Wow. My last post was five days ago? Really??
I guess I shouldn't be that surprised--I haven't had a ton of time to play Dragon Quest VIII, much less write about it. As I recall, I had two sessions of maybe 90 minutes each.
The first session was a deliberate goof-off thing: I had captured a new creature that seemed pretty powerful and thought I'd have a run at the Level C Monster Arena championship.
And now it occurs to me I haven't told you anything about the Monster Arena yet, which is probably for the best, but alas unavoidable now. The Monster Arena mini-game is this area you stumble across after you've been playing for a while; when you do, a surprisingly hairy-chested man gives you bounties on three monsters, one of which you've probably already encountered, one of which you're about to encounter and the final one you run across about four or five hours down the road. If you capture all three, you open up the Monster Arena miniquest where you pit a team of those three monsters against three teams of three monsters in rapid succession. If your team beats those three teams, you get a price and you're allowed to compete at the next highest, more difficult, level. Because the three creatures you're given bounties for are pretty wimpy, you're encouraged to go find other monsters wandering the countryside. If you can beat them, you'll recruit them to your team.
This, plus the assorted treasure chests, provides more incentive for you to wander the countryside, and, timed where it is in the game, retrack your steps looking for monsters you'd encountered in the landscape. (In DQ8, the majority of your monster fights are randomly generated, but there are a number of monsters wandering around by themselves that you can avoid or attack, and it's these that you can recruit for your team.)
Me being me, I completely misunderstood the location of one of those three monsters so I didn't unlock the Monster Arena minigame until much later in the game than I'm sure the designers had calculated. This was good thing because by the time I'd opened it, I knew the location of two or three strong recruitable monsters and had a pretty powerful team right out of the gate. My group battled their way up from G to E without any trouble, and barely squeaked through D which hairy chested Mario assured me was the hardest group to beat. Actually, C went on to kick my ass and so I put the monster quest aside until I encountered a wandering dragon early in my Wednesday session... It was good enough to soundly beat Round C, but Round B, the penultimate set, was a bunch of mean bastards, and I barely made it to the second team in Round B before savagely beaten.
This set up the situation for the rest of that Wednesday session--wandering around the landscape on a sabrecat, fighting random monsters, finding treasure chests, and looking for recruitable monsters. It was only another thirty minutes of play or so, but it was pretty breezy and I finally turned it off as much out of annoyance at my own laziness as anything.
The second session on Thursday was, alas, more serious as I decided to go back into the Dark Ruins where my characters got killed. To my surprise, I battled to the bottom of the dungeon without too much trouble, mainly because I was willing to have all my characters throw out their top spells and bring the beatdown. I was hoping the bottom of the dungeon, which promised a showdown with the Big Bad, would just be a coattail of a level--the kind of thing that had happened twice in the past where my party confronts the villain, he mocks them and then teleports away laughing, and some new area of the map is opened up.
Nope. It's probably not the end of the game (I'm right at fifty hours, which is how long it takes people on the Internet to finish Dragong Quest VIII, but if there's one thing I've learned about my ultra-tard playing abilities is however long it takes people on the Internet--I call them "liars" for short--to finish, that's about two-thirds of the time it takes me to finish. If DQ8 is really fifty hours on a relatively quick play, I'll finish the game at about the 75 hour mark) but goddamned if I wasn't stuck fighting a laughing, annoying uber-boss who could split into three and fuck my party up big time. Remarkably enough, right as I was running out of everything, I beat his first incarnation, and the next two within five minutes later. I wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but I knew better: I don't recall encountering this in American games--I'm sure it happens--but Japanese game developers love the two-stage end boss. Sure enough, the dude rises up, says more stuff, laughs some more (I gotta give it up to the designers of Dragon Quest VIII; you have to push a button to move past each box of dialogue, which is handy if you have to run for a pee or a sandwich or something. In this scene the villain laughs at you for a solid minute at which point you have to push a button, then he continues to laugh some more, and then you push a button, and then he laughs even longer and heartier and more annoyingly. It was so in-your-face I had to laugh.) and then, as is the Japanese end-boss want, turned into a giant winged demon and proceeded to beat me stupid. Because he got two insanely powerful attacks per round, one of which would shock half my party, and the other of which would brutalize any given party member, I was mincemeat in about eight minutes.
And then, thanks to the generous nature of DQ8, I was reborn in a church having lost no more than half my gold and having gained several thousand experience points. Unfortunately, I was out of time for the day, to say nothing of all the rare one-use only magic items I broke out in my attempt to beat his ass.
So that's where things stand. I haven't played since Thursday; I doubt I'll play until Wednesday; and once I do, I'll have to decide what I'm going to do. Currently, I'm leaning toward hitting GameFaqs and really looking in-depth at the stuff I can create with my alchemy pot. I've done a pretty good job avoiding it, and creating various items based on the hints I've found around the game, but there just aren't enough of them and I'm not getting any younger.
I don't like the idea of wandering around having random fights just to level up, but I don't see any other choice since I'm not strong enough to beat that boss in my current state. The main problem is my heroes are leveled up enough that while the fights are quick, the payoff is low, and it's gonna take forever for me to level up. Ideally, there'll be a section of the map I've missed where the monsters are just tough enough that I'll get good XP (yes, that stands for Experience Points) and can have my group bump up a level or two. That, plus manufacturing a rare item or two might make enough of a difference.
I certainly hope so; not only do I still want to play Yakuza, but those copies of Front Mission 4 came in and Mr. No-Willpower ordered GTA: Vice City Stories from Amazon today. This puts my to-play list at NINETEEN games. If I can get three or four of those games before God of War II goes on sale (hell, before it becomes a Greatest Hits title), that'll be a remarkable triumph of willlpower on my part.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Monday, March 05, 2007
Nobody To Blame But....
Myself, of course. After posting on Saturday about how I felt relatively ahead of the curve on Dragon Quest VIII, I went and got my party killed in the dark ruins yesterday.
Dying in DQ8 isn't a big deal, other than if it happens it's usually because you deserved it. There's several ways to get out of any particular fight, and for a mere pittance you can buy an item that'll jet you back to a place where you can safely heal up. Yesterday, I noticed that my party was running kinda low on health and magic points but thought, "Ehhh, I'll make my way to the stairs at the end of the screen and then transport back." Sure enough, exactly twenty seconds later, a group of dog riding skeletons, orchid-headed priests, and a blood mummy or two arrived to slaughter me wholesale.
When you do die, you're resurrected in the last temple you visited, and stripped of half your gold: like I said, no big deal, particularly since the game has several banks where you can store your cash and avoid such a penalty if you get taken down. What stings is knowing that if I'd listened to myself, I wouldn't have lost any anything, except the time it would've taken me to retrace my steps. Of course, with video games the only true currency is time.
Which is the source of my ongoing ambivalence about video games in the first place--why do I continue to fritter away a currency which I have in such short supply? Answers like "fun" certainly come to mind, but sometimes I worry it's because while a triumph in a video game is almost as gratifying as a triumph in real life, failure in a video game is hardly as crushing as its real life counterpart. Maybe someday in the future, when people do something stupid and get themselves killed, they'll be able to wake up in a hospital with half their money gone, but that's still not the case today.
