DooM II and friends.

DooM II - 1/1 - Henry Arrambide

NOW IN GLORIOUS EXTRA COLOR!

    Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground. (McCarthy) All that remains are twelve shells, six shots from the double barrel. You face down a flickering hall which can only lead deeper into hell; roars of cacodaemons echo down from the void, each reverberation bearing a unique taunt. Slap those shells in the barrel and walk forth, the end is inevitable.

    Have you ever played DooM? I mean really played it; episode 1 is freeware and most people just download that for a good romp on the easiest difficulty, shooting and running around splattering shrapnel and enjoying the cartoon gore splash about. Or they pirate key wads and then download skulltag or zdoom and some (admittedly awesome) mods like true 3D total conversions and custom campaigns and enjoy an entirely different beast than what they originally downloaded. I'm not asking if you've done that - everyone downloads DooM out of novelty for temporary enjoyment or "hardcore" gamer credit in some form. I'm asking if you've played DooM.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning – 1/1 – Henry Arrambide

            Breath of Death VII: The Beginning (BoD) is a little gem I found on the Xbox Live Arcade’s “Indie games” section among such wonderful titles such as ‘Avatar Boogie’, ‘Curling 2010’, ‘Who did I date last night?’ and a multitude of zombie titles (seriously guys the novelty has worn off) (in case you can’t tell those titles in that sequence are NOT wonderful). BoD is what the indie section was made for; I would say you get more than your dollars worth out of it (OH YEAH IT’S ONLY ONE DOLLAR. BUY IT), but saying that you get your dollars worth attaches a certain deflated value to that dollar. You don’t want BoD to be some exception to the rule; you want BoD to be the standard by which the games in the indie section are measured. Seriously, why are there so many zombie games and who is buying this crap?

Amazing Fantastic Audio Program Part 3

Guess who's who.

Back again is the podcast that loves to be ignored and feeds off your apathy, The Good or Blog Amazing Fantastic Audio Program! This episode spurns the previous by not being topical in any possible way! We start out talking about speedruns, getting off topic, then we talk about XBOX Live (which was shut down a full four weeks ago), get off topic, then we move on to Anthony's brutal MGS quiz, get off topic, and wrap everything up with a discussion of the flaws and merits of Western and Japanese RPGs (after probably getting off topic somewhere in there)!

So what's new this time? Aren't we just getting off topic from different topics? Not so listener! This time we have a certain special guest star: Mr. John Stamos!

Not really.

So get downloading, get listening, and as always don't be afraid to leave a comment or send a message. It always helps to hear from the fans we don't think exist.

Segment 1 - Intro and Favorite Speedrun/Let's Play (14min 18sec)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6EFYTTC0

Segment 2 - XBOX Live Shutdown and Online stuffs (12min 57sec)

(also I forget to mention the intro song, but it's Peril off the Halo 2 OST Vol. 1)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MLZLI9FK

Segment 3 - Metal Gear quiz and the largest horse in existence (25min 34sec)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V9T1XJFD

Segment 4 - WRPGs vs. JRPGs, listen to it you retards (20min 41sec)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TWA3ADMT

Final Fantasy 6 (the jRPG Gauntlet continues!)

Final Fantasy 6 - 1/1 - Henry Arrambide

I'm going to say this once - best Final Fantasy, no nostalgia. Let's try to clear this up with something besides the usual points fanpeoples make in defense of the game.

The problem with most Square games, which was born all the way back in oh, FF4 but not really problematic until FF6 and then found economically viable with FF7, is that above all they strive to be cinematic experiences more than actual games. This isn’t a Hurrdurr interactive movie slur; if the games actually pulled off their cinematic dreams well then sure, it’d still be an interactive movie, but damn it would at least be a good interactive movie. This is a root problem because the cinematic look is strived for above everything else, and overrules every other idea within the game. RPG’s were born as a series of placeholders waiting for technology to catch up; nowadays the reason I’m still picking “attack” off of a battle menu in FF13 is because the battle system is still a placeholder which serves the cinematic look of the game. Things must look cool. A problem arises because there is no central theme or idea which the game serves, rather an idea or theme is shoddily tacked onto the game after all the concept art is drawn up, all the cool angles are figured, and the fighting system is hammered out. FF8, as stated in the previous review, is a perfect example of everything done wrong. FF10 is a close runner up though.

Final Fantasy 6 bleeds its cinematic aspirations every turn of the world map and every unfolding of plot progression. It wants so badly to rip the controller from your hands and play the game for you so that it can get you to the next overdramatic scene with hammy dialogue and go “LOOK! LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL PIXEL ART! LOOK AT THIS DETAIL! LISTEN TO HOW THE MUSIC STIRS THE MOST BASE REACTION IN TANDEM WITH THE WAY THE SPRITES ARE DIRECTED!” Yes, the game is overwrought with drama; the limited space of a Super NES cart means characters have to be direct, no meandering allowed. At this point RPG’s were still niche and expensive; I feel that there was a somewhat honest attempt to make a story here. Unlike PS1 era games with their limitless space and multiple discs and pre-rendered scenes requiring you do nothing but sit and watch, the game needed to be lean and direct with the player. Maybe that’s why actual themes and motifs are present. Hamfisted and clumsy, but present nonetheless. Final Fantasy 6 works because it doesn’t work the way Square wanted it to work.

Final Fantasy 8 (or VIII if you're that concerned about it)

Final Fantasy 8 – 0/1 – Henry Arrambide

...and the word 'emo' is not used once. Because that term has been overused by morons.

              Final Fantasy 8 is the anti-videogame. It is a game about making the rules up as you go along, a game that doesn’t try to approach the player at all. It lives in a realm where consistency is a bad thing, where the “story” is an empty shell of a bullet point on the back of the case that was slapped together for no reason aside from it being “what jrpg’s do”.

              It starts with the junction system, needless and bloated, potentially interesting, ultimately gamebreaking. You see, rather than giving you a set of characters with skills, strengths, and weakness, what the game does is give you blank slates. These characters are not “start off unique and eventually turn powerful” characters that previous installments have delivered. With the junction system, literally every character is blank. Stats are modified mainly through attaching different elemental powers to different attributes. Throughout the game, you encounter various beasts and draw points which allow you to collect different types of magic which you then bind to different characters for different statistical outcomes.

              This is not bad. The system itself can be fun. Upon first realizing the intricacies of the system and messing around with it, it seems pretty damn fun, and once you start effectively using Junctions, you feel wonderful. It gives the player incentive to invest in the game world and learn the mechanics. The biggest flaw however, is that the game itself decides that rather than steadily opening up new possibilities for the player by moderating when you get what magic, it’s going to dump the whole mess on you at once. Early on you are handed Diablos, an optional boss who can be defeated with one of those simple jrpg strategy staple patterns. What Diablos does when defeated is give you a card, which then can be harvested into hundreds of “Demi” magic spells, which then can turn your character into a killing machine. All this is roughly an hour into the game. No longer is there challenge. No longer is there incentive to collect magic and use the junction system.