Completed Games (Click to view all of the game's related posts)


Incomplete Games with Progress

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Progress for April 21, 2009 - BioShock

Talk about night and day. This game is so completely different from Chrono Trigger.
I started the game on the easy setting, because I want to be able to appreciate the storyline without too much hassle. If all goes well, I'll be playing the game again at least once more on a higher difficulty.

The logistic issue I've noticed about BioShock is how long the levels are. I played for 6 hours today and just now made it to the smuggler's hideout. It's going to be tough to find the 1-2 hours I'll need to complete just one chapter.

So far, I have two minor complaints:
  1. Dear 2K games, Don't fucking map a context-sensitive action to the same button that uses a consumable! I've wasted so god damned many EVE Hypo's trying to hack cameras and turrets just because the crosshair is half an inch out of range.
  2. And once I'm into the hacking game, the controls are JUST sensitive enough to be annoying. If they were any less sensitive, you'd be ready for it and be able to overcompensate for their latency and inaccuracy. But because they're that specific kind of slow, you don't know what to expect.
But other than that, the game is as immersive and well-written as everyone has always said. I really think I'm going to enjoy this.

Chrono Trigger - Retrospective

Ask any Square Fanboy their top 5 Super Nintendo RPGs and you will inevitably hear Chrono Trigger at or near the top. For what it's worth, I did enjoy the game, and I can see where the game earns its "masterpiece" title. The graphics are impressive for its time, the combat system is somewhat unique, and it deals with a subject matter that rarely gets old: Time travel. However, there are many points in the game that shocked me not for what happened in the game, but for didn't happen. The game is given numerous opportunities to shock the player with an jaw dropping plot twist, but never pulls the trigger.

The game started off by lulling me into a false sense of epicness with the brilliantly written leene/marle quest. But then it degraded into a simple episodic. For the first half of the game, nearly every quest you do is self-contained and unrelated to the quest before it or after it. This style continues throughout most of the rest of the game; You find an area with a problem, you fix that problem, then move on to a new area. The locales and characters are all different enough so this doesn't feel very monotonous, but it is awfully shallow.

There were multiple times when playing the game that I thought I was sensing a devastating plot twist, gearing up to be blown away when it finally happens... only to be disappointed when it doesn't. The first time this happened was when approaching Magus to prevent him from summoning Lavos. You find out that Magus is trying to summon Lavos to destroy him, but is unsuccessful regardless of whether or not the party interferes. Now, tell me this isn't a much more dark and epic plot twist:

The party prevents Magus from summoning Lavos, but then discovers that he was trying to summon it in order to destroy the monster. By defeating Magus, the party THEMSELVES are responsible for Lavos destroying the world. Magus would have done it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Another time the game disappointed me was during the Dalton thread. Dalton has stolen a FREAKING TIME MACHINE! and all he wants to do with it is fly around the world as a king on some sort of airborne throne? What kind of evil overlord sets his sights so low? In my director's cut, Dalton would have taken the Epoch and used it to travel through time and rewrite history to make himself into a god. It worked for Kefka. This would have also done well to add several hours to an already short game.

Chrono Trigger is an RPG that tries to do too many things at once. It tries to have humor, irony, slapstick, plot twists, epic storylines, and even boasts 12 unique endings. But it tries too hard to cover so many bases, it simply stretches itself too thin to be effective. The game is 50 feet wide, but only 3 inches deep. I can only hope Chrono Cross is more my speed.

The Good
  • Excellent music. Some of the best ever from the 16 bit era.
  • Simple but satisfying combat that uses position as a legitimate tactic.
  • Perfectly balanced enemies and skills reduce the need for grinding to almost nil.
The Bad
  • Meandering storyline that defies all rules of the hero's journey.
  • Lack of character development for all but a few party members.
  • Frustratingly non-epic
Defining Moment
  • Chrono dying. Not because of how unexpected it was, but because it was the ONLY plot point I had managed to avoid spoilers for all these years.
Burning Question
  • Why is Marle doing Fire Sword on the cover of the game box with Chrono? Marle is an ice tech user.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Progress for April 20, 2009 - Chrono Trigger - COMPLETED

Done. The ending did a lot to wrap up a lot of loose ends, especially when accompanied by the anime cutscenes from the PS1 version, Then when you think you're done, you find out you only got 1 of the 12-some endings in the game. I think only a total completionist or someone who really REALLY likes the game will go to such insane lengths to 100% a game like this.