Dying in DQ8 isn't a big deal, other than if it happens it's usually because you deserved it. There's several ways to get out of any particular fight, and for a mere pittance you can buy an item that'll jet you back to a place where you can safely heal up. Yesterday, I noticed that my party was running kinda low on health and magic points but thought, "Ehhh, I'll make my way to the stairs at the end of the screen and then transport back." Sure enough, exactly twenty seconds later, a group of dog riding skeletons, orchid-headed priests, and a blood mummy or two arrived to slaughter me wholesale.
When you do die, you're resurrected in the last temple you visited, and stripped of half your gold: like I said, no big deal, particularly since the game has several banks where you can store your cash and avoid such a penalty if you get taken down. What stings is knowing that if I'd listened to myself, I wouldn't have lost any anything, except the time it would've taken me to retrace my steps. Of course, with video games the only true currency is time.
Which is the source of my ongoing ambivalence about video games in the first place--why do I continue to fritter away a currency which I have in such short supply? Answers like "fun" certainly come to mind, but sometimes I worry it's because while a triumph in a video game is almost as gratifying as a triumph in real life, failure in a video game is hardly as crushing as its real life counterpart. Maybe someday in the future, when people do something stupid and get themselves killed, they'll be able to wake up in a hospital with half their money gone, but that's still not the case today.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
I Know What I'm Playing Next.
First: three posts in one day? Yes. My original plan had been to post on the other blog, but work was such an evil, baying, scrote-biting leech I knew I wouldn't have the wherewithal to write anything that required critical faculties. For better or for worse, this is the blog I go to when I just want to write.
Second: I know why there was an underlying thread of anxiety in my previous thread about the length Dragon Quest VIII: I know what game I wanna play next.
I've had the opposite problem over the last several games, with DQ8 coming more or less out of the blue to save me as I looked to the end of Bully with something like panic. Like any good junkie, I fear having a string of the good shit run out, not just because it means I have to go through withdrawal pains but, worse, it means that maybe it's time I seriously think about kicking.
Last week, when Robson returned my copy of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance saying he just wasn't digging it, he mentioned that he threw on Yakuza after taking M:UA out of the playstation and immediately felt better. That and a comment I came across on the message boards while reading critical reception to DQ8 twanged a off-key, but heartfelt, note of desire.
The quote was this:
And it's worth pointing out--to my avaricious heart if no one else--that this review is clearly that of someone who played the original Japanese version. The U.S. release got much more mixed reviews (although looking around again on that message board, it seems a lot of regulars liked the U.S. version just fine).
It's an RPG that's also a fighting game, that's also a modern day Japanese gangster story! I don't know what flipped the little switch in my brain (actually, that's a lie, I do know: before DQ8, the RPG comparison had absolutely no positive heft for me at all) but now it's looking like it may, very soon, be my New Best Friend.
Second: I know why there was an underlying thread of anxiety in my previous thread about the length Dragon Quest VIII: I know what game I wanna play next.
I've had the opposite problem over the last several games, with DQ8 coming more or less out of the blue to save me as I looked to the end of Bully with something like panic. Like any good junkie, I fear having a string of the good shit run out, not just because it means I have to go through withdrawal pains but, worse, it means that maybe it's time I seriously think about kicking.
Last week, when Robson returned my copy of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance saying he just wasn't digging it, he mentioned that he threw on Yakuza after taking M:UA out of the playstation and immediately felt better. That and a comment I came across on the message boards while reading critical reception to DQ8 twanged a off-key, but heartfelt, note of desire.
The quote was this:
Yakuza / Ryu ga Gotoku - Play casino games, try to get the attention of women in hostess bars, go to the batting cages, or the special Sega store, play UFO catcher games, collect all manner of trinkets including stuff like men's cologne to help with the ladies, fight with everything from microphones to sofas to fire extinguishers, each having their own special attacks, help out homeless guys, find keys to coin lockers, shop at convenience stores and restaurants, get involved in any number of dynamic optional stories, etc.. It's like River City Ransom and Final Fight got married and decided to become a full-blooded action RPG with stats, money, dungeons and a battle system.
And it's worth pointing out--to my avaricious heart if no one else--that this review is clearly that of someone who played the original Japanese version. The U.S. release got much more mixed reviews (although looking around again on that message board, it seems a lot of regulars liked the U.S. version just fine).
It's an RPG that's also a fighting game, that's also a modern day Japanese gangster story! I don't know what flipped the little switch in my brain (actually, that's a lie, I do know: before DQ8, the RPG comparison had absolutely no positive heft for me at all) but now it's looking like it may, very soon, be my New Best Friend.
More of Everything: Dragon Quest VIII
I'm just about to pass the fifty hour mark on Dragon Quest VIII, meaning I've played it for longer than Bully and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance combined. I wish I could tell you how much longer I'm going to be playing it, but I honestly have no idea how much plot is left to the game. I could be on the last leg of a fetch quest right before I go to fight the final boss, but there's a whole other island/continent I haven't even begun to explore.
I could've shaved at least five hours off those fifty if I didn't keep bucking against the game design: although the game frequently sends you out into the world with vague directions (like, "there's an old man in the Western Woods who can help you") the roads and landmarks are designed to lead you there if you don't run off in the woods and act like a 'tard. Unfortunately, I was raised to run off in the woods and act like a 'tard (only upon typing this did I realize how true it was) and so, whether through impatience or insecurity, I've struck out repeatedly for the corner of Fuck-All and Nowhere, despite knowing better: it was after I failed to find the proper entrance to the Western Continent, and had to consult a FAQ, that I grokked to the handholding via landmark layout approach. And I still went on to fuck it up and, in fact, feel confident I will go home after writing this and fuck it up all over again.
Y'see, there's this cat chapel that I came across right after leaving the casino town in mourning to get the magic mirror at, uh, Avignon? Avalon? Richard Avedon?, and, after asking a question or two and realizing that this wasn't the town I was looking for, I split.
Now, this cat chapel was placed there for a reason. Even a dumbshit like me knows that. But I assumed it was some later quest I would do on my way back, or maybe just a bit of lovely local color that would tie in with someone's backstory.
Nope. This chapel exists so that, if you do the subquest it's tied to, you get a nifty little beastmount that'll make your land travel go two to three times as fast. If I hadn't been a dumbass, my quest to the far-flung of town of Richard Avedon would've been markedly shorter and, since this game relies of random monster encounters for most of its action, markedly easier.
And how did I find all this out? By going back to that FAQ when, after completing the giant lizard hunting ground subquest you get in Richard Avedon, I was unable to find the above-mentioned Western Woods, the next step in my quest. Lemme tell you, I really worked my ass off trying to find this Western Woods--I have a fucking boat, mind you, and I sailed around the Western edge of that continent looking for a forest. And when I found it, I wandered through the ass-end of it, getting in 'tarded random monster fights and getting nothing for my trouble but some paltry gold and a painful leaking of my players' Magic Points. So, yeah. When I asked the rhetorical question that opened this paragraph, I originally was going to type, "I took the easy way out--I looked at a FAQ." But, really, I did it the hard way--running off in the woods and acting like a 'tard, but only after fucking sailng--and still had to check a FAQ. That's how I found out where to find the Western Woods and how to get a Sabrecat mount to get your ass around. Fuck.
