Damage Control

Hope everyone had a happy Pi Day!

Pi Day brought yet another of March's big games to store shelves.  Just five days after Final Fantasy XIII landed in gamers' laps, Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver arrived for the Nintendo fanboys to go gaga over.  Speaking of Final Fantasy XIII, fanboy hate is still at record highs.  Also, there's the possibility, not only of a direct sequel to the first FFXIII game, but of more FFXIII games.  Finally, screen shots were shown of an early build of the game, when it was still in development for the PS2.

Details of Final Fantasy XIV have been released, and the game's beta is going to be open to fans who have purchased the PS3 version of FFXIII and registered it.  And gamers who don't own the PS3 or 360 but own the Wii aren't shut completely out of the Final Fantasy loop this week.  Final Fantasy IV, the original version, has been released for the Virtual Console under its original North American name, Final Fantasy II.

Just like Mehitabel, there's life in the old 360 yet.  In February, the Xbox 360 came out on top, although the PS3 and Wii were not far behind.  Indeed, February was a most balanced month for console sales.  Now if the fanboys were toujours gai, the Internet would be a far better place.  Fat chance of that, though.

The life of a three year old gamer came to an abrupt end when she mistook a real gun for a Wii accessory and shot herself with it.  The gun had been left unsecured on a table... and come to think of it, wasn't there a Gargoyles episode like this?  One that Toon Disney refuses to air, despite the fact that it teaches an important lesson about guns that this three year old could've used?  I had no idea that Toon Disney advocated gun use.

Harmonix is attempting to kill the music game genre once and for all by making a third Rock Band game.  But what has caught my eye is Civilization 5, and the changes made in the series formula.  The PlayStation Move has also been officially announced and demoed.  And all of this and more are being studied by the University of Washington.

A little over 20 hours in, and I can finally change my party now! It's pretty liberating, actually.

But yeah, I've put a lot more time into Final Fantasy XIII in these last few days, and during that time, you can usually expect a game, especially an RPG, to have developed quite a bit. And it has! Sure, it's had its slow parts (like Chapter 4, and especially Chapter 5), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't having a good time. It's not just the game and its inherent gameplay systems that have developed either: Its characters have also had ample time to develop a relationship with both the player and themselves. They've had time to really grow on you, especially Hope and Vanille.

It's the battle system that's really had time to shine. Throughout the lengthy "opening" hours, the game has spent time placing you into arbitrary teams and has forced you to abide by their setups. Part of the reason for that is that the developers had a story they wanted to tell, so they placed the game's specific characters in these situations to let one particular character (or multiple characters) develop with each other. But another reason they've done this is to teach you how to skillfully utilize the game's particular mechanics.

The game may start off as being a mindless cakewalk, but the further it goes, the more it shows its depth. Paradigm Shifting isn't just way to shift to another moveset for the hell of it. No, there will come a time where you'll need to shift to another set of classes for the sake of strategy. The game places you with arbitrary characters in its earlier moments to teach you what each class consists of. Think of it as an extended training session, because you'll need to learn how to analyze enemies and buffing and debuffing on the fly, or you risk the potential for death - even in normal enemy encounters.

As you could expect, the game looks incredibly nice. In the comments section to my last entry, Joseph was talking about how he liked to just look that the environments to absorb them in. It's something you can easily do in this game. Heck, I recommend that you do it, just to see how much detail Square Enix put into this game's graphics. You can actually see the clouds moving in the sky, along with other objects. The cutscenes are also gorgeous.

And so is the Hamauzu soundtrack, which I hope makes more fans for him. This is the first high profile game he's composed the soundtrack to, and you can tell he gave it his all. Some of the songs during specific stages also have lyrics, which will probably blow the minds of some players - though it probably won't if you've played a Megaten game or maybe Tales of Legendia before. I can't stop listening to "Sazh's Theme," personally. It's ingrained in my mind as I type this.

I'm personally glad to see that I'm firmly in the "like" side for this game, but I can understand how quite a few people don't like this game. It's an RPG whose style differs quite a bit from its predecessors, and some of its changes could rub people the wrong way (like the lack of towns, for instance). But again, in spite of that, I think it's a game that everyone should try to see if they like or hate.

Super Street Fighter IV took a turn for the hilariously bizarre when Capcom finally revealed Hakan this week, the final character for the update to last year's biggest fighting game. We've known about him and his gimmick for a while (since the Tokyo Game Show in September), but now we're finally able to see him. He actually has a rather appealing and endearing character design, though that's noticeable when we're not laughing at his main gimmick. Or his quotes in and out of battle.

