Misadventures True to Form

So, just about every year I have one very random and ridiculous thing happen to me. I’m not sure why this happens, but it’s pretty regular. There seems to be something about me that just attracts odd occurrences. On to the story.

Sunday mornings I play in a community-rec basketball league. Most of the people on the team are college aged early to mid 20’s. So, Saturday one of the kids on my team was in my town and heading back to his apartment near where we play (the gym is about 35 or 40 minutes from my house), and offered to let me crash at his place. This didn’t seem like a bad idea. I would get to sleep a little later and actually hang out with some people. In fact I even brought my PS2, fighting games, FIFA, and Guitar Hero along. Two other guys from our team came over, they drank, we played games it was good fun. FIFA was the preferred game, and I was the undisputed king of both 2-D Fighting and Guitar Hero.

It was during the FIFA playing that things started to go awry (in retrospect, at the time I thought nothing of it). We worked the FIFA playing in pairs and switching off at halftime. So in the third game of our best of three match-up I scored the winning goal in stoppage time. This prompted a, slightly to fairly drunken kid on my time who I was staying with, to hug me and exclaim, “I like Mayama!” Now at the time I attributed to the aforementioned drunkenness of the kid, and also his relatively rudimentary skills in spoken English. Shortly after this the other two kids left, we played a couple more songs of Guitar Hero and got ready to hit it.

Now he had the standard tiny ass one room apartment. So, there was no bed, no couch, and only one set of bedding for the floor. Not wanting to freeze and not really caring because it was a guy I shared the roughly double bed sized “futon” and blanket with the kid. A little bit into my attempting to sleep I had a hand flop onto my shoulder, I was facing away from the kid, but I shrugged it off and figured he was just a tosser/the drunk sleep made him restless. A few minutes later the hand flopped again, I again shrugged it off and scooted away a bit. Everything seemed to be settled at this point and I was just drifting away when suddenly I felt the hand again. This time it felt like a little more than a flop. Sure enough seconds later there was definite wrapping around action, and the hand started to move down. Before I get onto my reaction I should note that atleast a few times throughout the course of the evening I had mentioned the fact that I had a girlfriend. Why that was not respected/processed I will never know. So, right about the point the hand made a definitive move I pretty much jumped straight up to standing and was like no, nuh-uh, and I packed up my belongs. The kid mumbled an apology and I did say thanks for playing video games with me, and I left the apartment. It might have been safe at that point to try and remain for the rest of the night, but I wasn’t going to have it.

At this point it’s 2am, and I only have the vaguest ideas of where I am. Also, because I’m a girl, I’m getting a little teary eyed do to the fact that I thought I had finally made a friend my age, and then all he wanted to do was grope me. Admittedly there were also teary eyed thoughts of just wanting to be with Yukino and have her give me a hug. Anyhow, about twenty minutes later I found a 24 hour public bathhouse. I paid the $5, and found a corner in the common room. There I proceeded to curl up clutching my things and tried to dozen on the hardwood floor. I got a little sleep, but as it was uncomfortable, and I constantly startled awake to protect my things it was largely ineffective. In the morning I got a cab, and tried to get to the gym. However, I wasn’t completely clear as to where I had wandered to, and I can’t give directions in Korean, this was a failure. So, I just took a bus home and skipped the game.

There you have it. My first tale in Korea of a non-annoying student trying to grab me, and doing so in a definitely coming on to me way. Why these things always happen to me I don’t know, but I really wish it would stop.

all drummers wanna be at the front of the stage

Guitar Hero is the newest rhythm game from Harmonix. For those of you not overly familiar with the rhythm game genre think of it with DDR with a guitar. Just like DDR isn't real dancing, Guitar Hero is hardly an accurate simulation of playing the guitar. The experience of the game though, coming from a drummer, is something that is so insanely addictive and fun, that you won't really care that you're not actually playing the guitar.

Game mechanics and graphics wise there isn't a whole lot to talk about. The environments for the various venues are well done. The animations for the band are really well done, especially the hand movements for your guitar playing character. This however, really doesn't make a huge difference as 99% of the time you're too busy concentrating at the notes flying at you to pay them much mind. Like the basic game mechanics couldn't be simpler. The controller has 5 buttons and a strum bar. Push the button that corresponds to the note on the screen (conveniently the same color) and strum the strum bar.