FAQs probably deserve a post all their own in this blog of mine. Like most video gamers, I have a strong love/hate relationship with them: the only thing worse than not discovering something awesome in a video game because a FAQ tells you first, is being stuck forever on some god-damned stupid puzzle, design flaw, or misunderstanding between you and the designer *without* a FAQ to save your ass. Game designers, of course, know this, which is why the difficulty of puzzles have diminished over time and the number of cool, hidden easter eggs have grown. I expect that's only going to continue as video game playing demographic gets older and has less and less time on its hands but still wants cool, unexpected shit to pop up and surprise it. (Remind me to write about the Monster Arena sometime.)
And yet, that approach is also, to an extent, the antipathy of the old-school RPG from which Dragon Quest VIII is descended. Like a pen and paper RPG, the random monster battle is a vital component of the game. Sure, I'm wandering around like the map like a like an idiot, but I'm also gaining crucial experience points, leveling up, and finding the occasional valuable treasure out in the middle of nowhere. If the giant lizard hunt is any indication, I'm comfortably ahead of the level curve because I beat those lizards down without breaking a sweat.
And that's another reason why I suspect that the plot isn't over yet--I've heard this game has about 50 to 100 hours of gameplay to it. Since I'm not exactly doing a speedrun, I bet I'm going to clock in closer to 100 hours, even without doing the "make every item/beat every monster/open every treasure chest" route. That worries me becuase I like all the little sidegames, sub-quests and mini-what-have-yous but I don't want the game to become a chore. Unless it's structured well, that happens with games more often than not--I think they prefer to leave you oversaturated than leave you wanting more--and I worry that could really be the case with Dragon Quest VIII, since I'm already 50 hours into it and have no idea how much more they're going to string the story along. (Considering I haven't even finished the subquest that'll let me play roulette--or anything else--at the big casino, I'm thinking: a lot.)
On the other hand, they were smart enough to throw in the Sabrecats...even if I wasn't smart enough to discover them. Maybe there'll be the chance for me to actually have more of everything, without it feeling like too much of nothing.
I could've shaved at least five hours off those fifty if I didn't keep bucking against the game design: although the game frequently sends you out into the world with vague directions (like, "there's an old man in the Western Woods who can help you") the roads and landmarks are designed to lead you there if you don't run off in the woods and act like a 'tard. Unfortunately, I was raised to run off in the woods and act like a 'tard (only upon typing this did I realize how true it was) and so, whether through impatience or insecurity, I've struck out repeatedly for the corner of Fuck-All and Nowhere, despite knowing better: it was after I failed to find the proper entrance to the Western Continent, and had to consult a FAQ, that I grokked to the handholding via landmark layout approach. And I still went on to fuck it up and, in fact, feel confident I will go home after writing this and fuck it up all over again.
Y'see, there's this cat chapel that I came across right after leaving the casino town in mourning to get the magic mirror at, uh, Avignon? Avalon? Richard Avedon?, and, after asking a question or two and realizing that this wasn't the town I was looking for, I split.
Now, this cat chapel was placed there for a reason. Even a dumbshit like me knows that. But I assumed it was some later quest I would do on my way back, or maybe just a bit of lovely local color that would tie in with someone's backstory.
Nope. This chapel exists so that, if you do the subquest it's tied to, you get a nifty little beastmount that'll make your land travel go two to three times as fast. If I hadn't been a dumbass, my quest to the far-flung of town of Richard Avedon would've been markedly shorter and, since this game relies of random monster encounters for most of its action, markedly easier.
And how did I find all this out? By going back to that FAQ when, after completing the giant lizard hunting ground subquest you get in Richard Avedon, I was unable to find the above-mentioned Western Woods, the next step in my quest. Lemme tell you, I really worked my ass off trying to find this Western Woods--I have a fucking boat, mind you, and I sailed around the Western edge of that continent looking for a forest. And when I found it, I wandered through the ass-end of it, getting in 'tarded random monster fights and getting nothing for my trouble but some paltry gold and a painful leaking of my players' Magic Points. So, yeah. When I asked the rhetorical question that opened this paragraph, I originally was going to type, "I took the easy way out--I looked at a FAQ." But, really, I did it the hard way--running off in the woods and acting like a 'tard, but only after fucking sailng--and still had to check a FAQ. That's how I found out where to find the Western Woods and how to get a Sabrecat mount to get your ass around. Fuck.
FAQs probably deserve a post all their own in this blog of mine. Like most video gamers, I have a strong love/hate relationship with them: the only thing worse than not discovering something awesome in a video game because a FAQ tells you first, is being stuck forever on some god-damned stupid puzzle, design flaw, or misunderstanding between you and the designer *without* a FAQ to save your ass. Game designers, of course, know this, which is why the difficulty of puzzles have diminished over time and the number of cool, hidden easter eggs have grown. I expect that's only going to continue as video game playing demographic gets older and has less and less time on its hands but still wants cool, unexpected shit to pop up and surprise it. (Remind me to write about the Monster Arena sometime.)
And yet, that approach is also, to an extent, the antipathy of the old-school RPG from which Dragon Quest VIII is descended. Like a pen and paper RPG, the random monster battle is a vital component of the game. Sure, I'm wandering around like the map like a like an idiot, but I'm also gaining crucial experience points, leveling up, and finding the occasional valuable treasure out in the middle of nowhere. If the giant lizard hunt is any indication, I'm comfortably ahead of the level curve because I beat those lizards down without breaking a sweat.
And that's another reason why I suspect that the plot isn't over yet--I've heard this game has about 50 to 100 hours of gameplay to it. Since I'm not exactly doing a speedrun, I bet I'm going to clock in closer to 100 hours, even without doing the "make every item/beat every monster/open every treasure chest" route. That worries me becuase I like all the little sidegames, sub-quests and mini-what-have-yous but I don't want the game to become a chore. Unless it's structured well, that happens with games more often than not--I think they prefer to leave you oversaturated than leave you wanting more--and I worry that could really be the case with Dragon Quest VIII, since I'm already 50 hours into it and have no idea how much more they're going to string the story along. (Considering I haven't even finished the subquest that'll let me play roulette--or anything else--at the big casino, I'm thinking: a lot.)
On the other hand, they were smart enough to throw in the Sabrecats...even if I wasn't smart enough to discover them. Maybe there'll be the chance for me to actually have more of everything, without it feeling like too much of nothing.
Stronger Than Fiction.
If you think my previous post, in which I spent several thousand years bemoaning my inability to cheaply buy games I will never have time to play, was a cry for help, consider this: about five minutes after I hit publish, I bought a new copy of Front Mission 4 off Ebay for nine bucks. Actually, to be fully honest, it was a dutch auction so I bought two copies.
