means risking damage to the image. At this point, six days after getting my tattoo, I am ready for a straightjacket: not because the itching is driving me crazy, but to keep my fingernails from unconsciously straying to my back. Weirdly, my husband's tattoo hasn't produced a single flake. Which seems cosmically unfair. Or it would, but unfortunately my hubby falls into the following category, so my peeling pales by comparison...

You might be back in that chair a month later. Tattoo touch-ups are apparently fairly common, for a variety of reasons. Maybe your skin had a reaction to the ink or the ointment and the colors became spotty or faded in places. Maybe a blended color didn't look quite the way you'd hoped once the skin healed up. Perhaps your tattooist just plain bolluxed something up. The good news is that they can tattoo over the same spot and minimize or correct any problems, so you're not eternally stuck with it. The bad news, of course, is that you're in for another round of pain and peeling. Woohoo.

You can't give blood for at least a few months. In most states, they won't let you donate for a full year afterwards. When you’re O+ like me, the local blood bank already gives you enough polite-but-firm grief if you don’t come in five minutes after you’re eligible from the last time. I’m really not looking forward to the sort of guilt they’ll be heaping on me when I tell them I’ve just been inked.

You can cross “visit a public bathhouse” off your to-do list on that vacation to Japan. Turns out that most traditional bathhouses won't permit anyone with a tattoo to use their facilities. I assume this is because historically only Japanese gangsters had tattoos. Fortunately, tattoos have caught on among the youth of urban Japan in much the same way they have over here, so the stigma is slowly fading. Still, no matter how little your hairy gaijin self might look like a member of the yakuza, don’t expect to be welcome in any bathhouse outside Tokyo. Of course, I don’t know whether you were planning a trip to Japan in the near future, so hey, this might not apply to you anyway. My hubby, on the other hand, just flew over there yesterday for Gamefest Japan. D’oh! So much for that relaxing trip to the sento.

Finally, this is probably the most important thing about tattooing that you won’t learn on TV…

A lot of tattoo artists just plain suck. Even if you've never seen some of the eye-poppingly bad designs strutting around in nightclubs and on beaches, your sense of reason should tell you that not every tattooist has true talent. After all, the proportion of good to bad artists in the tattoo field should be roughly the same as you’ll see in any other genre or medium. For example, stop by a science fiction convention and take a look around the art show. Find all the book-cover-quality oil paintings. Not very many, are there? And yet you can't throw a cheap plastic spaceship without hitting sixteen cutesy dragons, cats with wings, or cartoon women with ginormous boobies and disturbingly inaccurate faces that look as though the artist was subconsciously channeling Picasso. Now check out a tattoo photo gallery on the web. If you're lucky, you'll see one or two magnificent, artistic pieces that really take your breath away. But yep, the rest of them will be mass-market flash, uninspiring or poorly-executed designs, and pinup-style women with ginormous boobies and disturbingly inaccurate faces that look as though the artist was subconsciously channeling Picasso. (Some things truly are universal.) Anyway, the point here is to be very, very, very careful when choosing your tattooist. Ask tattooed friends or coworkers for references. Visit tattoo studios and look at portfolios. Ask for a consultation with any prospective artist before you make your final decision. Life may be too short to overanalyze everything, but it’s also much too long to go through it with a crappy tattoo.

That said, with enough research, preparation, and the right artist, being tattooed can be a great experience. In a society that puts so much emphasis on comfort and convenience, there’s a certain satisfaction to enduring something painful, not because you have to, but because you’ve chosen to do something meaningful to you. It’s also been fascinating to watch the healing process over the past few days. My tattoo started off very shiny when it was fresh; it almost looked as if it had been painted on. Now that much of the skin has flaked away, it seems more… well, you can’t call it natural, but it does look more like it’s part of my body. And it’s absolutely beautiful. Best of all, every time I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror, I’ll get the same warm feeling of happiness that I have whenever I look at my wedding ring.

(I love you, sweetie! Happy anniversary!)

NEXT TIME:

Bioshock, Ratatouille, and Mel Brooks’ new musical production of Young Frankenstein. Life is interesting again!

Oh, yeah. I am hard core.

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 01:25:26 GMT

Okay, I think I deserve some serious geek cred for this.