Despite it's relatively simple mechanics (though I'm sure programming the controller was trickier than you'd think) this game does just about everything well. With four difficulty levels there is a nice gradual learning curve for those of us new to the instrument. However, the higher difficulty levels I think would provide a challenge for even seasoned guitar veterans. Currently I am on the third difficulty level and struggling my way through it, but as I said earlier...I'm a drummer. The other thing the game does fantastically is the music. Harmonix managed to put together a very very solid lineup of songs. Yes the versions in the game are all covers (with the exception of the unlockable songs by indie and local bands). However, with the exception of the vocals there really isn't much difference between the cover versions and the real versions. This is really the key to the game. Sure it doesn't sound like David Bowie on “Ziggy Stardust” or Eric Clapton on “Crossroads”, but playing along with some of your favorite guitar riffs is really amazing, at least for those of us with no particular talent for the guitar. This game also gives us drummers to feel like we're in the limelight rather than buried in the back. Granted there usually is a good reason that we're buried in the back, from borderline neanderthalean facial features to social awkwardness to our complete lack of vocal talent. However, as we sit back there and pound out beats, I'm sure there isn't a single one of us that someplace in our heart of hearts hasn't wanted to be front and center. That's the beauty of the game, if you're willing to let yourself buy into the little fiction that you're actually shredding on a real guitar, it's awesome.

One comment. If you are going to play this multiplayer with two guitars make sure both speakers on your stereo are fully functional. A blown out speaker will result in one of the two players (depending on which side the speaker is down on) to not be able to hear themselves and this makes everything a lot less fun, and a lot trickier.

So, if you like rock'n'roll music and possess even a little coordination...go pick up this game.

Grade: A

In all honesty it seems like a mixed bag

Final Fantasy XII Demo

It’s been five years since Final Fantasy X and while Square has provided us with over FF titles: FFXI and its many expansions, FFX-2, FF Crystal Chronicles, and FF Tactics Advance to name a few. It has however been quite a time since a good and proper Final Fantasy game has been released. Final Fantasy XII marks a hopeful return to the series more epic roots. Admittedly it is hard to get a handle on exactly what the final build of the game will play like from the two short demo levels, but at least it gives us a taste. FF XII will be released in Japan in early March, and will come to the states sometime in August.

Music:

The Final Fantasy series has long been known to possess some of the best music to be found in gaming. The tunes are so adored in fact that there have been live orchestra concerts of music from the series. That being said the score in the two demo levels does not really jump out at you. Granted, at least for me, many of the most memorable themes have either been for characters or towns, so not having the best music in a couple of random exploring areas is ok. The sound effects, while I couldn’t say were anything astounding, did give a nice sound to battle.

Graphics:

As you might imagine the technical quality of the graphics is remarkable. The environments are crisply and well rendered 3-D, and respond well to the camera controls. The character designs are well done, complete with our a little on the skinny side, slightly femmy main hero. The monsters too, form what I’ve seen seem to be well designed too. The animations, especially the special effects for various spells are exceedingly well done. This also includes the summons that you can perform, which are appropriately dramatics and kick ass. Also, as is a habit of the animators in FF games, they can get a little long. In the demo there was no way to skip the animations; I can only hope there is in the final build.

One last comment the opening cinematic trailer …breathtaking. The English voice actor they have narrating isn’t so good, but the technical quality is astounding.

Gameplay:

The basic gameplay in FFXII is a radical departure from the traditional. While certain actions still have they’re appropriate charge and wait times the action on a whole takes place on the same stage. There are no more random encounters, there is no different interface between the world map and battle, in fact there isn’t any battle screen. All monsters and creatures are just out wandering the land. This is nice in some ways because it means there are no random battles. Yes there might be a group of monsters that you cannot sneak around or avoid, but at least you know it’s coming. When you are actively fighting monsters you can have your command input set to either active or wait. Similar to how these timers worked in past games wait pauses the game while you input your commands, while active leaves to furiously input your commands while action continues. For my two cents I find the active timer significantly more fun than the wait timer. Also of interest since the game is trying to give a little more of a mmorpg/live action feel to its battles, when a monster is defeated, even if it’s part of a group, everyone’s counters reset and the new target needs to actually be targets. You get no freebie retargets of the next enemy that is so common place in most RPG battle systems. Lastly on the battle interface front; when you do summon a monster to aid you it takes all other party members away except for the caster and the two can fight together. This can work extremely well for ganging up and doing a lot of quick damage, or you can have the summon caster start casting heal spells on the summoned monster to help it stick around longer. All in all it’s one aspect of the battle system that I really enjoy. Lastly this game would benefit greatly from multiplayer, but it appears that the other two members of your party will appear to be largely controlled by AI scripts. Which is really a shame.

As for the plot and flow of the game, there was not nearly enough content in the demo to get a solid definite idea. However, on the plus side, there are sky pirates involved in the game. On the downside though both demo levels had a very missionny feel to them. If the entire game is more mission hopping with plot, as opposed to a more seamless epic I will be sorely disappointed.

Closing Thoughts:

Square Enix is taking a bit of a chance with their new Final Fantasy game. Their past departures from the norm FFV, FFVII(to an extent), and FFVIII have met with varying degrees of success(not talking about sales success here). So, with that in mind I remain cautiously optimistic of the results. Though I am willing to admit that in the long run if the approach to the game is more mission based the gameplay and battle system itself will not be enough to prop the game up.

Grade: B (with reservations and hopes all at the same time)