Rogue Galaxy 60h02m12s

This morning at 2:00am I finished Rogue Galaxy. It was a big relief to finish it. The final boss battle was a very long and sometimes frustrating multi-part affair. I died once about twenty minutes into it because I didn't use healing items fast enough. A dumb mistake on my part that very nearly caused me to hurl the controller at the wall. It was about 1:00am but I didn't feel like I could sleep until I finished the damned thing, so I re-started. The whole thing ended up taking an hour and a half, although that included some long cutscenes.

The game didn't need to be so long if you ask me, since parts of dungeons were cut-and-pasted over and over in order to make the game longer, which often made them a chore to get through.

In summary, and sad to say, the game did not live up to my expectations (Level 5's last game was the excellent (and even longer, by the way) Dragon Quest VIII).

Although I don't regret the time I spent playing it, there's no way I would bother re-playing it. However, for JRPG fans it's definitely worth playing, with many enjoyable elements (for example the fast and fun real-time battle system, the high quality animation, and the character's Special Attacks, for example Kisala's Deadly Stench attack where she throws the smelly old sock - oh how I wish I could bring her in the next time my boss throws a tantrum).

Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call*

Got this game in the mail today - a very unconventional JRPG - and can't wait to check it out. Now gotta hurry up and finish Silent Hill 3.

Busy busy!

[* known as Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne in the US]

Jerk Thompson

Only recently have I heard about an American 'Witchhunter' of the videogame world - the guy's name is Jack Thompson. (What a shame that he shares the same name as one of Australia's best-loved actors).
Anyway, I just read an excellent post on Bill Harris's blog where he totally rips the shit out of Thompson's idiotic accusations. You can read it here.

You Must Be In A Mad Panic!

(...posted on GameCritics forum...)

Beat Baten Kaitos last night. 70+ hours, two game crashes, lots of terrible voice acting, too-long battles (really sucks that you can't attack all members of the enemy party, only one at a time), a million boss battles including one total bullshit WTF one where you beat the dude (Geldoblame I think) then there's some dialogue, then you have to fight the EXACT SAME BATTLE AGAIN! The card system also made me scream "CHEAT!" at the screen a hundred million times when you keep getting dealt cards you can't use and the enemy just keeps whacking you.
...
Wait a minute... why did I play this game to the end again? Well, it looked very nice, the music was excellent (Motoi Sakuraba and his wild prog style, love it) and the battles were fun when they were not annoying. Also, I grew to love the retarded battle taunts - "WATCH OUT! I'M NOT SO INNOCENT!" and, "YOU MUST BE IN A MAD PANIC!", etc.

I'll definitely get Baten Kaitos II: Origins when it comes out. ... It's a love/hate relationship!

P.S. One of the greatest things about this game - and something I wish all games had - is that once you have heard a theme, you can then go to the Options screen and listen to it. So by the end of the game you have the full soundtrack and can listen to any track, any time. Pretty damn cool.

Top 20 Gayest Video Game Characters

I love video game lists, and this one is very funny.

Extreme Attack!

I had a halfday yesterday. Did I go to the movies? Do you remember when I used to go to the movies and then write about it? Do you remember when I used to write in here? Anyway, no I did not go to the movies, I went straight home and continued playing Baten Kaitos. Last year I stoppped at the 25-hour point and I can't remember why. Why did I stop that time? Was it because of the terrible voice acting? No, I grew to love that, especially at times like when Lyude uses a healing item on himself and says 'This is for you!', and when Xelha warns the monsters: "Watch out! I'm not so innocent!'
The picture above is Lyude doing his special Concerto attack. As he says when he does this: "Extreme attack! Concerto!"

The 50 Worst Video Game Names Of All Time

Someone Set Up Us The Crappy Video Game Name dept.

