I was ready to talk shit about this dumb-looking white guy, too...
Wolfenstein: New Order might be my favorite fps game ever. It took me a few hours to discern it from your average FPS game with another white male lead. The setting is great, though; the graphics are stellar, the controls are very responsive, and the two gimmicks work just fine. I'm referring to dual-wielding and leaning. The former works just like it should, adding a longer firepower, which is especially devastating with two shotguns. For the lean mechanic, you hold on L1, and can quickly crouch, lean out from cover, and even raise up on your tippy-toes to fire over cover with the movement stick. Finishing this game with my buddy left me feeling so uber-satisfied, and I'm only glad that there's a lot more content waiting for me. Wolfenstein's cinematics were able to make me give a shit about that white jarhead soldier because the writers were on point with context. BJ Blaskowicz Blazkowicz is one of the last Allied soldiers, after Germany wins WWII. This characters has existed for 30 years or so, since the first Wolfenstein, but your character's ethnicity is important because he passes the Aryan test, allowing him some natural infiltration abilities.
There's a side romance story with one of the characters Anya, which at least has the visual payoff of a couple sex scenes. I think this is acceptable because romance in movies and games is often a waste of time. Live action relies on the actors' chemistry, but rendered scenes rely more heavily on good writing, which is a lot easier to control. Also, in a mature game, if you're onboard with the violence -- ohh, there's LOTS of that in this game-- then you've earned the right to see some T&A. So often are we subject to bullshit romance without any payoff more than the couple finally being able to show their affection publicly. Big whoop.
This boss, which you actually fight, is about 3 stories tall.
The game has giant scary mechs, blasting out garbled German in robot voices, sadistic high-ranking officers, and a milleu of vibrant characters that react off of your stoic main character. Bethesda, id and Machine Games did us good on this one!
Zheroes is a comic-style beat-em-up game, free for Xbox Gold members last December. The game's two characters are styled like Mr and Mrs Incredible. There's nothing particularly great about this game, but I can't complain about a free game with couch co-op!
February: Star Craft II (PC), Dishonored (PS3), Guns Up (PS4).
My favorite Christmas gift was Star Craft II. I sure as heck haven't played it much, and all of that has been multiplayer skirmishes. Another mode is an objective-based survival mode, which has you building a base and protecting nodes from being reached by the enemy team. I hope to write more about this game as I play more, but it was worth mentioning that it, like every other Blizzard game, is rad! My main complaint about this game is that the units are so small that they feel insignificant. I've always been more of a fan of Warcraft III, where your armies are a little smaller, along with heroes that level up. Starcraft II's quickly-dying units mean there's a lot of back and forth with base and roaming armies, rather than WCIII's spawn-explore-micromanage abilities gameplay. Great game, nonetheless.
Gorgeous, and the palette isn't supposed to be vibrant.
I think I'm playing Dishonored at the wrong time to fully appreciate it. It's another Bethesda game, right after I completed Wolfenstein and had such a stellar experience. Dishonest is gorgeous in it's depressing and blandly-colored European slum backdrop, and plays very similarly to Bioshock with a stealth element. You chase an objective and clear out enemies with special abilities or weapons, and loot while dodging traps and listening to awesomely-voiced NPCs. The platinum trophy for this game sucks, though, because it diverts you from letting loose. There's a trophy for completing the game without any abilities, and the other trophy is to complete the story without alerting anyone. Both of these encourage you to COMPLETELY play off the beaten path. I understand I'm complaining about something totally optional, but team in charge of these trophies could have been more creative in their design. I'm glad I got off the hook without insanely time-consuming multiplayer-based trophies. Fuck multiplayer trophies ALWAYS.
Guns Up, like Gems of War, is another free to play game with very-accomplishable trophies and short gameplay. You spawn army units that follow their own (often terrible) AI to destroy enemy bases. Each round takes 3-5 minutes, and your profile gains levels and munitions--the in-game currency to buy better units and upgrade your base. You do the latter to survive waves of attacking units, and get permanent fixtures for your base, as well as more munitions, for surviving beyond 2 minutes.
As you're deploying units from your ever-creeping truck, you also pick up specials to cast on the battlefield. These include a decoy, which makes the enemy divert their fire away from your units, to a napalm or missile that does heavy damage to either buildings or moving troops.