(Why two? I... don't... know? I had some idea that I could flip the other purportedly new copy, either on Amazon, Ebay or at some shop that it might cover the money I spent on both games. This seems really, really unlikely, I know, but nothing screws up my inner compass like success: I flipped my second copy of the limited edition of Metal Gear Solid: Subsistence for enough money that it covered both copies and gave me a $50 profit. Weirdly, for a guy who's been buying comic books for over thirty years, I can count the number of times I engaged in such speculation in that market on the fingers of a single hand, and have enough fingers left over to flash the peace sign. If only such sound judgment would guide me with video games!)
Then, three days later, I found a used copy of God Hand for $11.95 at Streetlight Records. Provided that the scuffs seem as minor as they appeared in the store, this is a good deal. Even if I don't take to the high difficulty level of the game (I've read it's awesome but hard), I could flip it for a small profit on Ebay now. I suspect I may be able to flip it for a larger one later...
So, yeah. That's how Video Game Player: The RPG is going. I defeated dutch auction and it monster dropped two copies of Front Mission 4, and I completed the record store sub-quest for a God Hand reward. I've gained a +2 to Avarice and opened up the Difficult Fighting Game skill tree.
Next: some actual fucking talk about playing actual fucking video games.
(Why two? I... don't... know? I had some idea that I could flip the other purportedly new copy, either on Amazon, Ebay or at some shop that it might cover the money I spent on both games. This seems really, really unlikely, I know, but nothing screws up my inner compass like success: I flipped my second copy of the limited edition of Metal Gear Solid: Subsistence for enough money that it covered both copies and gave me a $50 profit. Weirdly, for a guy who's been buying comic books for over thirty years, I can count the number of times I engaged in such speculation in that market on the fingers of a single hand, and have enough fingers left over to flash the peace sign. If only such sound judgment would guide me with video games!)
Then, three days later, I found a used copy of God Hand for $11.95 at Streetlight Records. Provided that the scuffs seem as minor as they appeared in the store, this is a good deal. Even if I don't take to the high difficulty level of the game (I've read it's awesome but hard), I could flip it for a small profit on Ebay now. I suspect I may be able to flip it for a larger one later...
So, yeah. That's how Video Game Player: The RPG is going. I defeated dutch auction and it monster dropped two copies of Front Mission 4, and I completed the record store sub-quest for a God Hand reward. I've gained a +2 to Avarice and opened up the Difficult Fighting Game skill tree.
Next: some actual fucking talk about playing actual fucking video games.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Junkie's Blues Gets The Power-Up.
I still can't decide if Best Buy is trying to kill me, or trying to save me. Today (and maybe today only?) they're having an absolutely absurd clearance sale of their videogames with items like:
1.99 PS2 187 Ride or Die
1.99 PS2 American Idol
1.99 PS2 ATV Offroad Fury 2
1.99 PS2 Bad boys Miami takedown
1.99 PS2 Beat down: Fists of vengeance
1.99 PS2 Beyond Good and Evil
1.99 PS2 Big Motha Truckers 2
1.99 PS2 Brothers in Arms
1.99 PS2 Champions of Norrath Realm
1.99 PS2 Conflict vietnam
1.99 PS2 Constantine
1.99 PS2 Frontmission4
1.99 PS2 Gauntlet the Seven Sorrows
1.99 PS2 GTA 3
1.99 PS2 GTA San Andreas
1.99 PS2 GTA Vice City
1.99 PS2 Jak 3
1.99 Ps2 Killzone
1.99 PS2 Legacy of Kain Defiance
1.99 PS2 Onimusha 2
1.99 PS2 Syphon Filter The omega factor
1.99 PS2 Test DriveEve of Destruction
1.99 PS2 The Matrix Path of Neo
1.99 PS2 Virtua Fighter 4 EVO
1.99 PS2 We Love Katamari
4.99 PS2 Jak 2
4.99 PS2 Jet Li Rise to honor
4.99 PS2 Katamari Damacy
4.99 PS2 Prince of Persia 3
4.99 PS2 Sly 2 band of thieves
4.99 PS2 Sly cooper
4.99 PS2 Star Ocean 3
4.99 PS2 Ultimate Spiderman
4.99 PS2 Wild Arms 4
4.99 PS2 X-Men Legends
9.99 PS2 Romancing Saga
Now, I left some of that stuff in there to show you how much crap is there (and believe me, there were tons more cheap awful game titles I cut) but there are also a SHOCKING number of good deals there and/or junk that I would gladly played and then resold at a wee profit. (With God as my witness, I would've paid seven dollars or under to get a copy of Big Motha Truckers 2 new.) And, as a fledgeling SPRG junkie, the idea of getting Front Mission 4 for 2 bucks and tax makes me want to weep. So, yeah, I was kinda tempted to pull an emergency sick day, and break out that Holiday Gift Card I got from B.B. And by "kinda tempted," I mean "I rung my hands and rubbed my forehead, and sweated like a junkie on detox."
Because for the last few months, I've been just as, if not more, addicted to buying video games as to playing 'em: I've got a stack of twenty-seven or twenty-eight games sitting on the side of my desk, and I'm sure some of 'em I'll never get to now. In the past, I've gotten the occasional killer high from my budget gaming habit (On a previous Best Buy clearance sale, I was able to score the first Hulk game for $4.99; not only did I enjoy the game, but I sold it for $6 two years later at a garage sale) but mostly it's the cheap quick fix, and the long shameful grind (at that same sale I sold a copy of Resident Evil: Code Veronica for a dollar less than what I'd paid for it two weeks earlier).
So even though I'm a pained junkie, I'm aware I'm also a junkie, and it's probably for the best that I'm here at work, making money, and not driving in the rain, from poorly stocked Best Buy to poorly stocked Best Buy in search of ten dollars worth of games.
(In fact? Wanna know what I really honestly truly only want out of that list above that's puffed up with sure-fire garage sale filler and amazon marketplace bait?
1.99 PS2 Big Motha Truckers 2
1.99 PS2 Champions of Norrath Realm
1.99 PS2 Constantine
1.99 PS2 Frontmission4
1.99 PS2 The Matrix Path of Neo
4.99 PS2 Jet Li Rise to honor
And which ones I would actually pay more than that super-low price for?
PS2 Frontmission4
Which means that no matter how many of those games I actually got, that would be the only game I'd really feel happy about getting.)
See that? The other games are all just shit I would get to have at a super-low price, or be able to trade. And, honestly, that's pretty much the same as most of the dozens of other middle-aged dudes driving to their Best Buys today: we're like sharks in the ocean, drawn by the merest drop of seal blood into a seething, restless blind-eyed searchingness. They think they want the bicycle tire, the suit of armor and the length of chain they devour, but really they just want that tiny spot of seal blood they can almost remember tasting...
More on this quasi-depressing topic as it develops. (Although, really, just between you and me, I'd rather be talking about Dragon Quest VIII.)
