Just Kidding

08/06/08 07:38:26 pm

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• Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core
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• Skins
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Okay, so it seems I lied a little in my previous post when I said there wouldn't be any new content updates for awhile. New Crisis Core skin available. I've also got some drafts for Soul Eater skins...

And I fixed an error that was messing up the comment forms on the newest news posts. This is why the site needs some code development attention. :]

Crisis Core Wrap Up

07/13/08 05:40:00 pm

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• Games
• Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core
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Crisis Core has been an interesting little game. The battle experience is not exactly a highlight - combat tends toward button mashing, and the DMW roulette is an odd feature offering you no control and an over-abundance of power ups. Special attack animations are unskippable, and often pop up at unnecessary times - like when a single plain hit would've ended the battle instead. Missions - sidequests with item rewards - are repetitive and tedious, but offer some worthwhile prizes and are good for playing with limited time on your hands. Materia Fusion is a decent idea, but you'll likely need a guide to get anything cool out of it. And I don't think I know any game where receiving email from other characters doesn't get annoying.

The story and new characters feel largely unnecessary too. Since the game's a prequel, we know who to pay attention to, and all others are pretty much throw-aways. The main antagonist - Genesis - is particularly annoying in that nearly every line of his dialogue is a recitation of lines from a hackneyed play that you will hear about over and over and over again. Unless they're going to retcon the whole series (and I suppose they could), I just couldn't care about these new characters who I knew had no relevance to the series beyond this one game.

So what makes Crisis Core worth playing then? The best parts of this game are where it overlaps with its original; namely, it's characters - Zack, Aeris, Sephiroth and Cloud - and events, like the Nibelheim incident and all that follows it. As if it's not bad enough that you already know Zack is doomed, the ending is so well done - with both FMVs and battles as story telling - as to make the event more poignant than ever before. I think it may have cemented Zack as the most tragic character of the series (yes, even more so than Aeris). That's really what makes Crisis Core worth the effort.

Happy 4th Ramblings

07/04/08 07:39:14 pm

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• Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core
• Life
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Happy 4th of July, to those of you who celebrate it. Nothing to post today but some random thoughts from the last few days.

Bookstores. On two separate visits, we've noticed a certain breed of person... Usually it's a teenager, usually reading a manga, usually while seated smack in the middle of a narrow aisle between bookshelves. While we spend awhile finding the book we want, this person remains stationary, even while other customers attempt to go around him (this person is also usually male). I suppose the responsibility of dealing with this person falls upon the bookstore staff, but it's awfully rude all the same.

Gaming. I've just started up Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, which is the first game I've played on a PSP actually. While the visuals are lovely, the battle system feels flawed, at best. There's not much challenge - you can mash X to beat most enemies - and the roulette-like DMW thing dampens the difficulty even further by bestowing numerous power-ups and special attacks throughout the battles. It also feels odd that you have absolutely no control over the DMW wheels - they just spin and stop whenever they please. The game's story and dialogue also feel rather silly, what with everyone quoting poetry or proverbs and sprouting random wings. And how weird is it to see Sephiroth acting normal? Still fun though, and Zack is a likeable lead.

Website. Hopefully some site improvements will be coming along soon, if I can spare some time to work on them. I know the skin menu on the right is a bit broken in Firefox 3 (which only a small percentage of you are using... and I thank you), but I'm probably going to leave it that way for now.