Personally, I'm just going to watch the endings on Youtube and consider it done.

Expect a review tomorrow. I have many choice words to say about this game.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Progress for April 14, 2009 - Chrono Trigger

Well, Almost done. I revived Chrono and completed 2 of the final missions. I'll likely be finished tomorrow and I can finally start playing something I want to.
Not that I'm not enjoying the game. I do like the relationships in the game, especially between Lucca and Robo, Even though Lucca's storyline and time travel experience reeks of Deus ex Machina.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Progress for April 10, 2009 - Chrono Trigger



Well, I'm back in the game, and I'm starting to get tantalizingly close to the end, which is really the only thing that's keeping me going. I've had to replay parts of the game numerous times because my guide decided to fake me out. I will admit, Chrono dying DID catch me off guard. I'm shocked that with so many spoilers around the internet I caught that Magus would join the party, but never found out about Chrono.
I beat Dalton, and now I'm just going around the maps doing some sidequests. I did the Prometheus quest and defeated the sun stone. I suppose it's time to climb Death Peak now.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Legalese

Mark today. Thursday April 9, 2009, 10:49 AM Pacific Standard Time.

In regards to the upcoming Wii Game "Dead Space: Extraction" I am officially coining the phrase "House of the Dead Space"

That is all. Thank you for your time.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Progress for April 7, 2009 - Chrono Trigger

I don't understand what the hell is wrong. I don't want to play this game. I've been holding off ever since beating Super Mario Galaxy. I don't want to start anything else until I've finished Chrono Trigger, but I don't want to play it anymore. Thus, I haven't really been playing anything the last few weeks except Rom Check Fail. Super Mario Galaxy was a deliberate distraction from Chrono Trigger, but I don't feel like putting it off anymore.

I suppose it's good practice. Part of being a professional is doing things when you don't want to do them. I've played games long after they got boring when testing at Vivendi and SnapTV, So this should be a cakewalk for me. Eyes on the prize, bro. Just keep thinking about the next game you're going to play.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

New Games!

This just goes to show you; it pays to make friends with people in other countries. Today I received a package from someone in Canada who was getting rid of his games. He didn't want to sell them, just wanted someone else to be able to enjoy them. So for the piddly sum of $10.50, I was able to ship this



Brigandine is the rarest of the bunch, which can sell for as much as $120 on eBay used, and this thing has all of the documentation and booklets still in the case.

But I didn't get these games to turn right around and sell them. In fact, I think that's the LAST thing the original owner wants me to do. I want to actually play them first.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Site update

I tried recording a video of this. Three times. But every time, the footage was unusable. It reflects poorly on me a filmmaker and it's not up to my standards.

Anyway, 3 games are off my list, and they're being replaced by 3 others.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is gone. I last played it about 6 months ago, and honestly, I can't remember a damn thing about the story. All I can remember is it went ON and ON without ever getting anywhere.
In its place, I will be playing Bioshock.
Yeah, tough decision there.

Ultimate Spider-Man is also gone. I already beat it before I even started 53games, And getting 100% is the next step. But that means finding all the tokens, stopping all the crime, and beating all the races at the fastest time, which is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE. So in its place is another game where you run around on rooftops, climb buildings, and help civilians: Assassin's Creed.

Finally, Doom 3 wasn't even mine. It belonged to a friend who sold it to me when he needed money, then I sold it back to him later. So to replace that, I have another game. A game with zombies, a number in the title, and is a PC FPS: Left 4 Dead.

Also, if you look to the side, you will see a video for my new ustream account, where I will be playing my games live for the select few who actually feel like viewing it.