And from the videos released this week, all over the internet from playtests from the Game Developer's Conference, it looks like he could be pretty formidable. Hakan uses oil to allow him to slide across the ground to his opponent, which is also an attack that hits low. It's sure to catch people off guard if they don't know the match up, and definitely has the potential to work incredibly well online. I can see this seriously pissing some people off online, which is great if you like hate mail or hearing people raging through the mic.

He also has the most hilarious Ultra combos in the game, definitely outdoing Dan's - who, might I mention, has a second Ultra that's very much a homage to Ryo and Robert's super from the Art of Fighting/King of Fighters games. You can take a look at both of them on the official Japanese website, or look at the American trailer. This game really needed another grappler character aside from the two we have (Zangief and Abel), and you can never get tired of seeing this guy's particular grapple.

(I still think this game could have used Alex, though.)

With Hakan, all ten characters for SSFIV have been revealed, so the only thing now is to wait until April 27th for the game to release. In the meantime, there are plenty of videos going around of match videos from GDC, and there are extensive walkthroughs (and I mean very extensive) for the Street Fighter III characters - Dudley, Makoto, Ibuki - on GameTrailers from US Champion Justin Wong. I think all the new characters should have lengthy walkthroughs like this. I'm sure Capcom is currently preparing a big trailer that will showcase all ten characters, the new stages, and features to entice anyone who still thinks this could have all just downloadable content. And when it's only $10 more than what Street Fighter IV goes for right now (and not full price, like Capcom's older Street Fighter updates), it should be more enticing than a lot of other semi-sequels.

Ah, the beginning hours of an RPG, where ample time is dedicated to teaching you the ropes of its seemingly esoteric new implementations. It's the part where Final Fantasy XIII says to other RPGs: "We are not so different, you and I." Not to say this is bad; just the opposite, actually. Its initial tutorials are brief and informative, finely crafted enough so they don't bore you. And they teach you just about everything.

But I'm willing to bet that this isn't what you wanted to read about. No, I'm assuming you want to hear about how the first bunch of hours are. At this point, I'm nearly six hours in, meaning I'm nowhere near the parts where the game will stop holding your hand. Not that it wasn't to be expected, however, since the idea behind FFXIII is to streamline the RPG experience and remove the fat that's so plagued it for years. I can see how this may (and has) upset quite a few people, but I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

The characters themselves are also endearing, even if some of them feel it's necessary to engage in their more annoying tendencies. Lightning seems pretty distant towards most of the group, and feels the need to instill some tough logic into some of the other party members. Sazh is pretty great, though he's constantly referred to as the old man of the group. Nice afro, too. Snow is the template of the archetypal shonen protagonist (Goku, Naruto, Ichigo, etc.). A more charmingly stupid character, ladies and gentlemen, I haven't seen in an RPG in a while. Meanwhile, Hope is what you'd expect a typical RPG protagonist to be like. And Vanille...oh, Vanille. Definitely the requisite genki girl/popping-crazy-pills character.

Now, I should add that I think I'm one of the five people that actually like Vanille, despite her being the only voice that irritates me a bit. Everyone else's voice is fine. Sazh has yet to utter the words "Aw hell naw!" just yet, but this quest still has a lot of time left, so there's still hope.


So yeah, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. And despite its linearity, which you've undoubtedly heard about a good while ago, I still think that everyone should try to game to determine if they like it or not. I can understand if anyone isn't a fan of its hold-your-hand-the-entire-time design, but its other qualities, like the battle system, may be something you find endearing. It's definitely daring, and everything it attempts probably shouldn't be used as a template for future RPGs (though that kind of ceased with FFXII), but it's a very interesting experiment.

With much ado Final Fantasy XIII is finally here. Taking advantage of GameStop's midnight national launch party I was able to pick up my copy along with the mini strategy guide at my local retailer just after 11pm last night. While the atmosphere was less than festive quite a few gamers did trickle in to purchase copies of Square Enix's latest game. I was one of the few people who actually got the 360 version of the game. Admittedly, Final Fantasy XIII is the first Final Fantasy on console that I've actually picked up at launch. I didn't actually play Final Fantasy until around 2003, with Final Fantasy VII being my first title in the series and FFIII on the DS being the last game I actually finished. With FFXII on hold for the moment I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into FFXIII.

In terms of graphics Final Fantasy XIII on the PS3 definitely has the edge. The differences are noticeable when compared side by side but I would hardly call the difference detrimental. When I loaded game up on my HDTV I found myself impressed with the graphics. Despite owning a 360 for nearly a year I haven't dabbled in very many current generation games. Compared to the string of PS2 games I've been recently playing FFXIII on the 360 with compressed graphics is still an awesome looking game. Switching discs on the other hand feels like a throwback to the PS1 era but I'll probably be having too much fun to notice.