The 50 Worst Video Game Names Of All Time

Videogame Mailbag

Boss is on recreation leave for two weeks so everything is cool in the office. Don't have to worry about any fits or tantrums for two weeks. It's just me and Colleague. We get along pretty well. I got two videogames in the mail today so it was a very good morning. Since I am the King of the Mailroom, I am the one who brings the big fat mailbag upstairs and gets to pour out the contents onto the long bench in front of the pigeonholes. If I ordered something and got it sent to my work I find out quickly whether or not it arrived that day, and today there were two parcels for me. I knew what they were - two videogames - Silent Hill 3 and Dragon Quest VIII. That's what I call a Good Mail Day, and since it put me in such a good mood, naturally I showed them to Colleague. First I showed her the Dragon Quest box and she said Uh, that looks like a kid's game. I didn't know what to say to that. She saw the cartoon-like characters on the box, and the bright primary colours, no wonder she thought it looked like a kid's game. But Silent Hill isn't a kid's game, that's for sure, and it could never be mistaken for one, so when I showed her the box she looked at it for a few seconds and shivered and said Ugh. That looks horrible! She must have seen one of the sick freakish creatures on the back of the box. I wanted to say more about these games to Colleague, I always want to say more, but I know it's pointless. So I just laughed and we started opening the mail.

Beat SH4 But Got Worst Ending

Tonight I beat Silent Hill 4: The Room. There are four endings and I got the worst one because I didn't take enough care of Eileen, and I let her walk into the machinery in the pool of blood during the final battle with Walter, so she got sliced up. But what the hell, I was busy fighting Walter, and he was such a stubborn bastard that it took about six charged-up Rusty Axe attacks and a dozen revolver bullets to finally kill him (I beat him on the third attempt). Plus Eileen was walking pretty fast into the machinery anyway. Why was she doing that? Well, because she was possessed because I didn't take enough care of her, and she probably got bitten too many times by those skinned dogs with the three-foot-long tongues. Oh well. I hate babysitting in videogames anyway, so who cares.
The other reason I got the worst ending was because I didn't clear at least 80% of the hauntings in my room. But was it my fault that there weren't enough Holy Candles in the game? No. And was it my fault that I didn't know you could also clear the hauntings using Sacred Medallions? No. I thought they were only for warding off those annoying ghosts (because you couldn't kill the damn things). Anyway, the hauntings were definitely one of the coolest and scariest parts of the game. I experienced the following hauntings:
+ Big evil-looking cracks in the wall that started moving when you got close to them along with a scary sound;
+ Walking back into the living room to find the windows rattling like crazy, opening a quarter way and closing again real fast. Very scary;
+ Hearing the TV blasting loud static and walking near it to see horrifying indistinct faces trying to come out of the screen;
+ Seeing bloody footprints in the kitchen made by the slippers that were always next to the front door, the slippers now in the middle of the kitchen floor and when I got near them the screen flashed red and I started taking damage (you take damage if you move too close to these *hauntings*);
+ Waking up in my bedroom to hear a young boy sobbing, and seeing a silhouette of that young boy in the closet;
+ Hearing a surging sound from the kitchen and walking up to find the kitchen sink tap pouring a constant jet of blood;
+ Hideous purple baby faces coming out of the wall in the living room, making horrible wailing and sobbing sounds;
+ The wall clock hands spinning fast.

In conclusion, Silent Hill 4 was very good although not as good as Silent Hill 2 where James Sunderland got a letter from his wife who died three years ago. If you want to play a Silent Hill game, that's the one you want to play first.

Devil May Cry II

I spent most of the afternoon reading my new book (The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov - the Devil appears on Earth and torments Moscow's literary and theatrical community) but tonight I have been playing Devil May Cry. (Devils and demons everywhere! No wonder I've been dreaming about them.)
I'm at around the halfway point and now can do some pretty spectacular moves. My favourite one right now is double-jumping against a wall for height, blasting the hellfiends with Dante's twin handguns which also makes him hover in the air for a while, then on the descent come screaming down with a devastating meteor blast. The way the automatic camera spins around to get the action, sometimes you will have Dante in the air letting rip with his guns (he calls them Ebony & Ivory) and the camera is behind the enemy, so you see Dante high in the air in the distance, so when you do the meteor charge, he comes blasting in toward you, that is, the camera. It is impossible to convey just how awesome stunning amazing breathtaking and cool this looks. Not only that, but there is one breed of fiend called Sin Scissors - insane cackling witches with big scissors - and they fly around so you can land on them with your meteor strike move, jump higher when they block it, open up with the handguns, the witches will slash at you with their big scissors but if you jump at the right moment you bounce off the scissors and fly up even higher, so these battles can take place fifty metres in the air. This game is so pumped full of style it's ridiculous.
The game never gets boring. The missions are never too long. It's never too hard. OK, well I am actually playing on Easy mode (yes, by all means feel free to have a big laugh at Stratu who is not a hardcore gamer at all, ha ha!)
Anyway, even though I'm only halfway through, it's already become one of my favourite videogames. What are those games, you say? I'm glad you asked! ... The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, LoZ: The Wind Waker, Ico, Final Fantasy X, Resident Evil 4, Beyond Good and Evil, Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time and Animal Crossing.