A couple of weeks ago, I started playing Final Fantasy XI (a game which I am still playing, despite its many faults, and I'll discuss that when I have a bit more time). A few days later, I started to notice a nasty ache in my left elbow, the sort of inescapable background ache that I'd usually associate with moving heavy boxes all weekend. Except without, you know, actually moving any heavy boxes. A couple of days after that, it went from nagging ache to full-on agony whenever I tried to lift anything. Heat packs did nothing to help. Ice packs made it feel a bit better, but only for an hour or so at a time. A velcro elbow brace and copious amounts of ibuprofin helped me survive the week, but the pain just wasn't going away. So I finally made an appointment to get my arm x-rayed and looked at by our family doc. The verdict? Tennis elbow.

Yes, folks, I gave myself tendonitis by playing videogames. And I don't even own a Wii.

If that's not hard core, I don't know what is. Frustratingly, all I can do about it is exactly what I've already been doing: ibuprofin, ice, an elbow brace, and if it doesn't clear up in two weeks, some kind of shot. Now, I've played a few videogames in the past that would almost be worth a full month of pain plus a possible injection; sad to say, Final Fantasy XI is not on that list.

Please note that this week's Doctor Who episode rant is missing on account of I am still frickin' speechless.

Wow. I mean, wow. What a way to end the season. I was crying like a fool. Wow.

What women want

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 23:38:57 GMT

D'oh! I missed the brainstorming meeting today. But now I'm in a mood to share my opinion, and I'm afraid my language might slip a bit into the profane. I'm very passionate about this subject, and I've always felt that most game designers are missing half these points and proceeding much too slowly on the rest.

You want to know what women want in videogames? Here it is:

We want to be able to play female characters, and we want those characters not to dress like Amazon women, prostitutes, or leather fetishists. Is it so damn hard to design a pair of virtual trousers?
We like good stories, clever dialogue, well-crafted dramatic tension, and genuine humor. This is without a doubt the biggest factor in turning a good game into a great game, no matter the genre. I started playing Gears of War, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Digital Devil Saga, and even Jewel Quest 2 because the gameplay looked like fun, but I finished them -- all the way through -- because I couldn't wait to find out what happened next.
We like to socialize, sure, but there are also times in which we don't feel like dealing with anybody else's emo crap. The perfect multiplayer game is one in which teamwork is rewarded, but going solo is also an option. This goes double for massively multiplayer games.
We like to show off to our friends. And to our opponents. And to anyone else who might be impressed. What's the point of finally obtaining that level-50 relic sword, clearing every puzzle level without losing a life, successfully obliterating an invading army, racking up a million-dollar Texas Hold'Em bankroll, or even just beautifully decorating your virtual home if the game doesn't provide a means of showing it off and gloating about it?
We're not keen on griefers, cheaters, kill-stealers and spawn-campers. We see enough similar behavior in real life, and frankly, it's not attractive: the aggressive commuter who cuts you off and then gives you the finger, the upwardly mobile office bastard who takes credit for everyone else's work, the guy who jumps into line ahead of you at the lunch counter. We play games to relax, and dealing with even more of these pinheads is not very relaxing.
We get attached to our favorite games. Sometimes very attached: I know one woman who's played a game of Text Twist nearly every day for the past five years. We just don't like to see a really good game end. We crave more: new maps, new puzzles, new quests, new word lists... released by the developers or user-generated... whatever it takes to keep the game going.
We're rather fond of in-game tutorials and training levels. Who wants to waste half an hour poring over a game manual or digging through extensive online help files when they could be starting down the road to world domination, solving a mystery, or storming the enemy base? Call it an immediate-gratification thing. But for the best games, a manual is something you use to refresh your memory or plan a strategy, not required reading. If you can't learn to play a game by playing the game, then it's doing something wrong.
We like to think, and we love the rush when clever planning or quick analysis saves the day. Now, I'm not saying that girls just want to play chess, but that all games should reward a bit of casual strategy. For instance, two of the best-selling games of all time, Myst and Tetris, may seem to be on opposite sides of the intellectual spectrum. But consider: the emotional payoff for solving a particularly challenging puzzle is the same thrill you get when mentally juggling two future moves along with an ever-changing game layout.
We enjoy customization, but we also like the option to ignore it. Some days I get a real charge out of carefully allotting the stats and skill points of an RPG character, or designing my mech's configuration from scratch. Miis are arguably the best thing about the Nintendo Wii. And yes, one of my goals in Final Fantasy XI is to synthesize enough cool furniture to turn my Mog House into a proper alchemist's study. Other days, though, I just want to jump right into a game and kill something. Give me both options and I'll be a happy player.
We want people to stop assuming that we all love to shop. Enough with the damn shopping already.