We're going to start with a little something from Canada this week on the Geek News Roundup.  It seems that the Throne Speech delivered this past Wednesday mentioned the possibility of changing a lyric in our national anthem to make it sound less male dominant.  Then, barely two days later, after uproar from both men and women across the country, the proposal was tossed off a bridge wearing concrete shoes.

Anyway, getting back on topic, how would you like to win stuff?  Winning stuff is good, right?  Do you also like independent developers?  Okay, DIY Gamer has started up a forum on their website, and to encourage people to start posting to it, they've come up with the DIY Mega-Ultra-Super-Happy-Fun-Time Forum Contest.  What a mouthful.  All you need to do is create an account and post meaningful posts in their brand new forum.  All I can say from my own personal experience as a forum moderator is, best of luck to them.

A couple follow-ups now.  Last week, I mentioned that the ApocalyPS3 was in progress.  It's been fixed by now, but not without a loss of data on certain machines.  It seems the problem was that the older PS3 models are showing signs of Alzheimer's early: the pre-slim models forgot that we just had a leap year two years ago, and thought that this year was another one.  I understand the rules for leap years are confusing (if the year is a multiple of four, it is, unless it's a multiple of a hundred, in which case it isn't, unless it's a multiple of four hundred, in which case it is), but still: they got it right on the PS2, so why not the PS3?

Also, I've criticized Ubisoft's new DRM scheme in the past.  Well, a fresh batch of criticism has begun, because as predicted (although sooner than expected), their servers went down on Sunday, which meant that absolutely no one could play the PC version of Assassin's Creed II, among other games.  When the servers came back, Ubisoft passed the buck.  Apparently a DDoS attack hit their servers, which if you ask me, just highlights another problem with the DRM scheme.  If someone decides to flood the servers, they'll go down just as easily as if Ubisoft had issues themselves.  At least they've acknowledged this and have issued a patch, despite refusing to commit to any kind of patch a week earlier.

Some more bad news for Ubisoft: a team of crackers have managed to break the DRM after only 24 hours, or so they claim.  Thing is, Ubisoft claims that the cracked version of the game is incomplete.  Then again, if someone's giving away your product for free, you'd say anything to make sure people keep putting money in your pocket instead.

Let's see, what else is there?  Well, Sony's patented something they call "feature erosion", but I call "jabbing people in the eye a few times with a stick after five hours and demanding they buy your game or else they won't stop".  Metaphorically speaking.  The Portal 2 is not a lie.  Another study is showing that violent video games lead to violent youths; I wish they would keep their politics out of so-called scientific studies.


And finally, Activision has been busy peeing in everyone's Frosted Flakes this past week.  First, they told Phoenix Online Studios that they're not allowed to do anything with a project they'd been working on for eight years, despite having already gotten permission from Vivendi to pursue said project.  Guess who bought Vivendi between then and now?

Then, barely a couple days later, they began a coup the likes of which we'd expect to see in Russian or French royalty.  They sent in their hired goons to keep the peace while they ousted two of the lead developers of Infinity Ward, who are known mostly for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 & 2.  It's claimed that Jason West and Vince Zampella have been very bad boys.  West and Zampella fired back with a lawsuit and it began to look like Activision staged the coup so that the company could avoid paying them substantial royalties.  Just how much does a new yacht go for these days?

Activision fired back with a statement of their own, no doubt carefully prepared to make West and Zampella sound like the bad guys in this affair.  Right now, I don't think enough is known about this situation to judge which side is truly in the wrong.  It's probably a knee-jerk reaction to say that Activision are a bunch of greedy fuckers who should crawl under a rock and die, but given their history, it could be the right thing to say, too.

At any rate, until more is known, here's the legal documents that were filed in court.

Have you ever noticed how many reviews mention how much a game takes inspiration from another? It's no coincidence. The more cynical among us have argued that the majority of us have hit a brick wall in terms of ideas, and that we'll make them look like new ideas by making two ostensibly disparate ones and meshing them together. (That also applies to more than just video games.) When they say this, not all of them mean this in a bad way, even though some certainly use it and liken it to the downfall of our society. It's actually an indirect way of making something original, and that's good.

This is precisely what Darksiders represents, though I'm sure its looks have fooled quite a few gamers. When most of them saw the game, they assumed it would be another God of War-alike, given that they're so in-style these days. While it takes a little inspiration from that game, it actually uses another popular series for its main source of inspiration: The Legend of Zelda. This is actually quite good on the surface, since there aren't too many games that use that as inspiration. But once you get into the meat of the game, you'll realize that it goes quite a bit beyond inspiration.