That anti-air tower protects against missiles, bombing raids, paratroopers and napalms!
The game's creative point is that you completely design your base, adding and upgrading buildings. If you want to place your tent, which spawns soldiers at intervals, at the entrance and keep all your sniper towers near your main base, you can do that! You can add fences to divert their units, and explosive barrels next to cover in hopes that stray bullets will make it go boom! Between rounds, you can place and angle the buildings to your liking. When you're ready to see your base get destroyed, you hit DEFEND and an endless wave of increasingly-stronger enemies shell the shit out of your base.
December: The Order 1886 (PS4), Final Fantasy VII (PS4), Gems of War (PS4).
The game looks like this...all the time. 100%, no jerks or blips or texture errors.
The Order 1886 was a really enjoyable experience. The story takes place in London, and the Knights of the Round Table have survived and protect Britain. You play as Sir Galahad, who fights anti-government rebels and werewolves in this gothic steampunk, Tesla-fueled alternate history. This plot is in the minority of perspectives that is not cynical about government and authority. Mechanically, it uses a polished Gears of War engine, but has very little firefights in between some top-notch cutscenes. After the opening cinematic, the camera kinda starts following one of the characters, and that's when I realized the game's scenes were all rendered in realtime, and absolutely gorgeous.
Pre-rendered.
See?
The first Playstation had a bunch of games where pre-rendered scenes were a lot more fluid, with way better textures, and it was pretty obvious that the game system just couldn't produce graphics at that level. These cutscenes usually took up huge amounts of data, relative to the game, which explains why all those multi-disc games that still had less than half an hour of cinematics. The Playstation 2 generation kept this intact, mostly; DVDs could hold so much more data, and you got cutscenes with graphics way better than the realtime rendering again, this time in higher resolutions. Then the devs got really bold and started having cutscenes with realtime rendering. When my friend told me about Halo 4's graphics, I was pretty excited. The visuals are quite amazing, but he was referring to the pre-rendered cutscenes. Halo 4 has quite amazing cinematics, but I don't personally call those graphics: your Xboxes are simply playing a video file.
The Order has realtime cutscenes, meaning your Playstation is capable of keeping those rich textures and details throughout the whole experience. I stopped for a half hour and fiddled around in Tesla's laboratory because the intricacy of all the gadgets and projects was so distracting and breathtaking. This game doesn't have much replay value, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth your time; please play this game.
Final Fantasy VII still holds up as my favorite game overall. The soundtrack is what shuts out all other competition. Nostalgia helps a lot, and I have written a whole entry to this game's story.
*boring voice* MANA SURRRGE!
Gems of War is an amazing freeware gem-matching game. Mobile games are dogshit, and this game almost behaves like one: the matches/rounds/levels last 3-5 minutes, and the game's graphics consist of moving cards and overlaid effects. Each color of gem you match gains you that color mana, which your troops use to cast spells and destroy the other team. You gain XP, gold or souls after every match. As your character levels with XP, Each match costs gold to play, but your winnings are usually about 3 times this cost. Gold is also used to buy kingdoms, which provide a daily gold bonus. Souls are used to level your troops, which help you win more! The main reason this games is awesome is because you very quickly grow out of time penalties.
Why ohh why do you only have one music track?
Most free mobile games are built to take your money. They do this by having some bullshit mechanic that either suddenly ramps up difficulty, or makes recovering resources very time-consuming. Mobile gamers usually don't mind spending a buck to save a few hours' recharge time. If you really suck at Gems of War, the penalty is a few hours before your kingdom generates you some gold. The reality is that the 3 of us in my friends circle have never had this happen...the game pushes you along, with decent payoffs for victory, and you keep playing. The antithesis of this game is Frozen: Free Fall. It's also a free, gem-matching game. The bullshit mechanic is that every 4 hours or so, you get 10 lives. It costs 1 life to play a round, win or lose. You can't win lives, and most of the levels have either a fixed amount of moves, or your board starts in one configuration and your first dozen moves are already programmed. It works for mobile gamers because they just want a few minutes of entertainment. It's a little harder to fool console gamers; when we sit down to play games, it's clear we're not going anywhere for a while.