In short, women aren't that different from men: we all want well-designed, fun games with a minimum of related frustration. Sometimes we want to share them with other people; sometimes we don't. Mostly we just want to kick back and enjoy ourselves after a hard day, so build us a good place to do so and we'll be there in droves.

Videogames and the workplace

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:15:33 GMT

I don't usually like to blog in the middle of a work day, but this just begs to be posted. ^_^

Over the years that I've worked in the videogames industry, a lot of friends, relatives, and occasional total strangers have asked me the same thing: "What's it like? What sort of people do you work with? Do you guys actually play games? C'mon, what's it like?" And I always answer the same thing: it's hectic, frequently chaotic, always geeky, and sometimes mind-numbingly stressful, and I would never, ever go back to doing anything else. The people I've worked with over the past dozen years have been some of the most brilliant, witty, fun-loving and genuinely nice folks I've ever met, and yes, we do play games, mostly to relieve the stress. But what stands out more than anything else about working in this industry (and one of the main things that endears it to me so much) is the wicked sense of humor that seems to be a prerequisite of employment. It must suck to be a Human Resources representative at a games company, since a good quarter of all conversations around here would get you fired, sued, or at least recommended for psychiatric counseling at, say, an accounting firm.

Take, for example, this morning's IM from my hubby. I shall preface it by saying that Bren is absolutely the sweetest, friendliest, and above all sanest man I know. I've seen him flip upturned beetles back onto their frantically waving feet, and stay up late to care for an ailing cat. He's also put up with me for the past twenty-some years without snapping, which should be worth double points on the emotional stability scale. But today he's at work, and the evil ambience has worked its magic on him.

Just as a note, I've changed the names of his coworkers to S1 and S2.

Brendan says:
Heh. S1 just came by, and I'm the only one in this area at the moment (don't know where everyone else is). He looks around and says "where is everyone?"

I look hurt. "Well, I'm here... I take it you mean everyone _else_."

To which he says "Yeah, it's like they all got taken out."

So I immediately reply in a happy voice, "yeah - it wasn't even that hard. I mean they didn't move that fast or anything... it was just *bam* one down, *bam* another one down..."

Brendan says:
He wanted to borrow a cable. He came back later with it, while S2 was asking a question, and stood behind him as though he were going to beat him with it.

S2 turned, saw this, and said, "oh, hi baby..."

Brendan says:
I asked S1 which of us won for "disturbing" this morning, and it was S2. I tend to agree.

I love this place. I really do.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late to a brainstorming session on what women want to see in games. I need to scurry down there and put in my vote for "more mechs!"

The title I thought of yesterday was better

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:19:49 GMT

I really need to keep a notepad next to my comfy chair when I'm playing games all weekend. I know for a fact that there were several situations that would have made excellent blog-fodder, but now that I'm sitting in front of the keyboard, I can't remember what most of them were. "Let's see... there was something about... ummmm... mushrooms? Or was it orcs?" It also doesn't help that I was imbibing heartily from a bottle of Blackthorne hard cider for part of the weekend, which had the dual effect of memory reduction and making stupid things seem very funny. One of the bits that I do remember is absolutely useless, since it consisted of my Final Fantasy XI character sitting down in the middle of the road to heal and accidentally blocking a chocobo rider heading south: the resultant animation looked as if the chocobo was dancing on my head for a few seconds before continuing on. Funny at the time, but posting it here with the headline "Chocobo Hit and Run" only sounded good while the cider was still active. Same goes for the notion of making a bumper sticker with just a line of appropriate FFXI status effect icons on it (MNT down, blind, haste, and so on), to slap on the back of recklessly driven cars. Not only would the application of such a sticker present nigh-insurmountable logistical difficulties in moving traffic, but it would be likely to get you shot, and frankly, it's not even particularly amusing when you're sober.