Darksiders pits you in the rather large, muscular physique of War, the first of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War is summoned to Earth, which is now in the midst of the chaos it's plunged into as armies of angels and demons have decided to make the planet their battlefield. There, War discovers, upon confronting Abbadon, that he's the only one to have arrived, and the seal hasn't been broken to summon the other Horsemen. The demon Straga then rises from below and kills Abbadon, and nearly kills War. But War is saved, so to speak, by the Charred Council.

The Council accuses War of bringing about the Apocalypse, and he is to be sentenced to death. That's until War demands that he be sent back to Earth to find the one actually responsible for bringing it about. But before he goes, the Council has a being called The Watcher, uh, watch over him every step he goes. The Watcher also has the power to kill War whenever he strays, or whenever he feels he strays, from his predetermined path. The Watcher also serves as a guide to tell you what to do next to advance the game. So he's kind of like this game's Navi, minus the high-pitched voice. It's here that War reawakens to a post-apocalyptic Earth, 100 years later.

Oh, and though you start the game with a plethora of powers, they're all stripped from you when you perish in the beginning. This is admittedly less Zelda and more Metroid.


Darksiders, like Zelda, has dungeons you need to explore for a specific purpose. Within these dungeons, you'll find items to help make it through them, and they'll also help in making your way around the game's overworld easier. Yeah, this all sounds pretty familiar. Well, the hearts thing notwithstanding.

There are also power-ups to collect as well, some that will extend you maximum health and wrath. Health is self-explanatory, but Wrath is used to utilize special powers to make fending off enemies a little easier. You'll only start with one, but more of them can be purchased with souls you obtain from enemies. Beating a boss will also net you a health boost, similar to...well, you know.

Yes, Darksiders actually lifts entire aspects of its game from Zelda. Sometimes quite shamelessly! Aside from the above, there are also plenty of parts that play homage to certain events that happened within many of the 3D Zelda games, especially The Ocarina of Time. And sometimes it's very, very blatant about it. Thankfully, this doesn't detract from the game's overall fun factor, and the quest itself is very enjoyable. Just don't be surprised if you constantly use the quote (or a variant of it): "This is just like that part in [whatever Zelda game]. Huh."


The game itself looks splendid and colorful, with a mix between cel-shading and CG. It's the perfect look for animating its comic book-inspired storyline. Though the story itself is enjoyable to watch in the well-directed cut scenes, it's rather predictable overall, barring literally a couple of twists. What helps sustain the story is the fantastic voice work. War is provided a voice by fan-favorite Liam O'Brien, while The Watcher features Mark Hamill doing a very close Joker impression. It also features the voice talents of Moon Bloodgood, Troy Baker, and Vernon Wells. Yes, that Vernon Wells.

Something that will bug the average gamer with Darksiders is the bizarre difficulty curve. From playing a lot of games throughout your life, you've probably become adjusted to them progressively becoming more difficult as you either become more powerful or begin to adjust to the mechanics and physics of the internal gaming world more. This game starts of a little tough, especially with the first dungeon and its boss (who, might I add, is an absolute pain), but it really doesn't get that much difficult. By the end of the game, you're too powerful for most and the enemies and all of the bosses. Some of them will actually struggle to get a hit on you, provided you've become attuned to the controls.


The world of Darksiders is pretty big, but how much time you spend in it depends on how much you're enjoying the game and how much you're willing to do. Feel free to run through the main quest in around 15 hours or so, but there a plenty of secret areas that you'll be able to access as you obtain more items from dungeons. If you want to find everything and explore everywhere, you can spend around 20 or more hours with the game.

What Darksiders takes its ideas from is precisely what makes it more appealing product. While its world may not be as appealing to some (depending on your perspective), it's a world that's open to much exploration, and rewards you with finding its secrets. It may not be as satisfying as a Zelda game, or even some of its other clones (like Okami, for instance), but it's still well worth your time. A stellar first effort from Vigil Games.

Final Fantasy XIII is releasing this week! So let's commemorate the occasion of its arrival -- in an admittedly miniscule manner -- by featuring the soundtrack to...one of Square Enix's worst games: Unlimited: SaGa.

