A case of narrative defeating frustration July 31, 2012
Posted by sinewysimian in Bethesda, PlayStation 3, RPGs, Xbox 360.2 comments
Of the 48 hours that comprised this weekend, I think I spent 35 of them playing Fallout: New Vegas, feverishly working toward the completion of my second full play-through. Having now followed three of the four main quest lines through to the end, I feel safe in concluding that New Vegas is the absolute antithesis of everything I loved about Fallout 3.
That’s not to say New Vegas is a bad game—on the contrary, it’s a rather good one. But where Fallout 3 excelled in giving me a wide open world to explore as I saw fit, New Vegas’s triumph is in its complex branching narrative. It plops you down in the middle of a vast, multi-faceted power struggle, lets you gradually learn who everyone is and what’s going on, and ultimately gives you complete freedom to decide who wins and who loses. Fallout 3’s main story got the job done, but ultimately felt kind of pedestrian, a means to an end; it didn’t even have a truly satisfying payoff until the Broken Steel add-on. New Vegas, on the other hand, is all about the story; it captures almost none of the joy of exploration that Fallout 3 so effortlessly delivered, but it sinks its narrative hooks in and doesn’t let go. (more…)
The most pointless exercise ever! July 2, 2012
Posted by sinewysimian in Final Fantasy, Inanity.2 comments
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy is releasing in a matter of hours, and as I get geared up for the game it’s gotten me reflecting on my favorite moments in the series. Because of this, I shall now engage in the utterly useless activity of ranking the 14 flagship Final Fantasy games in my order of preference, from least favorite to most favoritest evar.
This is a vapid undertaking for a number of reasons, but the primary one is simply this: many of the strengths and weaknesses of each individual Final Fantasy title are subjective judgments, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people rank the series in exactly the same order. Which is weird, because intuitively I’d have thought there would be a greater number of people on the planet than permutations of Final Fantasy games… but as it turns out, that’s not true! The factorial of 14 is like 87 billion! Crazy. Anyway, my point is that there’s no meaningful conversation that can come from this. Whenever anyone on the Internet decides to rate the series from best to worst, the responses boil down to things like “Here’s my order!” “No way, it should go like this!” “I’d rank them differently myself.” “You’re stupid and you should feel bad about yourself.” Each reply invariably contains a unique ordering of the games, so after a few minutes the whole affair has devolved into an unintelligible mess of numbers. It quickly becomes apparent that this is one of those subjects that no two people will ever agree on, and no one really cares that much about anyone else’s preferences but their own anyway. So there’s no point, but I don’t care. I’ve got Final Fantasy on the brain, so here’s my take on the series (again, just the numbered flagship titles), in order from the dimmest of lowlights to the brightest of highlights. (more…)
Tip of the Nose 