Final Fantasy VII is one of my favorite games in the world, and was the perfect spark of interest to lead to where I am today. It sounds really dramatic at first, but if it weren't for this game, I wouldn't have decided to study Japanese, work overseas, and have my multicultural life. The reason for all of that is a rumor that the Japanese version of the game had story variations, and this baited me to start my path to where I am now. FF7's story is great and doesn't take too many leaps in logic and bullshit.
ShinRa...I'm coming for you!
It starts out with AVALANCHE, an eco-terrorism group, destroying a power plant in the mega city of Midgar. Cloud, ex-soldier, has joined this group to make ends meet, only to learn that a mega-corporation called ShinRa owns this reactor, and is exploiting the planet. ShinRa owns the military, has the greatest technology, and generally runs the continent, so being on their bad side is a big deal. To get revenge at AVALANCHE for blowing up the reactor, the president decides to rig a section of the city to be destroyed, killing lots of innocent people in the process. The plan is to blame this destruction on AVALANCHE and cast them as a terrorist group.
As Cloud and his group heads to the top of ShinRa headquarters to get even, they find that some of ShinRa's experiments have turned on their scientists. It turns out ShinRa was making super-soldiers by exposing them to mako, a naturally powerful form of energy. In the old days, mako gave the planet's ancient race of people, the Cetra, the ability to use magic. In modern Midgar, mako is used to provide cheap electricity and power weapons.
...yeah OK, we get your sword, dude.
Enter Sephiroth and Aeris. The first is the best soldier in the world, who was the result of exposing a human to unprecedented levels of mako. The second is a descendant of the Cetra, and ShinRa really wants to capture her. Everyone assumes Aeris can lead them to the Promised Land, a place with unlimited mako. Sephiroth isn't having any of this and beats Cloud and co. to the corporation's headquarters, killing lots of ShinRa in the process. After the president of ShinRa, who ordered the earlier destruction of Midgar, is killed, his son escapes the city and the party follows. The new president of ShinRa leads a much more aggressive company.
Once outside of the giant city of Midgar, the group learns more about everyone's past. The group runs into Corel, a city that exposes Barrett's biggest regret. The villagers hate him because he abandoned them when they needed him most. After some time, ShinRa tries to steal a Huge Materia from a reactor near Corel, and casually kills half of the town doing so. Barrett saves the day and sees his old friend Dyne for the last time. Dyne has the bitterest feelings towards Barrett, and upon learning his daughter is alive and being taken care of by Barrett and Tifa, kills himself.
The Sephiroth chase is still on, and the party heads to Nibelheim, Tifa and Cloud's hometown, and victim to ShinRa and Sephiroth's attacks. ShinRa wants to collect another Huge Materia from a nearby reactor. In the distant past, ShinRa used DNA from an alien named Jenova. They thought it was an ancient Cetra, and mixed that DNA with other organisms, resulting in Sephiroth, Cloud, and a number of failures. In the more recent past, Sephiroth learns this and starts to go crazy, destroying the town as vengeance on puny humanity.
Before Nibelheim, the party wanders through Cosmo Canyon, a spiritual center and home to Red XIII. The party learns more about mako, the Lifestream and the planet's suffering. Red learns that his father, whom he had previously thought was a coward, died protecting Cosmo Canyon from an attack from spirits who'd gone bad.
Next comes Cid, the angry pilot who loathes his wife Shera. Cid's theme, as well as his airship theme, are two of the best music tracks in the game. Before ShinRa found that mako refining was profitable, they used to fund a space program. Cid was chosen to pilot the first space rocket, but during launch, his then-assistant Shera called it off at the last moment because she found a loose part that would have compromised the mission. ShinRa abandoned the space program completely after that failed launch, and Cid blames both her and the company for crushing his dreams. Back in the present, you realize that Rufus is chasing Sephiroth and needs to take Cid's only plane.
Shera helps you escape, but the plane is so damaged in the process that it now works like a hovercraft. You also decide to chase both ShinRa and Sephiroth, so take this strange vehicle to a mysterious place called the Temple of the Ancients. You see Sephiroth figure out that to gain power/mako/materia, he has to damage the planet so badly that all of the spirit energy gathers in one place to heal. He's going to do this using the Black Materia, which he manipulates Cloud into handing over. He also kidnaps Aeris!