I do recall a few things that really made me shake my head. While I spent four solid days slogging my way through the wilds of Final Fantasy XI (and achieving nothing more than level 12 and a sinking sense of disappointment over the game mechanics, by the way), hubby Bren was enjoying a European RPG called Gothic III. The main story of this game involves a war between orcs and humans; the orcs have overrun the human kingdom and enslaved everyone, so Bren's been busy liberating cities for the past week or so. The thing is, once you've tried dispatching a few orcs, you discover that there's a trick to it. And once you're in the groove, the process is rather repetitive: steal something in sight of an orc, insult him, lure him outside of town where the other orcs can't see you, and kill him. After a while, the outskirts of town are positively littered with dead orcs, but somehow the steal/insult/lure tactic still works. As far as I'm concerned, this puts orcs directly under slime mold on the big list of species intelligence: any rational creature would pursue the character as far as the town gate, see a ten-foot pile of dead comrades, run screaming back into town and assemble an army.

Right there on the same low rung of the mental ladder are three sets of humans: all the mercenaries who work for the orcs, the people who reclaimed a certain town after the orcs had been killed, and one complete sheep of a shopkeeper. Why? Well, consider that Bren attempted to spare the mercenaries by killing just the orcs in one city, away from everyone so the mercenaries didn't turn hostile. Okay, so with their orcish overlords lying dead and the guy who killed them all standing there saying hey, you're liberated now, congratulations, did they throw down their weapons and start cheering? Nope. Nobody left to pay them, nothing left to guard, but they're still loyal to the orcs, and the city isn't liberated until you add them to the pile. Collective (if posthumous) IQ score: 14.

Then there are the humans who apparently show up to settle an area after you've cleared it of orcs (I'm a little shaky on the details, since I was busy fighting giant yellow caterpillars in Vana'diel when Bren hit this section of the game). Back when the area was controlled by orcs, Bren's character swiped a few helpful items from assorted chests; we're both firm believers in the "if it's not nailed down" theory of RPG item acquisition. So now that he's gone through all the trouble of kicking out all the orcs and returning the land to its rightful owners, the ungrateful bastards are accusing him of theft. For things he took from a completely different species, and while there were no humans there to even see it. Collective IQ score: 12, with bonus points for being psychic.

As for the shopkeeper, he sort of showed up in the middle of an orc mob and started attacking Bren's character. No good reason, he was apparently just caught up in the moment. So Bren knocked him out, looted him, and went back to fighting the orcs. We had a bit of fun imagining the conversation that might take place the next day after this guy woke up:

"Oh, god, my head. What did I drink last night?"

"Dude, you're awake! I can't believe you're still alive!"

"I might be happier if I wasn... wait. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You don't remember? You know that bad-ass guy, the one they have all the legends and stuff about? The Decider?"

"Ummm, yeah?"

"Dude, you attacked him!"

"No way."

"You did!"

"I did not. You are so lying."

"No, really! I saw the whole thing! You just, like, picked up a sword and went right for him!"

"Why the hell would I do something like that?"
"How would I know?"

"Well, why the hell didn't you stop me?"
"Stop you? Dude, I bet fifty gold you could take him!"

That's the definition of a true friend, by the way.

Here come the drums!

More SPOILERS for the most recent episode of Doctor Who that aired in England, so do not read if you have not seen. And this goes doubly for you, Kevan. I'm serious.

Okay, I'm sold: the new guy rocks. I still mourn for what could have been, but I have no doubt that John Simm will do well as the Master. My biggest quibble with the character in the original series was that Anthony Ainley spent most of his tenure trying rather unsuccessfully to mimic Roger Delgado, rather than reinventing the role. Admittedly, producer/scriptwriter Davies didn't really give Simm an opportunity to repeat the mistake; this latest version of the Master is less the charming sociopath and more a full-on psychopath (albeit a driven, brilliant, and very cheerful psychopath). But two scenes convinced me that Simms will be making the most out of it: first, his assorted and marvelous expressions as he dealt with an inconvenient reporter, and second, his visible glee over killing somebody who won't stay dead. "I get to kill him again!"

As long as I'm raving like a teenage fangirl, allow me to say that this season just keeps getting better. Not only have the stories so far been excellent -- a well-layered mix of drama and good old-fashioned adventure -- but the plot twists have been clever and unpredictable, the dialogue has been witty, and now they've even started throwing a few bones to the old-school series fans. "The Sound of Drums" was the best example so far. Between the fascinating bits of Gallifreyan backstory, the interplay between the major characters, the offhanded "I figured you were going to say he was secretly your brother" comment, and the biggest cliffhanger yet, it was a thing of beauty.

