Chicken Race

Well, after a bit of unexpected thrashing around, I decided to go ahead and break out my venerable copy of Final Fantasy VII and finish the playthrough.


It actually took some doing; the place I stopped at is not itself a particular problem, but then I realized why I stopped.  I had just started the big sidequest of the game, getting the Golden Chocobo.  For the uninitiated, the Golden Chocobo is the ultimate, go-anywhere vehicle in the game.  This alone warrants attention, but the real reward is using the Golden Chocobo to collect the ultimate summon, Knights of The Round.  This particular summon is far and away the most powerful spell in the game, and can be combined with other Materia (the game's magic and customization options all rolled into shiny orbs of concentrated awesome) for some very broken stuff, up to and including wiping the final boss in one turn.


Anyway, this power has a commensurate price tag.  The 'traditional' way to earn a Golden Chocobo is by racing and breeding certain common birds to get special birds (there is a second legit method, but that means fighting a nasty superboss) until you breed the Golden Chocobo.  It sounds alright on paper, and is straightforward enough if you have a walkthrough  (it can be done blind, but even with in-game hints its not all that intuitive), but in practice you have to drop the storyline and race six separate Chocobos to twelve victories each, stopping along to way to feed them start-boosting greens. 


Not impressed?  Well chocobo racing tends to come in two flavors:  utter snoozefests where you sit at the finish line waiting for terrible AI racers to catch up, or frustrating traffic jams where you wind up stuck in dead last while the few competent AIs become impossible to catch.  You can find a happy medium, where the races actually become challenging and tense without feeling grossly unfair, but it tends to be fairly rare.  To add to all this confusion, there is a 'boss' racer running around in the higher ranks.  Despite general wisdom, he's not impossible to beat, and might actually be one of the more pleasurable elements involved; races involving Teogh (whether that's supposed to be his name or a mangled translation of Joe, the only named jockey you're introduced to in the story) become tense and rewarding duels against a chocobo-riding Dale Earnhardt (the color scheme even fits).


Even then, doing this means you're doing a minimum of 72 races (and odds are very good you'll really need to do 100 or more, especially if you skimp on the greens) , during which you get a choice of two slightly different racetracks, making things even more repetitive.  But it's not all bad news; leaving Knights of The Round out of the bargain, chocobo racing is far and way the most effective way to collect GP, the special currency for the Gold Saucer.  And that's not all!  Victories in the higher ranks can draw some really nifty rewards, including equipment and Materia that can only be gained through racing.  Even the common prizes have some value, since forgoing them in how you get that wonderful GP generation.


Now if we could just find a way to do all this without watching a polygonal bird butt front-and-center for hours on end.  The Harvest carries a fearsome price.

When Bad Guys Have Mommy Issues

Well, Atelier Iris 2 was beat fairly handily a night ago, and overall it wound up being a lot of fun.  The final battle actually managed to be tense without forcing out copious amounts of cheese on either side.  The world is saved and the Harvest must turn aside to root out more of the unworthy.

More or less for the hell of it, I pulled out another old friend, and jumped back into a playthrough for it.

Do you remember the old days, when one game effectively turned JPRGs from niche games for geeks into mainstream masterpieces?  When most problems were solved by hunting down the nearest bishie prettyboy and knocking the crap out of him?  A time when racing giant chickens for hours on end was something almost respectable, since it was the key to the grandaddy of badass summon spells?

I remember.  Final Fantasy VII.  I can sit there like a hipster tool and go on about how I loved RPGs long before I encountered this one (mostly because it's true), and dig myself deeper by going on about how I still go out of my way to nab new ones (if you didn't notice that already, than this blog is totally pointless).

But I won't.  I will tell you about how I spent the night at a buddy's house way back in the day, who happened to have a Playstation and a copy of FF7.  Him and some acquaintances kindly fired it up and let me take it for a spin; got to Wall Market before I had to turn it off and do something else.  I will tell you about how I went out and got my own copy and a guide from Best Buy, and then proceeded to connive and hoard and outright steal lunch money so I can afford the damn console too.   I came close to turning into a nasty little monster back then.  Thank God it didn't turn out worse.