1.99 PS2 187 Ride or Die
1.99 PS2 American Idol
1.99 PS2 ATV Offroad Fury 2
1.99 PS2 Bad boys Miami takedown
1.99 PS2 Beat down: Fists of vengeance
1.99 PS2 Beyond Good and Evil
1.99 PS2 Big Motha Truckers 2
1.99 PS2 Brothers in Arms
1.99 PS2 Champions of Norrath Realm
1.99 PS2 Conflict vietnam
1.99 PS2 Constantine
1.99 PS2 Frontmission4
1.99 PS2 Gauntlet the Seven Sorrows
1.99 PS2 GTA 3
1.99 PS2 GTA San Andreas
1.99 PS2 GTA Vice City
1.99 PS2 Jak 3
1.99 Ps2 Killzone
1.99 PS2 Legacy of Kain Defiance
1.99 PS2 Onimusha 2
1.99 PS2 Syphon Filter The omega factor
1.99 PS2 Test DriveEve of Destruction
1.99 PS2 The Matrix Path of Neo
1.99 PS2 Virtua Fighter 4 EVO
1.99 PS2 We Love Katamari
4.99 PS2 Jak 2
4.99 PS2 Jet Li Rise to honor
4.99 PS2 Katamari Damacy
4.99 PS2 Prince of Persia 3
4.99 PS2 Sly 2 band of thieves
4.99 PS2 Sly cooper
4.99 PS2 Star Ocean 3
4.99 PS2 Ultimate Spiderman
4.99 PS2 Wild Arms 4
4.99 PS2 X-Men Legends
9.99 PS2 Romancing Saga
Now, I left some of that stuff in there to show you how much crap is there (and believe me, there were tons more cheap awful game titles I cut) but there are also a SHOCKING number of good deals there and/or junk that I would gladly played and then resold at a wee profit. (With God as my witness, I would've paid seven dollars or under to get a copy of Big Motha Truckers 2 new.) And, as a fledgeling SPRG junkie, the idea of getting Front Mission 4 for 2 bucks and tax makes me want to weep. So, yeah, I was kinda tempted to pull an emergency sick day, and break out that Holiday Gift Card I got from B.B. And by "kinda tempted," I mean "I rung my hands and rubbed my forehead, and sweated like a junkie on detox."
Because for the last few months, I've been just as, if not more, addicted to buying video games as to playing 'em: I've got a stack of twenty-seven or twenty-eight games sitting on the side of my desk, and I'm sure some of 'em I'll never get to now. In the past, I've gotten the occasional killer high from my budget gaming habit (On a previous Best Buy clearance sale, I was able to score the first Hulk game for $4.99; not only did I enjoy the game, but I sold it for $6 two years later at a garage sale) but mostly it's the cheap quick fix, and the long shameful grind (at that same sale I sold a copy of Resident Evil: Code Veronica for a dollar less than what I'd paid for it two weeks earlier).
So even though I'm a pained junkie, I'm aware I'm also a junkie, and it's probably for the best that I'm here at work, making money, and not driving in the rain, from poorly stocked Best Buy to poorly stocked Best Buy in search of ten dollars worth of games.
(In fact? Wanna know what I really honestly truly only want out of that list above that's puffed up with sure-fire garage sale filler and amazon marketplace bait?
1.99 PS2 Big Motha Truckers 2
1.99 PS2 Champions of Norrath Realm
1.99 PS2 Constantine
1.99 PS2 Frontmission4
1.99 PS2 The Matrix Path of Neo
4.99 PS2 Jet Li Rise to honor
And which ones I would actually pay more than that super-low price for?
PS2 Frontmission4
Which means that no matter how many of those games I actually got, that would be the only game I'd really feel happy about getting.)
See that? The other games are all just shit I would get to have at a super-low price, or be able to trade. And, honestly, that's pretty much the same as most of the dozens of other middle-aged dudes driving to their Best Buys today: we're like sharks in the ocean, drawn by the merest drop of seal blood into a seething, restless blind-eyed searchingness. They think they want the bicycle tire, the suit of armor and the length of chain they devour, but really they just want that tiny spot of seal blood they can almost remember tasting...
More on this quasi-depressing topic as it develops. (Although, really, just between you and me, I'd rather be talking about Dragon Quest VIII.)
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Chained to the Alchemy Pot: Dragon Quest VIII
I put maybe twenty hours or so hours into Bully, maybe a bit longer, over the course of a month and a half. By contrast, I've clocked just shy of nineteen hours on Dragon Quest VIII and I've only had it a week and a half.
It's kind of an odd story how I ended up playing DQ8--someone had started a thread on a messageboard I follow about recommendations for an RPG to play and I hopped in and asked for advice. I'd actually gotten a kick of the RPG-lite touches on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (an experience I've really passed over about on this blog, I suddenly realize) and have always felt a little bit guilty for not being a bigger fan of RPGs on the console: in theory, it's a style of game I want to support (they're heavy on the writing and the storytelling) but never actually take to. I tried a few minutes of Final Fantasy X-2 and loathed it, hated the hour or two of the first Xenogears that I played, and then there was the savagely dull time spent with Kingdom Hearts II....
But I've enjoyed the faux RPG-ness of Champions of Norrath, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and certain demos like Front Mission 4, to say nothing of Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate (only my fear of having a time-suck RPG has kept me from installing Baldur's Gate 2 on my laptop). Considering how often I synch up with the average twelve year old video game console player in Japan, I couldn't figure out whether I just kept picking bad RPGs or I just hated them..
With this in mind, I ordered DQ8 from Amazon. It would be my way to finally find out how I feel about RPGs (at least on a console) since everyone who played RPGs praised it to the skies. (According to Wikipedia, the readers of Japanese video game magazine Famitsu voted it the no. 4 RPG of all time.)
Sadly for me, I love it.
Dragon Quest VIII is a huge sprawl of an RPG, in which you are a guardsman of a ruined king and a transformed princess hunt down the evil mage who destroyed your kingdom. At first, you're aided by a single henchman but as time goes on you add two more characters to your party. Pretty standard RPG stuff.
In fact, that's part of the appeal of Dragon Quest VIII--it's the epitome of standard Japanese style RPG, but with absurdly high production values and some of the best localization I've ever played. To catch the levels of stratification within your party, the game's adapters went with an all-Brit voice cast--your first henchman, Yangus, speaks in a delightfully thick Cockney accent, and the ruined king, despite looking like Yoda, sounds like a high-bred fop. (In fact, although the voicde acting is top-notch all the way around, Ricky Grover's voicing of the fat, faithful big-hearted tough guy Yangus puts the character in a lot of top five NPC lists. He's just a joy to listen to.)
That, and a dash of other incredibly high production values--the characters and monsters were designed by Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dr. Slump and Dragonball Z--make the game not just the RPG video game equivalent of comfort food, but the equivalent of super-quality comfort food feast: less a peanut butter sandwich, than a towering Dagwood Bumstead style sandwich made with pricey delicacies from Whole Foods.
Additionally, even though the game can be hard, it's almost always whimsical. You fight dancing devils in short pants, hooded shirtless muscle men who can distract you with their flexing, sentient bouncing bags with leering mouths and bouncing candies--Toriyama's designs so far are more Dr. Slump and less Dragonball Z, and that, combined with the cel-shaded animation, and a large number of silly side-quests and possiblities for character optimization, makes one feel like they're playing an ongoing anime series. It's closer to Harvest Moon than Final Fantasy, making it a nice continuation of the child-like time-wasting I indulged in Bully.