Oh, and my inner editor is still jumping up and down, squealing happily over the fact that somebody used the word "decimate" properly. One-tenth, folks. How it came to be synonymous with "devastate" in the public lexicon is a baffling mystery and source of frequent frustration to me. Thank you, Russell Davies, for being the exception.

Our second-season DVD set just arrived over the weekend. Now I'm keen to re-watch it and look for Saxon references!

Wark!

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:51:31 GMT

So I forgot to mention yesterday that I also started playing Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales. It's become traditional for hubby and me to pick up at least one new handheld game in preparation for any air travel; why, I'm not certain, since I always drug myself stupid on anti-anxiety meds and sleep through the flight. Nevertheless, I splurged on Chocobo Tales for the DS, and stayed up late every night playing it while we were in Arizona. The highlights...

1) Chocobos! Of all shapes, sizes, colors and attitudes. So far, I've seen four humans in this game, including Cid (of course), plus one moogle and assorted monsters; all the other characters are chocobos. This is perhaps three too many humans for the game to be absolutely perfect, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. ^_^ Because, really, can a game have too many chocobos? I didn't think so.

2) Minigames! I know, player opinion is often very divided on the merits of mini-games in the Final Fantasy series. Some folks could spend hours playing Triple Triad or Tetra Master, snowboarding, tossing the ol' blitzball around, or of course breeding and racing chocobos. Other players would rather claw their own eyes out than play another round of Sphere Break. Well, the latter crowd would do well to avoid Chocobo Tales, since this title is composed entirely of minigames. There is nothing RPG-like about this game; the story is driven by completing a dizzying array of touchpad- and microphone-controlled, arcade-style tasks.

And your prize for beating the ever-more-difficult rounds of these minigames? That's right: battle cards for yet another minigame!

3) Pop-up books! The artists who designed Chocobo Tales must have had way too much fun in the process. Although the game world itself looks like a typical RPG town, your chocobo character can enter various magical books and take part in the stories. And they're all pop-up books. So the minigames inside look as though they're made from paper cutouts: a unique, and frankly adorable, style.

4) Game balance! (Game balance? It's all minigames; what kind of game balance do you need?) There are two kinds of puzzles in Chocobo Tales, designated as minigames and microgames. The difference is that minigames are plot-related and microgames are optional. What does this have to do with game balance? Because some design genius at Squenix made certain that the puzzles with the highest potential annoyance or frustration factors are not plot-related. Now, I'm not saying that the primary minigames are easy. Some of them elicited the sort of language that I promised myself to cut back on using this year. But I've played about 3/4 of the game so far, and none of the main puzzles triggered my "aaarrrrrgghhh, just put it back in the box and forget it exists" reflex. That's well done.

5) Chocobos! Yes, I know I mentioned that before, but really, I can't stress it enough. ^_^ It has chocobos!

I'm so pathetic.

Assorted VG Cats chocobo toons

Mmmmmmmmm...

Final Fantasy XI chocobo license

"Have sex, dammit!"

It's a dry heat

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:14:31 GMT

So here I am, more than a month after my previous post, and it's time to choose a topic. The past few weeks have been eventful, and rife with blog fodder. My father's pacemaker was recalled ("whoops, sorry about this, but it seems the thing we sewed into your chest to keep your heart beating is pretty much useless. Our bad"). We flew down to Arizona to be there for his surgery to replace it (by the way, 121 degrees should be an arc measurement, never the temperature inside your car). We did some geocaching while we were down there (and let me tell you, you've never really cached until the GPS zeroes out at a giant, needle-studded cactus with a woodpecker hole that might contain a log book... or an angry cactus wren... or a dozen scorpions...). Back on the home front, my contract with MSN Games was renewed, one of our cats developed an irresistable urge to dive into the freezer every time it opens, we managed to kill our fourth game console in less than two years, I struggled to rebuild my gamerscore after switching accounts last month, and we bought a new camera (which takes incredible pictures). So am I going to talk about any of this? No. Today's topic is...

