A Green Mushroom

This has been hard to write for me.  I've spent over 50 hours with Final Fantasy XII and for most of that I felt like I didn't really "get" it.  I never connected with the story or the characters and that's definitely not a good thing.  I wanted the game to "click" after the first few hours so I could write some impressions... but it never really did.  So, I waited until I finished to write a full review.  Let's get to it. The story is set on a grand scale.  The first half hour is a giant cutscene full of lots of politics and war.  The grand scale continues throughout the storyline of the game.  It ends up dwarfing the main cast of characters.  It's so grand that it feels removed from the actions of your characters most of the time.  The last few hours tie the political events to three of the six characters, but it takes way too long for that to finally happen. Final Fantasy games always invent their own terms but this is the fir...

I was worried about how I was going to play Final Fantasy XII.  Almost every Final Fantasy game has either been re-released, remastered, remade, or released on multiple systems.  Final Fantasy XII is the only mainline game that hasn't been.  It is available on PS2 and that's it.  There's a rumor that it's going to get the HD remaster treatment the same way Final Fantasy X did, but a rumor doesn't do me any good right now. I own a PS2 and a copy of Final Fantasy XII.  They're sitting in my closet right now.  The problem is I don't have any good spot to set up the console, I don't want to view the game in low resolution via composite cables, I don't want to be tethered via a hardwired controller, and I don't want to have to get to save spots to save my game.  I've been spoiled by my iOS and Vita games.  I need the ability to suspend or save anywhere.  It helps games fit into my life so much better.  The rest are just minor inconveni...

I really enjoyed Final Fantasy X.  I finished the whole game in a week and a half.  That's the fastest I've finished any game in the series.  It hooked me and I was engaged enough to pick up the game every single night. Overall, my initial impressions still stand.  This is a great game with wonder characters that interact in a well realized world.  The story is strong and drives the whole game.  It's not too difficult and very friendly for new players.  This is where I'm going to direct Final Fantasy newbies if they ask me where to start the series. Compared to my  initial impressions I did have a change of heart about the sphere grid.  I thought it was simply a gimmicky replacement for leveling up.  At low levels that's still true.  That changes when characters start to break out of their primary sphere grid path near the end of the game.  They get the option to cross over into other characters' paths or even telepo...

Sitting down to write is always the hardest part of writing. A really good friend of mine died last week, so I haven't felt much like writing. But, it's time to start getting back into my daily life.  I miss writing already, but not all my thoughts today are gaming related. I've known my friend since we were around 3 years old.  I have memories of playing all sorts of games with him over the course of the last 20 years from NES to Xbox 360.  One of the memories that kept flashing through my head this last week was about playing couch co-op games with him while we were roomates in college. Freshman year we lived in the dorms and we also got a little game called Guitar Hero.  We ended up socializing with a ton of people on our floor because we would rock out with Guitar Hero and leave our door open.  But the best part of the game was knowing that every night we could both relax for a while and hang out together.  Working on our skills and learning to m...

Most of the games that hit the market today are not new.  They may look new or sell themselves as new, but the majority of the time they use old gameplay mechanics.  Developers constantly take each other's ideas and recreate the same type of game. Think of all the shovelware out there.  So many games aren't even worth five minutes of your time.  It is really sad. Playing Bayonetta is like playing Devil May Cry 3, which is like playing Devil May Cry 2, which is like playing Devil May Cry.  That's really the spark that got me thinking about rehashing gameplay mechanics.  Bayonetta has a crazy story and different visuals, but it is essentially an old game with a new layer of paint. When developers have really high production values they can get away with remaking the same game.  The Halo series comes to mind.  Between Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: ODST not a lot has changed.  All the games basically play the same.  If you didn't like...