Devil May Cry

I started playing another videogame today. This one is called Devil May Cry.
This game is AWESOME. (Did I put that in caps? Yes. Good.) And not only is it totally awesome but it is so goddam INTENSE that while playing it I think I am going to have a heart attack any minute. I can only play a mission or two then I have to lie down.
In the game you play as Dante, a guy who is half demon and half human. His father (Sparda) was a demon-knight and 2000 years ago a supreme evil dude (the Devil Emperor) appeared and wanted to enslave humanity, but Sparda liked the humans so he and his pals went up against the Devil Emperor and his foul hordes and kicked their asses, destroying his army and imprisoning the Devil Emperor in a sealed vault. So peace was restored and Sparda settled down with a human woman and they had a kid, Dante.
Now, somehow, the Devil Emperor has broken out of his sealed vault and Dante is the only one who can stop him and his demonic army. Why the Devil Emperor didn't decide to start with Sydney or New York City or London or Paris or any other big city where he would have a chance to really make his mark is a mystery. Instead he chose to start with an old Gothic castle on some remote island. But who cares? I don't. The main thing is the castle looks great. No! The main thing is how amazing the ACTION is!
See, Dante goes up against all these demons armed with a big sword AND guns so what he can do is whack a demon up into the air with his sword, then whip out the twin handguns and blast away at the demon, in effect juggling the infernal creation, and then let it fall just enough to switch back to his sword and finish it off with a great killing slash of his sword. These combos look AMAZING and are only limited by your imagination.
I'm probably not even a quarter of the way into this game but everything so far has left me in awe. In AWE, I say!

God of War

Anders came over and we spent all night playing God of War.
Well-designed games like this one are addictive, very addictive. Gamers call games like this *gaming crack* for good reason. When somebody else walks into the room and sees that person playing, they see glazed eyes, some kind of zombie. You can say something to that person but they will not hear you. The game is ALL.
Even though I have enjoyed playing this game, tonight I got angry. Got up to one part where you had to jump from moving platform to moving platform but between those platforms were circular saws zipping back and forth. AND there was a time limit where you jumped on a switch to open a gate then had to quickly make your way across these platforms and sawblades to the other side and through the gate before it closed. I kept dying over and over again. And I would jump and swear I had made a good jump, but would die. I was sure the game was cheating and got so angry I yelled and raged and swore and threw the goddam controller with great force onto the floor. Did this over and over again. At one point I even got up and punched the door. Anders was laughing. I said here ya fuckin smartass you have a go. He had a go and died instantly. Once twice three times. Then I started laughing. It was ridiculous. Is this training to keep cool under great pressure?
We must continue our training.

Resident Evil 4 II

It's 1:10am. Another night spent battling the insane villagers and horrific monsters of Resident Evil 4. Eight hours last night and eight hours tonight.
I am reminded once more that videogames are not compatible with keeping to a strict writing regimen. At least not for me. I don't know how other people do it. Do other people manage it? (I know Gordon Cheng doesn't seem to manage it. Gordon, how is World of Warcraft going? Please stop playing for a few minutes and make a report in your blog.)
The thing is, Resident Evil 4 is ADDICTIVE. Did I put that in caps? Yes. Good. I had to buy it, you see, I read months ago how goddam AMAZING it was going to be, and a few days ago I found out it had been released, so I had to get it, I had to, no way was I not going to get it, and I know I vowed to quit the videogames, but I just can't do it. No sir, I can't and I won't.

Resident Evil 4

No time to write.
Resident Evil 4 has me cornered.