On the way to retrieve Aeris, you learn about her mother Ifalna falling in love with an ex-ShinRa scientist. In this flashback, the evil scientist Hojo barges in on the two and steals baby Aeris, too. When you finally catch up with Sephiroth, he kills Aeris, the last Cetra/Ancient alive that you know about. Then, Sephiroth starts to unravel your past, messing with your memories. You see a flashback of another soldier named Zack helping Cloud escape Nibelheim. The twist is that some of Cloud's memories actually belong to this guy Zack, leading Cloud to believe that he's a ShinRa creation, just like Sephiroth.
In a dreamy hallucination, you hear that the real Sephiroth died 5 years ago, and that he was revived using "Jenova" cells and mako. Cloud was a clone of the same DNA/cell mixture. Jenova is an alien that was diced up and spliced with Sephiroth clones, who all gather at one place during what's called Jenova's Reunion. The clones gather, with Cloud at the vanguard, delivering the Black Materia to Sephiroth's preserved body.
The Black Materia unleashes hell on the world in the form of Meteor, and your party is separated from Cloud while he figures his past out.
Barett and Tifa wake up on a military based called Junon, and are going to be blamed for Meteor and publicly executed by ShinRa. Right before this happens, Weapon, the planet's creation and defense against Meteor starts to attack Junon, which doesn't go very well for either party. ShinRa goes about their plan to collect Huge Materia from around the world, put it on a rocket and send it into Meteor. Cloud's party would rather use the Huge Materia to research and learn new abilities.
Note: the opposite of this happened.
After Cloud and co. thwart the attempt to launch the rocket into Meteor, ShinRa decides to move a giant mako cannon to Midgar, hoping to destroy the sleeping Sephiroth from the other side of the world. Well, the blast wakes him up and removes a protective barrier, so it's time for the party to go in and finish him off.
Sephiroth is in the heart of a wound in the planet - and doused in mako from the Lifestream, as the planet tries to heal itself. Meteor continues to descend, even after the party defeats the super-mako-powered Sephiroth. Right before it hits Earth, Aerith's magic, Holy, destroys Meteor, and then starts to heal over some of the scabs that humanity has left.
So, while the story unfolds over 40 hours or so, some great lines, amazing sound track and addictive fighting system make this game a timeless hit!
2015 marked the year where I turned back to Seattle after more than 2 years in Yokohama. I REALLY liked my workplace and co-workers, but there just wasn't any sense of progression in having large groups of students practice English for 50 measly minutes a week. Now that I've had most of a year to reflect, I am still glad I came back. I surely miss my Japanese life for having a salary where I could eat good quality food, the ability to take a train just about everywhere, and the relationships I'd started with friends there. The letdowns can come in another post: this is supposed to be highlights!
One of the coolest experiences was my parents visiting me in Japan. It was so cool to show off my familiarity with the language and culture, and guide them around. Boy did I harrow those two around in order to avoid waiting for the next train. Also, I never realized how many stairs there are in the country!
Spring: Reconnecting with Korea was pretty awesome. I had a half-day layover in Seoul, and met a friend for a couple hours, while enjoying how clean and modern of a city it is. A week after I got back, I went back to work for Kaplan, the school I had taught ESL at for almost 4 years. I've been very fortunate to work pretty much when I want to, and having adult students with life experiences I could talk to was such a contrasted difference to teaching teens in Japan.
Over the summer, I headed east. On that trip, my good friend Wil in Connecticut took me to see a navy base, and in Baltimore, My mom and pop treated me to a top-notch Brazilian buffet. For the second half of the trip, I went to the casino with my mom, and saw my grandfather for the last time.
Booth babes are like if this girl were selling hotdogs.
The summer also came to a thrilling conclusion with PAX - the Penny Arcade eXpo. I'd been to two Tokyo Gameshows, and even a hands-on Japanese gaming convention called Tokaigi earlier this year. But PAX is just way cooler. Japanese people don't socialize the same way, strangers don't talk. You can have 10,000 people in the Makuhari Messe, and it will still be quiet enough to talk slightly above your normal speaking voice. PAX is also more spread out, and has discussions, lots of tournaments, and is 4 days long. Tokyo Game Show has better booth babes - some politically-correct American decided that you had to be somewhat knowledgable about your product to promote it, essentially ending booth babehood. I liked the distraction, but I also see how using a sexy babe to promote Tetris is kind of silly.
