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.)
Monday, February 26, 2007
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.
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