It has its drawbacks, of course. The game's action stems from its random encounters, and there are times when you just want to get back to the village, save your game and quit, but half to fight your way through teams of six monsters, over and over and over.... Also, playing the game for more than three hours at a time makes me feel headachey and over-stimulated, like I'd eaten a bag full of jellybeans. And although it's a huge open world with treasure chests, secret monsters, and hidden subquests, the lack of a detailed world map (I got one about seven hours in and it's ridiculously sparse) and the high number of encounters make that world too much of a chore to explore. (So far.)
But, overall, it's a stunning game, the kind of candy-colored time waster I'm tempted to send along to my ex roommates back on Paris Sreet, and I'm both delighted that I bought it and more than a little terrified. I have projects to take care of in the next few months--some big ones for other people, and a decent-sized one for myself, and it's already caused me to sabotage one gym visit.
I might well have been better off if I hadn't liked Dragon Quest VIII, to be honest. But I take some comfort in knowing that chances are good that no matter how long I play it, there aren't going to be a lot of other RPGs as good as it. My best hope now is that the game will be so good it'll spoil me for others of its ilk.
And if not? Well, at least I'll once again be in line with my twelve year old Japanese brethren.
It's kind of an odd story how I ended up playing DQ8--someone had started a thread on a messageboard I follow about recommendations for an RPG to play and I hopped in and asked for advice. I'd actually gotten a kick of the RPG-lite touches on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (an experience I've really passed over about on this blog, I suddenly realize) and have always felt a little bit guilty for not being a bigger fan of RPGs on the console: in theory, it's a style of game I want to support (they're heavy on the writing and the storytelling) but never actually take to. I tried a few minutes of Final Fantasy X-2 and loathed it, hated the hour or two of the first Xenogears that I played, and then there was the savagely dull time spent with Kingdom Hearts II....
But I've enjoyed the faux RPG-ness of Champions of Norrath, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, and certain demos like Front Mission 4, to say nothing of Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate (only my fear of having a time-suck RPG has kept me from installing Baldur's Gate 2 on my laptop). Considering how often I synch up with the average twelve year old video game console player in Japan, I couldn't figure out whether I just kept picking bad RPGs or I just hated them..
With this in mind, I ordered DQ8 from Amazon. It would be my way to finally find out how I feel about RPGs (at least on a console) since everyone who played RPGs praised it to the skies. (According to Wikipedia, the readers of Japanese video game magazine Famitsu voted it the no. 4 RPG of all time.)
Sadly for me, I love it.
Dragon Quest VIII is a huge sprawl of an RPG, in which you are a guardsman of a ruined king and a transformed princess hunt down the evil mage who destroyed your kingdom. At first, you're aided by a single henchman but as time goes on you add two more characters to your party. Pretty standard RPG stuff.
In fact, that's part of the appeal of Dragon Quest VIII--it's the epitome of standard Japanese style RPG, but with absurdly high production values and some of the best localization I've ever played. To catch the levels of stratification within your party, the game's adapters went with an all-Brit voice cast--your first henchman, Yangus, speaks in a delightfully thick Cockney accent, and the ruined king, despite looking like Yoda, sounds like a high-bred fop. (In fact, although the voicde acting is top-notch all the way around, Ricky Grover's voicing of the fat, faithful big-hearted tough guy Yangus puts the character in a lot of top five NPC lists. He's just a joy to listen to.)
That, and a dash of other incredibly high production values--the characters and monsters were designed by Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dr. Slump and Dragonball Z--make the game not just the RPG video game equivalent of comfort food, but the equivalent of super-quality comfort food feast: less a peanut butter sandwich, than a towering Dagwood Bumstead style sandwich made with pricey delicacies from Whole Foods.
Additionally, even though the game can be hard, it's almost always whimsical. You fight dancing devils in short pants, hooded shirtless muscle men who can distract you with their flexing, sentient bouncing bags with leering mouths and bouncing candies--Toriyama's designs so far are more Dr. Slump and less Dragonball Z, and that, combined with the cel-shaded animation, and a large number of silly side-quests and possiblities for character optimization, makes one feel like they're playing an ongoing anime series. It's closer to Harvest Moon than Final Fantasy, making it a nice continuation of the child-like time-wasting I indulged in Bully.
It has its drawbacks, of course. The game's action stems from its random encounters, and there are times when you just want to get back to the village, save your game and quit, but half to fight your way through teams of six monsters, over and over and over.... Also, playing the game for more than three hours at a time makes me feel headachey and over-stimulated, like I'd eaten a bag full of jellybeans. And although it's a huge open world with treasure chests, secret monsters, and hidden subquests, the lack of a detailed world map (I got one about seven hours in and it's ridiculously sparse) and the high number of encounters make that world too much of a chore to explore. (So far.)
But, overall, it's a stunning game, the kind of candy-colored time waster I'm tempted to send along to my ex roommates back on Paris Sreet, and I'm both delighted that I bought it and more than a little terrified. I have projects to take care of in the next few months--some big ones for other people, and a decent-sized one for myself, and it's already caused me to sabotage one gym visit.
I might well have been better off if I hadn't liked Dragon Quest VIII, to be honest. But I take some comfort in knowing that chances are good that no matter how long I play it, there aren't going to be a lot of other RPGs as good as it. My best hope now is that the game will be so good it'll spoil me for others of its ilk.
And if not? Well, at least I'll once again be in line with my twelve year old Japanese brethren.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Childhood's End.
And suddenly, just like that, Bully was over.
I figured once the "wronger" side of the tracks opened up, the end was near, but suddenly I was on the last mission of the game, running around in a sillier version of the riots at the end of GTA: SA, and then out the other side, watching the credits roll. I wasn't ready.
The game doesn't really end, of course--you get to go around and do all the side missions you might have missed, kiss the girls and guys you might not have kissed, and loaf around Bully style, and I thought I'd spent a week or two doing just that. But after collecting the remaining three photos for the yearbook, I popped the game out of the PS2 and looked to one of the new games I'd compulsively ordered online despite my tremendous backlog. (More on that later.)
I haven't written off Bully--just the other day, I found online the list of guys you can kiss, and I'll be damned if I'll put the game away until Jimmy's kissed 'em all--but I worry that, despite my writing that (and believing it), it may be a while before it ends up back in play. GTAIII is the only sandbox game I continued to play for any duration once I ended.
True, a few times I booted up GTA:SA (because I still hadn't scored with that crazy martial arts chick) but it was disquieting and odd. I'd shoot some hoops or wreck some cars while waiting in between dates, but, sounds of gunfire aside, it felt far too much like when I go home to visit my Dad in Humboldt County: I find myself nostalgic and unsettled, surprised by how small and how quiet everything feels. I had C.J. shoot hoops in his old neighborhood and he looked lonely and alone, an old fart trying to figure out why it all feels different when absolutely nothing's changed. I don't want that to happen with Bully, but I worry it's gonna be the same. I'll boot up Bully, send Jimmy in search of Cornelius, or a frisbee, or a butt to pinch, and suddenly he'll be the kid who went away to college and came back the next summer, slightly skeevy in his cocky dedication to do everything (and everyone) he couldn't do the first time. And I think I'll maybe be able to handle that for about two hours before I shudder, turn off the machine and find a new game. As with life, so with art.