Somewhere in the summer was news that Final Fantasy VII is getting a remake. A few weeks later, there was a breathtaking demo of this most beloved games of all time getting a 20-year facelift. I am not sure when it's coming out, and have shelled out $15 to get the PC-cum-PS4 version of the 1997 masterpiece. I am aiming to process the story as a whole on this 6th-or-7th journey through the game.
Halloween this year was probably the most fun I've had on the holiday since I was a kid, when I used to trick-or-treat with my friends. I went out dancing two nights around that holiday, and my girlfriend and I made some new memories. Both nights, I saw live funk and shook my ass, and never even thought about trick-or-treating! I'd been in Japan for the last 3 Halloweens, and it just isn't the same if you don't know anyone.
As the event coordinator at Kaplan, I had some victories in planning and leading an academic activity called the Vocabulary Olympics. It's a series of vocabulary games where classes get mixed up and put into teams to do rounds of challenges like spelling, define-the-word, and put-this-word-in-that-sentence. I also had a fantastic Halloween and Thanksgiving party, which is a feat to coordinate 250 people.
The Star Wars premiere at IMAX was quite awesome. I cheated, and snuck into line to stand with Chad, who'd been waiting for 6 hours at that point. When we were let into the auditorium, our dozen-member group took seats close to some reserved seats. 10 minutes before the show, the manager of the theater thanked us and had the usual under-your-seat prize giveaway. The guest turned out to be Seahawks defense man Michael Bennett, who shook hands on his way to his seat, after grabbing the mic for a minute and getting us riled up about both the Seahawks and The Force Awakens. I really liked the movie, and was thrilled to be such a part of a great moment of nerd history.
I have braved the waves in my journey as a 31 year old. I can now behold the majestic view that is a life officially debt-free, as I have just paid off the remainder of my $15,000 loan. This was only half of what I borrowed to go to 2 years of university. In 2003, when I entered Western Washington University, my mom's salary of $55k disqualified me for any grants. She ended up being forced to take out a "parent plus" loan for the other $15k, which is a crock of shit, but she wasn't about to let her son get priced out of a future.
It took 10 years after graduation to start attacking that debt, though. There were 2 years where I made more than $2000 a month. The rest of that decade, I was teaching part-time, or getting a low salary in one of the many economic traps for teachers. Then I got a sweet full-time job in a Japanese school, and everything changed. My friend Zack had turned me onto the idea of financial independence, and taking money more seriously. I used to take so much pride in never paying full price for things, and opting for old fashions, but in the end I just used the money to buy more games and collect bullshit. I've always been frugal, thanks to my grandfather, but 2013 was the turning point where I started investing my savings rather than buying more shit.
With my first full year in Japan in 2013, on a good salary, I defeated $10k in debt that had crept up over the years, and invested another $5k. The tax rate of the still-big loan was 3.75%. Basically, the half of my salary that I sent home in 2013 was better used to destroy high-interest credit card debt (~12%) and invest in aggressive stock market returns (~15%) than that wimpy loan tax rate.
I learned from this 10-year loan that college debt is pretty forgiving when pit against other middle-class expenses. I didn't' have to start paying until a year after graduation, plus there were further deferment options, and a really low minimum payment, like $50. There was no car note for me, and I didn't have a family to support, either.
College is supposed to be your shot for a boost in economic mobility. But, I found that to apply so generally that it was disappointing. I chose to be an ESL teacher overseas, where you can get hired with ANY baccalaureate, and only minuscule does your employer understand that your major might be relevant to teaching the language. This realization hit me first after I saw a Spanish language major get paid more than me, who majored in Linguistics, with a TESL certification. While there are other factors at stake, like experience (though it was the first year teaching for both of us) and negotiating power, that was the first ego deflation that my diploma didn't mean as much as I had thought. It turns out that I didn't get to use any of my training and knowledge of language until a few years later, when I got to teach grammar to some higher-level students. This helped me re-define a university diploma as a badge of discipline; proof that you were able to get things done, more or less on time, for 4 years.
