Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Lunchtime reviews of iPhone Games

I download the iPhone free games of the day through Open Feint and Free App of the Day and sometimes don't get to sit down and play all of them that day. Today during lunch I ran through a bunch of them that I had been sitting on and here's a little mini review of each:

Castle Conflict - Reminds me of Fat Princess, but 2D. Quick and fun to play, will be keeping around

Dragon Slaughter - Tower defense game with the little time that I spent with it, very little variety. Will give it another try, but so far I think Sentinel is a superior game.

Scribattle - Missle command type game. Tough to get the aiming down just right, think the enemies move too fast for the speed that shots are fired, will give another try to see if it stays or not.

Ascent - Climb the level by swinging from bomb to bomb. Quick and fun, maybe a little too critical on how fast the bombs you attach to explode, since you can't really see them under your finger and have to base it off of a red circle that appears a moment before you would go. Played several times before I really got the hang of it. Will be keeping it around.

Fastball - Like Funkyball, but you don't need to tilt your iPhone to make it work, and uses a simple tap to jump over obstacles. Good stuff.

Robocalypse - Reminds me very much of Warcraft 3, which is a pretty good thing. Looking forward to spending some more time with it.

UniWar - Initial impression is that I'm going to need some more time with it to understand what is even going on, this is not a pick up and already know how to play it type of game, and I couldn't find any kind of tutorial right off the bat.

FF13 - 26 hours in / DSiXL Non-Hands On Impressions

A mere hour off of the given mark, I have landed on Gran Pulse, where I now get side missions and the ability to run around and look for things. The story has really come together, and I look forward to seeing what is next for me. I've only gotten about half of the "secret achivements", so I would say I'm about half way done with the game. I'll post more about that as I get to it.

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I saw the DSiXL on Xplay and wasn't impressed much at all by it. The point of a portable unit is to be portable, and making it bigger doesn't seem to really do that. I understand the concept that they have that they want to make it a social experience on the go, but if I'm going to be with other people, I'm either going to have a TV and console near by, or we're going to be doing something else like eating dinner, or bowling, or whatever other things people with free time go to do with other people with free time. My point is that I've owned just about every GameBoy since the original brick, and the last two haven't joined my collection because they didn't improve on what the system did somehow. The next Gameboy to own is going to be their 3d offering that they will be hopefully announcing at E3.

On the other hand, maybe Sony will finally scrap their PSP and put out a new system with two nubs to play games with. You get that and a better way to handle games (PSP Go's market system was a great idea, it just needs a NEW system to be coupled with!) that could actually give Nintendo a run for their money.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Final Fantasy 13 - 23 hours in / Xbox Game Room

At long last after 23 hours of play, I am able to customize my party. They are doing heroic things now, launching assaults, saving their friends, and there's hardly any crying anymore. There's been a few moments where something happened in a cut scene that made me keep playing after I was planning on taking a break because I wanted to see what happens next. Finally, I'm in the best part of playing Final Fantasy.

I've just beaten the last boss of disc 2, and I've popped in disc 3, but haven't started it yet. Have to take care of a few things around the house before I dive back into some more ;).

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I downloaded the Xbox Live Game Room this morning and messed around with it a little bit. These are the games from my childhood, yes, but am I missing something? I spent some time playing Yar's Revenge, and wouldn't mind going back to play some Adventure, but it doesn't look all that awesome. It looks like they're trying to sell me Atari and Intellivision games instead of classic arcade games. Where's games like Gauntlet, or Tron, or Star Wars?

Maybe I'm expecting too much. Then again, they're asking me to pay to customize my own game room. If anyone is playing in the game room, share your experiences with it in the comments below!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

15 hours into Final Fantasy 13

I've been putting a couple hours into Final Fantasy 13 every night, and managed to make it to the second disc. These heroes really need to find their happy place. Every cut scene is "it's all my fault" and "they really hate us" and the crying, oh jeeze the crying. I'm all for setting the characters in a darker light to let them reach out and grow into what they will become, but I've been watching them be emo for 15 hours now and it's about time for them to start acting more heroic.