But it was a nice childhood while it lasted.
I figured once the "wronger" side of the tracks opened up, the end was near, but suddenly I was on the last mission of the game, running around in a sillier version of the riots at the end of GTA: SA, and then out the other side, watching the credits roll. I wasn't ready.
The game doesn't really end, of course--you get to go around and do all the side missions you might have missed, kiss the girls and guys you might not have kissed, and loaf around Bully style, and I thought I'd spent a week or two doing just that. But after collecting the remaining three photos for the yearbook, I popped the game out of the PS2 and looked to one of the new games I'd compulsively ordered online despite my tremendous backlog. (More on that later.)
I haven't written off Bully--just the other day, I found online the list of guys you can kiss, and I'll be damned if I'll put the game away until Jimmy's kissed 'em all--but I worry that, despite my writing that (and believing it), it may be a while before it ends up back in play. GTAIII is the only sandbox game I continued to play for any duration once I ended.
True, a few times I booted up GTA:SA (because I still hadn't scored with that crazy martial arts chick) but it was disquieting and odd. I'd shoot some hoops or wreck some cars while waiting in between dates, but, sounds of gunfire aside, it felt far too much like when I go home to visit my Dad in Humboldt County: I find myself nostalgic and unsettled, surprised by how small and how quiet everything feels. I had C.J. shoot hoops in his old neighborhood and he looked lonely and alone, an old fart trying to figure out why it all feels different when absolutely nothing's changed. I don't want that to happen with Bully, but I worry it's gonna be the same. I'll boot up Bully, send Jimmy in search of Cornelius, or a frisbee, or a butt to pinch, and suddenly he'll be the kid who went away to college and came back the next summer, slightly skeevy in his cocky dedication to do everything (and everyone) he couldn't do the first time. And I think I'll maybe be able to handle that for about two hours before I shudder, turn off the machine and find a new game. As with life, so with art.
But it was a nice childhood while it lasted.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Bullish on Bully....
Yeah, still playing Bully every now and then. I think I'm inching my way closer and closer to completion of the game (I'm close to 70% which is usually where the GTA games start wrapping up), and the closer I get, the slower I move. Thursday night, for example, I spent maybe six hours of game time mowing lawns. Sure, it made me a ton of cash, but I already had a ton of cash. I think I did it because I could, and then, after it was done, I found the button that turns on the sprinklers in the park and I felt really happy.
If I had to guess, I'd say that Bully's short game days (you pass out at two a.m. so you better be safe in bed by then) keeps the player from trying to blow through the whole experience in a week, and currently I'm pretty glad about that. When I first started the game, I admit, I was pretty nonplussed by it--as my wife put it, "It just seems like you're doing boring things, not interesting things. At least in San Andreas, you were doing stuff that was interesting."--and I had plenty of other games I was chomping at the bit to get at.
But now, as the game continues to open up more back roads and areas (just past the wrong side of the tracks there's an industrial park that's, like, the wronger side of the tracks) and adding more little minigames and toys and errands, I find myself thinking that Bully is much closer to a Childhood Simulator than I originally thought. Just like when you're a kid, the thing you're doing may look like nothing at all to the person watching, but to you, the person doing it, it's interesting--maybe because it is nothing at all. There's this weird low-key zone I get into while playing Bully that has nothing to do with speed runs, or enemies, or completed missions; where I decide to, for example, play a video game at one of those standalones scattered around town, or get my hair cut a completely different way and dress up like an old school punker. It does feel, almost, like childhood to me, because one thing you realize about childhood once it's gone is that you will never have that much free time in your life again, even if you try. And what's truly fascinating to me--what might be a great essay that I hope someone gets around to writing someday soon--is how Bully takes so many of its cues from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (clothing options, sports minigames, girlfriends to win) and yet is such a different game. I think it's precisely because of how the game trains you to see the world--the worldview of the game, I guess. In GTA:SA, there's lots of interesting things to do but I was always kind of restless in doing them, squirrely: I kept trying to get to the next area, unlock the next thing, find the next girlfriend. It felt like there was so much to do, I had to do it all. (And then, just like in real life, once I did everything I could, I ended up in the casinos playing cards all the time.) By contrast, Bully does a great job of teaching you to lower your expectations, to not expect so much. By the time, you finally get off the campus and get into town, it's pretty underwhelming. That's it? I thought. This is all there is to do?
And yet, when I started playing Bully again, coming back to it after beating Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, thinking I'd just knock off the rest of the game in a day or two and shelve it, I found the game kept doling out more and more bit by bit, expanding its repertoire very discreetly. The dreaded jobs I'd been avoiding--paper boy, lawn mower--were neither hard nor stressful. I started exploring, just because I could, and one day, in what I guess was the early Spring of the game, I went for a swim around the lake just because I could, walked out onto a beach and got in a fistfight with a pirate. That was pretty cool, but when I later maneuvered out onto a bunch of cliffs, lost my balance and caught myself on a ledge, that was even cooler. All those hours you spend walking around by yourself as a kid (in my case, out in the woods somewhere) because that's it, that's all there is to do, are an invaluable essential component to who you are. When you have a private little adventure, something where you almost tumble and tear up all your clothes but don't because you catch yourself on the ledge, that contributes some fundamental sense of who you are, and who you are in the world, without it being a lesson that someone's trying to teach you or that you're trying to teach someone else, those types of experiences are incredibly valuable and necesary when you're a kid, and having an experience just like that in Bully is odd and satisfying and sweet and a little sad. And great.
So yeah, if someone had told me a month ago Bully was a kind of childhood simulator, I would have thought they were absurdly over-evaluating the game. But it seems right to me at the moment. Explore. Watch the stars come out. Run home before it gets too dark. That's it. That's all there is to do.
If I had to guess, I'd say that Bully's short game days (you pass out at two a.m. so you better be safe in bed by then) keeps the player from trying to blow through the whole experience in a week, and currently I'm pretty glad about that. When I first started the game, I admit, I was pretty nonplussed by it--as my wife put it, "It just seems like you're doing boring things, not interesting things. At least in San Andreas, you were doing stuff that was interesting."--and I had plenty of other games I was chomping at the bit to get at.