For years, I devalued my diploma because I thought my honed language skills weren't recognized. It made me quite bitter to teach in a school alongside science, literature and loads of international business majors. However, if you take the above definition, you can add on that while you're shaping yourself to be a responsible worker bee who finishes projects on time, you at least get to choose something you're interested in. Well, assuming your parents don't take that away from you and force you to become a major THEY want. However, chances are that if you're in that position, you won't get control of your life any time soon. The flip side is that your parents are probably paying for your education, so bonus!
I am very happy for the connections I made at university, and it was nice to satisfy some curiosities I had, while walking away with some certification that put me into a 10-year-strong career. Teaching is all coming to an end, as I'm changing paths to retail customer service, but I've left a bunch of doors open in dat old career.
Hey, y'all! I wanted to give an update on how I'm living cheaply. My 2 games in, 1 game out strategy has gone well. I paid $48.99+tx (NOT full retail price) for StarWars Battlefront, and have completed Titan Attack, and I am almost finished with Crimson Dragon, a free title via Xbox Live Gold.
Sistema is made in NZ, and durable as hell.
Since March, I've lived with a family I'm very close to, which is cheating, frankly. Lots of you who are looking to save money don't have this option, but as more 1-bedroom apartment rents soar north of $1000, you might start to make nice with old neighbors and relatives. The family gives me access to their car, but I still walk 20 minutes to the transit center, and bus in to work, like a good boy. Another cheating point is that the family cooks for me and hates leftovers, meaning I get to bring my lunch to work everyday. If you decide to go that route, forget traditional tupperware. Sistema microwave/freezeware is the real deal. I've used mine for a year and a half, and there's no peeling or melted plastic scarring. The seal comes out, and all the plastic parts are easily washable.
Just need to plastic wrap them suckers
Breakfast, however, is where I can contribute. Barring some unfortunate allergy, I would suggest peanut butter (or another kind of--don't laugh--nut butter) balls. Take a buncha oats, mix in a pinch of cinnamon, an even tinier bit of salt, some chocolate chips. I currently use about a tablespoon of maple syrup or honey for a sweetener for every 1 cup of unsweetened PB. Boom! Then I wrap a heaping tablespoon with plastic wrap in my palm and make into a ball. These balls are the calories you need, and beat pastries (my weakness!) in the health department by a longshot. I make 1cup into 4 balls, and that's 3 breakfasts and a pick-me-up on the days with long shifts.
$5 per kit. I still want to add another type of candy.
Speaking of shifts, I'm taking advantage of the holiday season and working two jobs for the month of December. I wouldn't recommend this for anyone who isn't relatively strong, but have found that I can do just about anything for a month. At work, I've resisted the Keurig, and clung to sharing the pot with co-workers or using the single-cup aeropress.
These cute paper/cardboard boxes are $1.50 each at Daiso.
Tadaa! I may add some filler, like tissue paper or paper confetti.
I'm hearing a lot of creative Christmas gift ideas for keeping it cheap. My favorites include homemade fudge, hollowed-out false books, and a toilet-paper roll with cash stuffed inside. I've also gone some shopping at Daiso (Japanese dollar store - everything is $1.50+tx, but the selection is a cut above your typical dollar store) for my younger gift recipients. As a person who has moved and traveled a lot, I'm a huge fan of giving consumable gifts, which won't take up more room while someone feels obligated to keep something they may or may not actually like. I like gift cards, but I'm sure a lot of you who give those wonder how big a gift card is good enough?
Each garb comes with different abilities and stats, and are rendered realtime in cutscenes!
It's too bad that Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII
isn't really a Final Fantasy game, because it's got so many things that I like about it. Graphically, it's a masterpiece with amazing realtime cutscenes, costume design for your main character, and environment design. Musically, this is the best non-Uematsu soundtrack out there, with a LOT of battle themes, and probably the best chocobo theme to date. In terms of voice acting, the 100 or so NPCs almost all have their own voice actor, accent and mannerisms. This game also has the most mature characters I've seen in a Final Fantasy.
"Gah!...damnit, Lumina! Go chase a tree!"
