Oh, I guess there's still this
So, I haven't posted in well over a month. I assure you that I do in fact read LJ pretty much daily; it's just that I don't have a lot to say about myself recently, for reasons that aren't entirely clear.
I did get a new camera, and have been taking a large amount of pictures -- they're on Flickr, here. Other than that, it's been hanging out with friends, going through a crunch period at work, relaxing after a crunch period from work and starting to get back to work.
I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XII lately. I'm playing it like I haven't played a console game since I finished Earthbound on the SNES, although that was only a couple years ago, so that probably doesn't really count. Oh, I've played a lot of Winning Eleven since then, way more probably than I've played any other game. That doesn't really count, because it's really an accumulation of smaller games. There's a distinct difference between a game that you can pick up and have a complete experience in 20 minutes and something where you can feel yourself burrowing deeper into the corpulent belly of the game.
Final Fantasy XII is definitely the latter and it's really the only Final Fantasy that I've experienced like this. The early ones, which are the only ones that I've completed, can be chugged through at a fairly rapid pace, especially IV, which is about as different from XII as you can get, which is appropriate since they're the best two games in the series (with the possible exception of VII or VIII which to be honest, I haven't played beyond more than a couple minutes at a friend's house in college, in which he, giggling all the while, showed me the bathhouse scene in VII).
XII is different simply because the gambit system allows the player to have some performative input as to how the game is played, unlike just about any other RPG ever made. Now, there is a strategy to most RPGs, in that you should do certain things at certain times. This is not the same as setting up a tight series of automatic instructions and sitting back and watching your party rampage through the local ecosystem with little or no input from you. It instills a sense of pride that I didn't get from making decisions in X or VI or even IV. It's silly, really. When you get down to it, there isn't anything that's particularly more challenging about it, it's just more satisfying.
Lots of people have been complaining about how the plot is too low-key and the characters too similar. I kind of like it. It's not like the plot is really "believable"; however, it has a lot more coherence just because everything seems reasonable within the context of the game. The lack of overly-melodramatic plot twists and having all the characters look like they could concievably be hanging out in the same cities without looking like jackasses (or at least jackasses that stand out) helps the game feel like you're involved with something significant without beating you over the head with it. I realize that people miss getting beat over the head. If you're used to it, it probably feels pretty bad that it's gone and no amount of me saying that it's the first real actual plot in a Final Fantasy game is going to change that for you.
I hope I finish it pretty soon. I'm starting to get to the more obsessive-compulsive parts of the game and it's making me feel ugly.
Over the weekend, I was driving around town and realized that with my wool beanie, flannel shirt, converse all-stars and stereo blaring Melvins, that I am probably a style anachronism. Worse, I'm a style anachronism from the early-to-mid 90s. For zog's sake, I even have a wallet chain (on a Bad Badtz-Maru wallet, for that matter). It could be worse, or at least that's what I keep telling myself.
I did get a new camera, and have been taking a large amount of pictures -- they're on Flickr, here. Other than that, it's been hanging out with friends, going through a crunch period at work, relaxing after a crunch period from work and starting to get back to work.
I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XII lately. I'm playing it like I haven't played a console game since I finished Earthbound on the SNES, although that was only a couple years ago, so that probably doesn't really count. Oh, I've played a lot of Winning Eleven since then, way more probably than I've played any other game. That doesn't really count, because it's really an accumulation of smaller games. There's a distinct difference between a game that you can pick up and have a complete experience in 20 minutes and something where you can feel yourself burrowing deeper into the corpulent belly of the game.
Final Fantasy XII is definitely the latter and it's really the only Final Fantasy that I've experienced like this. The early ones, which are the only ones that I've completed, can be chugged through at a fairly rapid pace, especially IV, which is about as different from XII as you can get, which is appropriate since they're the best two games in the series (with the possible exception of VII or VIII which to be honest, I haven't played beyond more than a couple minutes at a friend's house in college, in which he, giggling all the while, showed me the bathhouse scene in VII).
XII is different simply because the gambit system allows the player to have some performative input as to how the game is played, unlike just about any other RPG ever made. Now, there is a strategy to most RPGs, in that you should do certain things at certain times. This is not the same as setting up a tight series of automatic instructions and sitting back and watching your party rampage through the local ecosystem with little or no input from you. It instills a sense of pride that I didn't get from making decisions in X or VI or even IV. It's silly, really. When you get down to it, there isn't anything that's particularly more challenging about it, it's just more satisfying.
Lots of people have been complaining about how the plot is too low-key and the characters too similar. I kind of like it. It's not like the plot is really "believable"; however, it has a lot more coherence just because everything seems reasonable within the context of the game. The lack of overly-melodramatic plot twists and having all the characters look like they could concievably be hanging out in the same cities without looking like jackasses (or at least jackasses that stand out) helps the game feel like you're involved with something significant without beating you over the head with it. I realize that people miss getting beat over the head. If you're used to it, it probably feels pretty bad that it's gone and no amount of me saying that it's the first real actual plot in a Final Fantasy game is going to change that for you.
I hope I finish it pretty soon. I'm starting to get to the more obsessive-compulsive parts of the game and it's making me feel ugly.
Over the weekend, I was driving around town and realized that with my wool beanie, flannel shirt, converse all-stars and stereo blaring Melvins, that I am probably a style anachronism. Worse, I'm a style anachronism from the early-to-mid 90s. For zog's sake, I even have a wallet chain (on a Bad Badtz-Maru wallet, for that matter). It could be worse, or at least that's what I keep telling myself.