But now, as the game continues to open up more back roads and areas (just past the wrong side of the tracks there's an industrial park that's, like, the wronger side of the tracks) and adding more little minigames and toys and errands, I find myself thinking that Bully is much closer to a Childhood Simulator than I originally thought. Just like when you're a kid, the thing you're doing may look like nothing at all to the person watching, but to you, the person doing it, it's interesting--maybe because it is nothing at all. There's this weird low-key zone I get into while playing Bully that has nothing to do with speed runs, or enemies, or completed missions; where I decide to, for example, play a video game at one of those standalones scattered around town, or get my hair cut a completely different way and dress up like an old school punker. It does feel, almost, like childhood to me, because one thing you realize about childhood once it's gone is that you will never have that much free time in your life again, even if you try. And what's truly fascinating to me--what might be a great essay that I hope someone gets around to writing someday soon--is how Bully takes so many of its cues from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (clothing options, sports minigames, girlfriends to win) and yet is such a different game. I think it's precisely because of how the game trains you to see the world--the worldview of the game, I guess. In GTA:SA, there's lots of interesting things to do but I was always kind of restless in doing them, squirrely: I kept trying to get to the next area, unlock the next thing, find the next girlfriend. It felt like there was so much to do, I had to do it all. (And then, just like in real life, once I did everything I could, I ended up in the casinos playing cards all the time.) By contrast, Bully does a great job of teaching you to lower your expectations, to not expect so much. By the time, you finally get off the campus and get into town, it's pretty underwhelming. That's it? I thought. This is all there is to do?
And yet, when I started playing Bully again, coming back to it after beating Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, thinking I'd just knock off the rest of the game in a day or two and shelve it, I found the game kept doling out more and more bit by bit, expanding its repertoire very discreetly. The dreaded jobs I'd been avoiding--paper boy, lawn mower--were neither hard nor stressful. I started exploring, just because I could, and one day, in what I guess was the early Spring of the game, I went for a swim around the lake just because I could, walked out onto a beach and got in a fistfight with a pirate. That was pretty cool, but when I later maneuvered out onto a bunch of cliffs, lost my balance and caught myself on a ledge, that was even cooler. All those hours you spend walking around by yourself as a kid (in my case, out in the woods somewhere) because that's it, that's all there is to do, are an invaluable essential component to who you are. When you have a private little adventure, something where you almost tumble and tear up all your clothes but don't because you catch yourself on the ledge, that contributes some fundamental sense of who you are, and who you are in the world, without it being a lesson that someone's trying to teach you or that you're trying to teach someone else, those types of experiences are incredibly valuable and necesary when you're a kid, and having an experience just like that in Bully is odd and satisfying and sweet and a little sad. And great.
So yeah, if someone had told me a month ago Bully was a kind of childhood simulator, I would have thought they were absurdly over-evaluating the game. But it seems right to me at the moment. Explore. Watch the stars come out. Run home before it gets too dark. That's it. That's all there is to do.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Press X to Continue.
I stopped posting about six months ago because I was pretty sure I was going to stop playing video games: somebody lent me a copy of Guitar Hero and I thought that'd be it. I'd put the PS2 into storage, focus on my writing, and that would be that.
Playing video games may or may not be anathema to writing. I still haven't decided. I do in fact know several writers who flat-out told me to stop playing video games and just get to work. As Brian K. Vaughan recently wrote, "'writer's block' is just another word for video games."
On the other hand, I know other writers who not only play video games, but nowadays, plot their stories while playing video games. (In fact, wasn't it Brian K. Vaughan himself who told me that he and Brubaker talk out plots while playing on X-Box Live?) And to muddy the waters further, 2006 was the year I got my highest paid writing gig ever... writing for video games.
In turn, the writing gig, combined with a bunch of pre-holiday clearance sales, put me even thicker in the video game playing woods than I'd been before. The "just played" list covers, I think, everything I played during those six months, but not everything I bought during that period: for that, you have to combine it with my "to play" list and then add the ten other games I didn't add to that list (Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, The Godfather, Max Payne 2, State of Emergency 2, True Crime: New York City, Gun, Total Overdose, Marc Ecko's Getting Up, Cold Winter and Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner, if you must know, and all of those were bought on clearance--I paid as much as twelve dollars for a game, and in a few cases, as little as three).
(And if you're keeping track, that's 23 console games purchased in slightly more than a six month period, not counting the two PC games and whatever you want to call Gametap.)
That's a lot of video games--in fact, I bet I could refrain from purchasing or renting another console game in all of 2007 and not suffer from a lack of games to play. Although I'm really over-dramatizing it, that puts me in a potentially dangerous position for the year: if I don't have the discipline to shoal up time for my writing, video games could, as they have in the past, flood those swampy lowlands I call my downtime. Because as much as I pretended otherwise, it wasn't my familiarity with video games that got me the writing gig last year: it was a familiarity with the source material and all the years I've spent writing that landed me that gig and helped me nail it. Writing a monthly column for over nearly eight years was invaluable. Playing video games during that time was negligible.
To be honest, though, the most fun writing I had during the first half of last year was writing this blog: bitching about the games I was playing, thinking about the mythos of the game I was playing, just blathering about what games to read next. I don't know how it was to read (which is almost never a good sign) but it was a lot of fun to write.
So, yes. For now, I think, more of This Crappy Controller in 2007. If I can't keep video games from overwhelming my writing time, maybe I can join them two of them together, like hostile convicts in a chain gang, and sent them loose over the lowlands together.
Playing video games may or may not be anathema to writing. I still haven't decided. I do in fact know several writers who flat-out told me to stop playing video games and just get to work. As Brian K. Vaughan recently wrote, "'writer's block' is just another word for video games."
On the other hand, I know other writers who not only play video games, but nowadays, plot their stories while playing video games. (In fact, wasn't it Brian K. Vaughan himself who told me that he and Brubaker talk out plots while playing on X-Box Live?) And to muddy the waters further, 2006 was the year I got my highest paid writing gig ever... writing for video games.
In turn, the writing gig, combined with a bunch of pre-holiday clearance sales, put me even thicker in the video game playing woods than I'd been before. The "just played" list covers, I think, everything I played during those six months, but not everything I bought during that period: for that, you have to combine it with my "to play" list and then add the ten other games I didn't add to that list (Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, The Godfather, Max Payne 2, State of Emergency 2, True Crime: New York City, Gun, Total Overdose, Marc Ecko's Getting Up, Cold Winter and Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner, if you must know, and all of those were bought on clearance--I paid as much as twelve dollars for a game, and in a few cases, as little as three).
(And if you're keeping track, that's 23 console games purchased in slightly more than a six month period, not counting the two PC games and whatever you want to call Gametap.)
That's a lot of video games--in fact, I bet I could refrain from purchasing or renting another console game in all of 2007 and not suffer from a lack of games to play. Although I'm really over-dramatizing it, that puts me in a potentially dangerous position for the year: if I don't have the discipline to shoal up time for my writing, video games could, as they have in the past, flood those swampy lowlands I call my downtime. Because as much as I pretended otherwise, it wasn't my familiarity with video games that got me the writing gig last year: it was a familiarity with the source material and all the years I've spent writing that landed me that gig and helped me nail it. Writing a monthly column for over nearly eight years was invaluable. Playing video games during that time was negligible.
To be honest, though, the most fun writing I had during the first half of last year was writing this blog: bitching about the games I was playing, thinking about the mythos of the game I was playing, just blathering about what games to read next. I don't know how it was to read (which is almost never a good sign) but it was a lot of fun to write.
So, yes. For now, I think, more of This Crappy Controller in 2007. If I can't keep video games from overwhelming my writing time, maybe I can join them two of them together, like hostile convicts in a chain gang, and sent them loose over the lowlands together.
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