Lightning is a really developed character; the tough savior of mankind who doesn't sugar coat anything. Other than 2 or 3 of the 50+ costumes, your main character isn't depicted as sexy, bimboish, or overly feminine. Instead, you play a warrior who is hella cynical, a bit gruff, and doesn't take bullshit either. There's a really girly character that appears throughout the game and pesters you with the "I know something you don't know" attitude, and Lightning clearly wants to kick her teeth in.
You solve people's problems to save their souls, in the final 14 days of humanity's existence. Whether you're helping a drunk who lost his wife forgive himself or slaying 20 monsters to prove your worth, this game hasn't gotten old in the 55 hours I've put into it. There's even a quest where 3 moogles - flying, cute, magical cat-fairies - are lost just outside their village. Lightning suggests that they look for their village from the air, because in the 10 days that they've been lost, it's never occured to them to simply fly higher off the ground. There are other parts in the story where the savior calls people out on their ignorance. She's got a very tough-love attitude toward her big dumb brother-in-law and ends up beating the piss out of him. I just don't feel like I've heard an FF game be so mature in its approach to dialogue and character thinking.
Since Final Fantasy games have had spoken dialogue (as of the 10th title) there have been lots of barriers to prevent me from liking characters. FFX is filled with all kinds of awkward pauses between dialogue lines, awful lip synching, and suffers from bad localization. FFX-2 has much better dialogue-synching and each character moves differently when they speak, but their banter is so painfully childish. Better localization would mean adults aren't teasing other adults about having boyfriends. It just doesn't work that well in this culture.
Earlier, I said this game wasn't a proper Final Fantasy game because the franchise staples, such as the espers/gods/aeons are almost completely missing in favor of a two-god religious setting. There is no airship, you control one character. The battle system is close to ATB, but you don't gain stats by doing battle: you get stats from completing quests. The game is also non-linear: there are 4 distinct areas that you do quests in. Each area has it's own unique setting and feel, with some great music pieces that vary during different times of day. Ironically, it's also not a Final Fantasy because it's actually a sequel! The nice part of it is that this game's story is a nice place to wrap up the Nova Chrystallis universe, and possibly move to Ivalice (FF Tactics, FF XII) or somewhere else.
Good run in your FF trilogy, guys. NOW MOVE OVER!
As a tangent to this game's obsession with religion, I noticed that Japanese writers really really want to talk about "God," which just doesn't have the same cultural context. Through my experience with Japan and its cultures, I've gotten the impression that some Japanese are worried about being seen as godless. I'll say that Japanese religion is in their routine. Bathing is done in two stages; shower to clean, and then soak in the tub to relax. Food presentation is especially important, and when you eat with others, you usually say itadakimasu. Giving and receiving gifts is just about required for trips, and many holidays in the year. This gets very expensive, but everyone gets everyone everything. You could call it cultural habits, but the conviction behind these practices is at the level of deeply religious behaviors. Do they go into a building, play music and talk about His Omnipotence? No. But I think that the Japanese tenacity to procedures and rules is quite religious.
Dem graphics!
Anyway, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII - 3 is so far one of my top Squaresoft games, without the benefit of nostalgia. I recommend you play it for its impressively-done characters, music and graphics. You only need a vague recollection of the first FF XIII, and even then the story is decently contained into the one title.
"Luxerion, is it? This is the city of light? Problem is, the brightest lights cast the darkest shadows." --Lightning's reacting quote to starting in the middle of a murder mystery.
Guns Up, like Gems of War, is another free to play game with very-accomplishable trophies and short gameplay. You spawn army units that follow their own (often terrible) AI to destroy enemy bases. Each round takes 3-5 minutes, and your profile gains levels and munitions--the in-game currency to buy better units and upgrade your base. You do the latter to survive waves of attacking units, and get permanent fixtures for your base, as well as more munitions, for surviving beyond 2 minutes.
isn't really a Final Fantasy game, because it's got so many things that I like about it. Graphically, it's a masterpiece with amazing realtime cutscenes, costume design for your main character, and environment design. Musically, this is the best non-Uematsu soundtrack out there, with a LOT of battle themes, and probably the best chocobo theme to date. In terms of voice acting, the 100 or so NPCs almost all have their own voice actor, accent and mannerisms. This game also has the most mature characters I've seen in a Final Fantasy.
