This is just a quick post to put it out there some of the stuff going on lately. Obviously, I haven’t been particularly active on the site of late. I could make a handful of excuses which would all be half valid, but ultimately it’s because of Final Fantasy XIII. I got it, and consequently spent about two weeks doing almost literally nothing but play it. At this point I’ve now beaten the game, and in fact earned the Platinum Trophy. With absolutely nothing left to complete in the game It’s now time to return to the land of the living! I hope to have a review for Final Fantasy up before the end of the week. However while I was catching up on what I missed over the last couple weeks some issues came up that had occurred in my absence. Primary among them is that my AdSense has been mysteriously disabled, as I’m sure you’ll notice the missing ads. So unfortunately, I can’t make any promises to future updates to this site until these issues are resolved.
Back when Wrath of the Lich King was on the brink, I knew I wanted to play a Death Knight. Not just a Death Knight, but a dual wield Death Knight. I have this thing about dual wielding, but the thought of playing this badass undead knight who dual wields, has DoTs, pets and a ton of other tools was really appealing to me. Not only that, there was also the prospect of dual wield tanking. Even though my plan was to DPS I intended to build a tank set of gear as well, and the thought of dual wield tanking was rather exciting to me. Once Wrath hit the shelves I leveled like mad, was the second person in my guild to hit level 80, and quickly found that the dual wield DK had insane DPS. Unfortunately, tanking was not so hot, but thats what I have my Paladin for. At any rate it was almost exactly a year ago that I abandoned my Death Knight for my Shaman, but I recently made the decision to gear my DK up again, in heroic and emblem gear. The thing is, I decided to dual wield now that it has finally been fixed (after the gigantic, crushing nerf to Dual Wield DKs last year that made me switch characters in the first place). Anyways, I thought I would talk about my journey and thoughts in this process.
Anyone who knows anything about the gaming market these days can tell you that the Nintendo Wii is the unrefuted winner in this generation of gaming consoles so far, at least as far as sales go, having sold over 67 million units worldwide, compared to the 360’s 39 million and the PS3’s 33.5 million. The Wii’s motion control combined with some good casual games has allowed it to reach out to a whole new demographic of people that were never considered gamers. Many would argue they still can’t be called gamers, but that doesn’t change the fact that Nintendo struck a gold mine, and as such are raking it in big time. With the unfathomable amount of success the Wii has seen, Sony and Microsoft both decided they wanted a piece of that pie. Sony took a pretty straightforward approach, coming up with their not-so-cleverly named “PS3 Motion Sensor Controller”. It’s basically a stick like the Wiimote, but with a purple orb at the end that the Playstation EyeToy can track. Microsoft however took a much more ambitious approach. Entitled “Project Natal”, Microsofts motion sensor incarnation touts an entirely controller free gaming and entertainment experience. Not only that, but an unparalleled level of not just motion sensory, but the ability to sense just about anything else that goes on in front of that camera. Many people, unsurprisingly including Microsoft themselves, have called this the future of gaming. I thought I would give my thoughts on this claim, as well as the Natal itself
As I mention fairly frequently, I am an RPG guy. I spent most of my life playing almost exclusively RPG games, FPS games were the furthest from my spectrum. Of course these days I am much more open minded, there is far more that defines a game than what genre it is classified as. In fact I would almost say that action/RPG hybrid games like the Star Ocean series, the Tales series or even Diablo can be even better than straight up RPGs. The marriage of the RPG character building elements and the action combat can make for some real good times. One of the less common forms this takes however is a shooter. When I first heard about Borderlands, it was described to me as what World of Warcraft would look like as an FPS, and I was intrigued. Top it all off with the fact that the game is cel shaded, and I knew I had to have this game. I just love cel shading, what can I say. My one line review of this game: “While there are parts of Borderlands that are as dry and empty as the desert world it takes place on, Borderlands does a superb job of hitting both the RPG and the FPS nerve simultaneously”.
As of the writing of this post, the wait for Final Fantasy XIII has been whittled down to a mere 2 weeks. 14 days from now, the one game I have been looking forward to the most for almost 4 years now will finally grace my television screen. Needless to say I’m quite excited about that, but it also reminds me of a somewhat regrettable fact. See, I never actually beat Final Fantasy XII. I played the heck out of it (60+ hours), but I never beat it. I think back to when Final Fantasy XII was released, and I was quite excited about it, too. I bought the collector’s edition of the game, which came in a nifty metal case and included a bonus disc with interviews and whatnot, as well as a strategy guide and art book. I remember it came out on Halloween, and I was so excited to get playing yet had to hand out candy at the same time. I must have watched the opening cinematic half a dozen times before I saw the whole thing. I got into the game big time and played it constantly for a good while, but in the end I became rather disenchanted with it and ultimately put it up on the shelf where my save file still remains in the final dungeon. Like so many other games, Final Fantasy XII did a lot of things really well, but just couldn’t overcome what were in my mind fatal flaws. With the next game in the series so close to fruition, I thought I would take some time and examine what I think of Final Fantasy XII when I look back on it.
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