Final Fantasy XI for Xbox 360

I'll admit it: I've avoided the siren song of massively multiplayer games for the past four years, recalling all too well my nearly career-suicidal addiction to Ultima Online and later obsession with Asheron's Call, plus my disappointment at the tedium of Everquest. Hubby and I are quite possibly the only two gamers we know who haven't dabbled in World of Warcraft. I've told myself again and again that I am done playing MMOs: I either like them too little or too much, and either way, I'm better off staying out of them. Why, then, did I pick up a copy of Final Fantasy XI the other day? I could say it was just because I didn't have a game going on the Xbox 360 now that I've finished Castlevania (true), and I didn't want to start Oblivion all over again just yet (so very true), and I need something to play while my hubby is plowing through a backlog of PC games (again, true), but really, it's mostly because this comic made me giggle. I know, that's hardly a good reason to start back down the slippery slope of MMOs, but it's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

With that said, I've been playing for a couple of days now, and I've already formed a few opinions. One is that I want a pet chocobo. Badly. This is hardly a surprise; I've been wanting my own chocobo since Final Fantasy VII, in the same way that most girls crave a pony. What I was not expecting to discover is that Final Fantasy XI -- virtual offspring of a company I love and respect -- is without a doubt the worst Xbox 360 port in the history of the console. Nearly every feature that the 360 offers has been either overridden, underutilized, or just plain ignored, making an otherwise-decent game seem at best crudely designed and at worst nigh-inaccessible. It's like a tasty serving of toro sashimi lost in the middle of a three-foot-wide, splintery wooden plate. Let's take a look at some of the basics, shall we?

The three-hour install: When we purchased this game, the guy behind the counter said "enjoy the five-hour install". I thought he was joking. Of course he was joking. ....... Okay, he was not joking. Not including the time it took to sort through my hard drive and delete every episode of Avatar to make room for the game (Final Fantasy XI is a hard drive pig), we spent nearly three hours on installation. I'm pretty sure it took less than two hours to install our satellite TV system, and that includes the time my hubby spent crawling out onto the roof and riveting the dish to the chimney. Between the PlayOnline registration process (believe me, I'll tell you all about PlayOnline shortly), the actual Final Fantasy XI registration process, the registration process for each of three expansions that were included with Final Fantasy XI, the downloading process, the updating process, the more downloading process, the content ID registration process, and whatever other processes there might have been, I went to bed without ever seeing the actual game load. I also seem to remember counting three seperate IDs and at least two different passwords that I needed to set during the course of the installation. Criminy, I'm not applying for a security clearance; I just want to play the game. Someday. When it installs.

PlayOnline: One of the best things about Xbox Live is how seamless and easy it makes online play. Each game's matchmaking is perfectly integrated into the system and quickly accessed with a few clicks... that is, unless you're playing Final Fantasy XI. No, for some reason the developers who ported this game to the 360 declined to use any of the helpful features of Live, preferring instead to drag players kicking and screaming (and clicking and clicking and typing and swearing) back into the dark ages with PlayOnline. I'm not sure what this thing is: some kind of freakish shell program that authenticates the user and selects the game and directs that game to the servers and delivers messages... which, unless I'm missing something, is all the same stuff that Xbox Live does. Except that Xbox Live does it quickly, intuitively, and with minimal impact on the player. So why am I dealing with PlayOnline every time I want to load Final Fantasy XI?

The keyboard: I am playing Final Fantasy XI on my Xbox instead of my computer because I'd rather kick back in a comfy chair and use my wireless controller instead of sitting down at a desk with a keyboard. Or at least, that was the idea. If I'd realized exactly how poorly implemented this game was for the 360, I'd probably have either bought it for the PC or, more likely, just given it a miss entirely. It is nearly impossible to play this game without a keyboard. Like most RPGs and certainly all multiplayer games, Final Fantasy XI requires at least occasional text entry. Unlike the others, though, this game steadfastly refuses to make use of the excellent Xbox 360 text entry screen, relying instead on its own text entry popup, which appears in squint-o-vision at the bottom of the game screen to confound even the most dexterous controller-jockey. After one extremely frustrating incident in which I attempted to use it to set up a macro command for fishing, I just gave up and attached a keyboard to my console. Since the keyboard doesn't reach all the way to my comfy chair, I have to scoot over to the footstool every time I need to type something. All of which would be unnecessary if the developers had just bothered to let the Xbox handle it.

Achievements: This isn't quite as bad as it could have been; when the game first launched, it didn't even include achievements. Yes, I too thought that all Xbox 360 games were required to have them, but apparently Squenix is special. One way or the other, at some point over the past year, they decided to add achievements, but in doing so, they demonstrated a complete lack of comprehension. The achievement system is designed to reward players as they accomplish goals, progress through a story, and try new things. Most games include a variety of achievements, from low-yield awards for the novice player to massive point payouts for the hardcore junkie who conquers every aspect of the game. Not so Final Fantasy XI. All achievements in this game are worth exactly 30 or 40 points each, and are awarded only for reaching the maximum level in a job class, completing every single mission available in one of the game's regions, or finishing an expansion pack.