The upgrade system doesn't seem to work right. I'm still on my basic weapons but I've upgraded them to level 4 which is better than the weapons that I'm picking up. I'm seriously hoping that I'm not wasting components upgrading what will be worthless items.

Also, 15 hours in is too long to be in tutorial mode. I just last night got back to a three party system, and I seriously question how long that will last at this point. I don't need to continue to be paired up with groups of two so I can see how they interact with each other. Let me learn on my own at this point.

Finally, the crystal sphere grid method is much more linear than I thought it to be. Every time I'm just about to finish off getting everything available, it expands out another level, but so far I've had no trouble in keeping up with it.

Those complains aside, I am really enjoying the story and combat system, the two hallmarks to the franchise. If I do something wrong and it wipes my party, I can go back and try again. I'm interested in (most) of the characters and want to see what happens to them and when they awaken their powers more. I also really like the recap that the game gives me when I load up a save, it's pointed out a few things that I didn't really catch on which has added to the story and made the next scene make more sense.

Onward to the next great boss battle!

Monday, March 22, 2010

Being 30 has its Perks, Too...

It's not all bad being a(n almost) 30 year old gamer. Sometimes you can go out and get yourself something that you really want, be it a new game, console, or high end HDTV. In this case, the Mrs and I got back a nice tax refund, which we used to go out and find a nice 7.1 surround sound system.

Before this weekend, I had a 10 year old receiver that I bought shortly after moving out on my own, which I was never able to get to work the way it should. Sometimes I would get two speakers to work, sometimes I could get four, once in awhile I could get the sub woofer to work, but it never seemed right. Having experienced the difference, it was clear that I had no clue what I was doing before, and needed an all in one solution.

We spent Saturday running around to a few different stores before deciding to go with a all in one box set from Fry's. I wanted to make sure that it had HDMI ports going in and out, and wireless rear speakers, unfortunately I was going to be stuck with a Blu-Ray player with this setup, but other than that, I'm extremely happy with how it's all working.

While I haven't gotten to experience the full surround sound gaming experience yet (I haven't fully set up the XBox or Wii to make use of the surround sound), movies sound fantastic, and I've caught myself wondering where a noise was coming from to only have it be something that was happening in the background of a TV show.

Looking forward to playing God of War 3 on this once I finish off FF13.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Time spent in WoW

I've mentioned before that I'm in an end game raiding guild in WoW. It's not the best guild, and we're hardly capable of doing hard modes, but it's a fun group of people to play with and we manage to get through the content.

We keep a fairly lenient schedule for a raiding guild, 10 hours total weekly, 3 on Wednesday nights, 3 on Thursday nights, and 4 on Sundays, but even with that, its hard to keep up with everything else in life and try to maintain a regular raiding schedule. I frankly have no idea how people do it. I have a bit of an advantage that most of those hours are spent at work and I can slack off just enough to get everything done and still raid (shh), but for somebody who is putting aside 10 hours a week, they have got some real dedication to the game, and that's not even touching things you need to do to keep up with badge gear, gold for repairs, and anything else you might need to raid (idols, poisons, reagents, etc), or the extra 10 man runs that they ALSO go on.

I'm not trying to disparage anybody who does this. I'm the one who's jumping between half a dozen gaming mediums just to get their game on. But I've been doing this type of life where I can raid and play some other games, and oh yeah, pay attention to my wife.

I've recently decided that my time in WoW is drawing to a close. The time I spend playing the game does not match the satisfaction that I get for getting past a hurdle. And there's only so many hurdles that are even left to get over. Being a fan of Warcraft, I feel that the story ends with Arthas, so that's when I'll be quitting. When my guild can finally bring themselves to beating Arthas.

I'm sure I'll chronicle more about this process as we go along, so keep eyes here to see how I manage to suffer through hundreds more wipes to reach a nearly meaningless goal. At least it's a goal.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Final Fantasy 13 - The first 5 hours

I grew up on Final Fantasy games. Ever since the strategy guide for the first game arrived in my mail box from Nintendo Power, I've been hooked on their story and game mechanics. I've played them all, or at the very least, very rough translations of them.