But you know what?  FF7 is still a fine game, and thanks to a bit of luck and a very good friend, I still have that original copy in my stack.  I admit that there's some nostalgia influencing me, but it's still a nerdy joy to fire it up and fiddle with your Materia collection and wreck corporate douchebags and watch Cloud randomly trip out.  I still say that Cloud's biggest issue is that he got so close to nailing Aerith, but he couldn't go through with it so Sephiroth whips out his blade and does the deed himself.  Double entendre ahoy!

I'm really just going ahead and fooling around with some sidequests for the moment, mostly because I'm between new games and a bit undecided.  There's only so much chocobo racing I can stand, but I want Knights of the Round (if you played this game, you know why), so I'll be shooting up and inbreeding chickens for a bit.  Still not quite sure what game to try next, but I'm thinking space pirates are in the near future now.  We shall see.

Stabbin' Dragons

Been busy at the job business.  I'm surrounded by the biggest collection of complexes this side of the internet, I swear.

I've taken advantage of losing my Xbox Live Gold (or rather, they lost my money because it didn't taste right or something) and wailing on the bonus boss in Dragon's Dogma.  The critter in question is known as the Ur-Dragon, so named because most players go "UUUURRR," and then "splat!" the first time they come across it.  The online version is technically harder, but the only real difference is that it has a ridiculous hit-point pool, and multiple players are wailing on it at any given time.  Unfortunately, being the guy who makes the kill is pretty much a crapshoot.  You can literally pick and play any strategy game by NIS long enough to beat their bonus bosses, and still have not gotten a kill on this beast in an equivalent amount of time.  Play the offline version of the boss to get the achievement, okay?

In any case this game is still very much one of my favorites, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to pick up and play again.  Definitely a point in its favor, and I hope we see a true sequel, not some bizarro MMO like the interwebs claim.

I've also heard some news that is already ancient now:  They're finally going to remake Final Fantasy VII.  I'm cautiously excited.  FFVII holds a special nerdy place in my nerdy heart (I actually owned the game before I bought a PS1, which is saying a lot) and I hope things actually go well.  Unfortunately, my auto-snark button got pushed when I head the words "gritty reboot."  Lolwut?
I thought up some ways to make this more "gritty."  Here's a random collection, in no particular order:

1)  Cait Sith is shanked and replaced by Belkar Bitterleaf.
2)  Cloud is voiced by Hugo Weaving.
3)  An option for a Mortal Kombat-like blood effect.  Imagine Omnislash now with patent pending 3-D Gore-O-Rama!
4)  Barret stops talking like Mr. T and acts like  (dammit I forgot his name) that black guy from Expendables.
5)  Trenchcoats.  Public flashing optional.
6)  New Game+ option to have Sephiroth shank other characters including, but not limited to:  Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie, Sora, Squall, Face McShooty, Wesley Crusher, Chris Pine!Kirk, and Jar Jar Binks.  Also the cast of FFXIII.
7)  Fuck it, give everybody guns!

That's about it, really.  I also really hope they fix the damn Chocobo racing, though.  Preferably with the old shoulder-button cheat still intact.

Rated T for Tanks

Blarg!

Been tearing about like a madman on World of Tanks again.  Even when I die like a moron, its an absolute blast.  The big trick to the game is really that death is just part of the game.  Its even reinforced by an achievement, This is World of Tanks, which you get by dying all alone as the last guy on your team.

I've also been tearing about in Final Fantasy VII.  It's still a fun game, even after all of these years.  FF7 is a particular favorite of mine; I actually owned a copy of it before I owned a Playstation!  I'm a little angry at the RNG right now.  Snagging certain skills can be a real bitch if the game isn't in a good mood.  I'll go back to it a day or so; controller throwing is a sign of idiocy.  Ol' Seph is in deep shit anyway.  He realizes that I'm back and prepared to shank a bitch, or bishie in his case.  Hell, it's both.

I'm still of the opinion that the real reason post-game Cloud is so damn emo because Seph up and poked Aerith with his sword before Cloud could.  That shit is Freudian as hell.