For reference here, I played some 14 hours of Final Fantasy XI over the past two days, during which time I have achieved level 7, completed approximately three non-plot quests, and died probably two dozen times while trying to get to the place where the first plot mission starts. By the time I haul this character's tuckus across hell and high water, battle or puzzle my way through what will no doubt be a vast number of missions, slaughter a veritable army of monsters to achieve level 75 in even one character class, and put in the weeks or even months of play time necessary for all this, I'm going to feel pretty darned insulted with two measly 30-point achievements. Boo, Squenix.

And the rest? As for the game itself, I'm still in the killing-rabbits stage, so I can't tell you much about its merits. On the one hand, it seems a bit tough to solo, and it's rather hard to find low-level equipment. On the other hand, I like the whole Mog House setup, and I really appreciate the use of traditional Final Fantasy job classes. I'll see how things look once I've acquired a few more levels, experimented with the crafting system, and managed to scrape together enough gil for a flowerpot.

In the meanwhile, if you run into a Mithra red mage named Simoom on Diabolos, please toss a Cure spell on her. Those rabbits can be dangerous.

Momentary hyperventilation over Doctor Who

MAJOR SPOILER if you haven't seen the episode that aired last week in England!

Derek Jacobi. Frickin' Sir Derek Jacobi, one of my favorite actors in the universe, playing the Master, unquestionably one of the best villains ever... and they only kept him for one episode. Cruelty, thy name is BBC One! For a few short minutes after the reveal -- glorious, scintillating moments -- I dared to hope that the series had unveiled a "perfect storm" of fangirlish delight. Frankly, I was preparing to nominate their casting director for sainthood. But three scenes, one bullet, and a lightshow later, and the class-5 fangirl hurricane devolves into just another manic skinny guy. Disappointed, me? Ohhhhhh, yes. Disappointed doesn't begin to cover it. I'm feeling robbed.

Manic skinny guy, you'd better be one hell of an actor.

Skip to my Lue

Wed, 16 May 2007 00:03:00 GMT

If you spotted my name change from Cindy Lou Grue to Cindy Lue Grue, give yourself ten points. If you surmised that it's because I needed to switch Xbox Live accounts -- for whatever unspecified purpose of my own -- then give yourself another ten points. If you took another cognitive step and realized that I've just lost all my achievements, you win fifty points and the right to call me a total idiot. I'm logged into xbox.com in another window, staring morosely at my pristine gamercard with its default avatar and goose-egg gamerscore, thinking to myself that all those hours spent playing Viva Pinata and Oblivion and Catan and Castlevania and Jewel Quest and Crackdown were all wasted...

...wait, what? Where the heck did that come from? Sure, I enjoy looking at my achievements and gloating over battles won, but wasted? Two years ago, the whole achievement system didn't even exist. Before that -- and since, on a multitude of other platforms! -- I played and conquered many, many games, and I've never regretted an instant of the time I spent playing (except maybe those two days when I was on an uncontrollable Ultima Online binge and nearly missed an article deadline). I love videogames! That's why I play them, and that's why I've spent more than a decade working in the industry (it's certainly not the short hours, light workload, or job security). Games have been my passion since the day I first saw a Space Invaders machine in the gift shop of the Atlanta Westin. So where did this shocking thought even come from? I feel all shallow suddenly, and rather traitorous, as if I've cheapened the games somehow by equating them with the little square icons you "earn" for playing them. What. The. Heck.

I refuse to entertain such a pathetic thought. I hereby welcome the opportunity to start over fresh, and I shall enjoy every minute of replaying Crackdown (I never did try multiplayer) and Castlevania (it'll go a lot faster now that I know the map) and Oblivion (I'm gong to play an Argonian this time), and the day I ever complain about having to spend more time with Catan, you can check my basement for alien pods. Sure, it will take a while to build my gamerscore back up, but that just means I get to play more games. The only downside to this is that I've just spent ten minutes questioning my own sanity, and that's ten minutes I could have spent playing a couple levels of Time Pilot.

Games are their own reward!