The last Final Fantasy to come out on the Playstation 2 was Final Fantasy 12, hailed by many gaming publications as the greatest thing to happen to the series in the history of ever. Oddly enough, it's the only Final Fantasy that I played and gave up on because I didn't like the way the game played at all. The combat system felt clunky, and I've never been able to get into political stories. Warring nations is good and all, but there's just too many names to keep up with to know who's the good guys and who's the bad guys.

So it was with some reservation that I picked up Final Fantasy 13. I was hoping that I would enjoy the combat system, which was the major point that I didn't like about the last game, and find myself to be pleasantly surprised with the end results. It FEELS like Final Fantasy in a way that the prior game did not.

The story has drawn me in, and while it's taking some time to get past the tutorials, it's easing me in by letting me become comfortable with an aspect of the system before introducing another.

The areas are totally linear, with very little room for exploration. There's certainly the hidden treasure orb here and there, but for the most part it's a "get from point a to point b while taking out any enemies that are in the way". Personally, I'm fine with this. This is how the FF games have always been in the beginning, and I'm looking forward to getting down to Pulse to really do some looking around.

The leveling system is a reminder of the Sphere Grid system from 10, with the exception that you can choose what kind of role to concentrate on with your characters. There is a cap on how far you can advance each role, but that is raised as the story moves forward. It feels a little linear right now, but I believe that will change as I move further in the story and have more choices to branch into.

Five hours in, and I'm looking forward to the rest. Check back later to see how to game continues to pan out.

The current spread

The toughest thing about being a responsible adult gamer is when there's a bunch of awesome games that all come out at once, and you've got to pick out which ones you're going to dedicate your time and money to. This year alone we've had Bioshock 2, Mass Effect 2, Heavy Rain, God of War 3, Final Fantasy 13, and a bunch of others that I'm sure I'm missing because I'm old and forgetful now.

Now, I just bought my PS3 last October after the price drop so I could get my hands on all those must have exclusive titles, so I've been kind of playing through some older games. While the rest of the world was playing Dragon Age, I was playing MGS4. While they were playing Modern Warfare 2, I was playing Uncharted. The first one. Yeah.

So here's what things currently look like for me. I just finished Dragon Age, with none of the downloadable content, about a week ago. I then picked up Uncharted 2, and played that for the last week (I don't necessarily agree with Adam Sessler that it's the best single player experience I've ever had, but it's certainly a great game). Now that that's finished, I've started up on Final Fantasy 13, only a week after it came out!

Unfortunately, there's some casualties from playing these older games now. I've pretty much written off Mass Effect 2, and Bioshock 2, even though I was a big fan of both of the originals. Sitting on my "need to play" stack are now Heavy Rain, and God of War 3. I'm not so sure how smart of an idea it is to start up such a long game with a couple other shorter ones waiting in the wings, but I guess I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Sunsetting on 29

I've been gaming my entire life. My earliest memories are sitting in front of the TV playing on my Atari 2600. I didn't know back then that the Pac Man game I was playing was completely inferior to the one from the arcade, and all I knew about the E.T. game was that the logo scared the heck out of me, but I knew I loved to play them.

Little has changed in 29 years, I still plop down in front of the TV to play my games, and the E.T. logo still scares the crap out of me, but back then all I had to worry about was if I wanted juice or milk with my lunch, these days I'm thinking about mortgages, and my career, and *gasp* kids (someday!)

My point is that I'm coming up on 30 really fast, and I'll be hitting it in just a couple short months. Already I'm feeling the squeeze of time as I try to figure out how to balance my life and still keep up with the games I want to play. I don't know if this will be interesting, I don't know if anybody will follow it, but I hope there's a few of you out there who will read and follow, and find that some of what I'm going through will strike a cord close to home.

My name is Video. I'm currently 29. I own all of the current consoles, and also play World of Warcraft in an end game raiding guild. I have a beautiful wife, a lovely home, a dog, a cat, and a good paying job. I also play other games, like Magic: The Gathering, Munchkin, Red Dragon Inn, etc. This is my story on how I try to balance all of my life with all of my gaming, and what games I as an almost 30 year old gamer am playing, and which ones are going to have to sit on the side.

I hope you all enjoy the ride with me.