What's the point of this? Glad you coercively asked! Featuring this game isn't sending an indirect message that it's what I or anyone here thinks will reflect the quality of FFXIII. No, it's being featured because it features a great-though-unpopular soundtrack by the game's composer: Masashi Hamauzu. People around the 'net still kind of refer to him as an unknown entity among Square Enix Music's prowess (well, formerly among), and Unlimited: SaGa is kind a representation of that trope. Heck, it's probably the biggest representation.

Hamauzu seemed to have a curse looming over him for every soundtrack he was lined up to compose. The unfortunate fact is that the majority of the soundtracks he's composed have been for games that ranged from bad to mediocre. Upon seeing early impressions and numerous reviews, it seems FFXIII is going to be a rather polarizing game for the series' fanbase; perhaps even more than Final Fantasy XII was. But even if you consider that, FFXIII will likely be the best game he's composed the soundtrack for.

(He was also involved in Final Fantasy X's soundtrack as well, but the fact that he was merely "involved" is the reason why that game wasn't mentioned above. There, he and Junya Nakano were only involved as assistance to then-series mainstay composer Nobuo Uematsu.)

Unlimited: SaGa's soundtrack bears many trademarks of Hamauzu's sweeping musical style: gratuitous use of violins (positively gratuitous, mind you), piano, electronic instruments, and a plethora of acoustic material to create an overall feel that's pretty grand. Well, for the first disc, at least. The second disc represents a little of this too, but it's mosly comprised of techno and electronic remixes, with a few jazzy themes thrown in the mix.

Most of it sounds great, but keep in mind that I'll be pulling the samples from the first disc. Sure, it's mostly typical Hamauzu material, but an alarming number of people don't even know what "typical Hamauzu" is, so I felt it best to showcase that here. The tracks are so good that it made this rather difficult to do.

To start things off, this first track here is "The Seven Travelers," which sounds like music that would either go towards a text scroll, menu theme, or character selection -- since this game has seven scenarios; one for each character depicted in the semi-portraits on the cover above (My playtime with the game was very...not extensive. Could you tell?). It's a beautiful track; well representative of Hamauzu composition style:


The second track here is "Battle Theme I," the first of four normal battle themes, if the track naming scheme on the soundtrack isn't deceptive. A pet peeve I have with RPG battle themes is that too many of them aren't good enough for you to hear over and over again throughout the entire (sometimes very lengthy) game. This, however, is not one of them. And there are (again, presumably) four of them! Very impressive:


As previously stated, this game has seven central characters. And wouldn't you know it, every character has a specific theme. This one is "Laura's Theme," who, on the cover above, is the blonde-haired woman on the left. Her specific melody is rather emotional and sad, perhaps (I hope) related to her place in the story:


What you've heard, unless you just skimmed to the bottom, is just a small representation of Unlimited: SaGa's entire soundtrack, which is an incredible soundtrack for a game that's just the opposite. Please give the entire thing a listen. If anything, writing this entry has gotten me in the mood for seeking out more of Hamauzu's music (aside from FFXIII, since I don't like to listen to too much of a soundtrack for a game I intend to play), and if that's happened to you as well, think of it as a positive-though-unintentional after-effect. If you don't like FFXIII, at least you'll like the soundtrack.

Fans of tabletop RPGs, specifically Dungeons & Dragons (Maybe Dungeons & Dogs too?) can put away the Mountain Dew, for there is now a soda that is made specifically for pen and paper gamers.  Jones Soda has come up with a 6-pack of different flavours inspired by D&D, and by now I'm not surprised.  This is a company who released a Turkey & Gravy soda every Thanksgiving for a number of years (and last year released a Tofurkey & Gravy variation).  They created sodas for Seattle's sports teams.  And as of late summer/early autumn of last year, they've created a limited edition soda for gamers.

This isn't the first gaming-inspired beverage to hit the market.  Japan has seen various editions of Potion released to commemorate various Final Fantasy related events, including the release of Final Fantasy XII.  But this is, from what I can find out, the first drink for gamers to be released to the North American market.  Bawls doesn't count.

The reviews* I've read regarding the Thanksgiving flavours have led me to be incredibly cautious when it comes to whether or not I'd want to try these ones.  I'm assuming they're fruit-flavoured, or close to it, but I'm going to stick with their normal, Red Apple flavour for now.  Let the true D&D nerds try this one first.

*Blogspot may have decided that Canadians are terrorists, or at least people living in Revelstoke are, and so I seem to not be allowed on their site anymore; it's also possible the problem is on my end.  I've been getting 403 Forbidden errors when trying to use their site to research this article.  This means I can't even contact them about it if I can't reach their site.  Thankfully, the Google cache still works as of this writing, so I'm linking to it for now.

4:08AM ETA: Blogspot's working for me again, don't know what was going on.