(edited to cut out unrelated chatter)

Me: http://member.square-enix.com/na/blog/
Me: check out the pie chart
Jeff: I like the nontrivial slice for FFVII Remake
Jeff: and the small slice for Please make games based on my story
Me: haha
Me: yeah
Me: that nontrivial slice scares me

Other FFVII fans make me *headdesk* sometimes. All I'll say to the remake-clamorers is this: don't come crying to me (or the Citadel) should you find that Squeenix messed up FFVII in its inevitable remade form.

P.S. - Some related chatter (continued here) in the CAG forums' current GGT.

P.S.S. - Not FFVII-related, but the comments for this otherwise innocuous Game|Life post make me sad, and not just because of the apparent n00bs who aren't aware that ddf is the blog's longtime resident troll. In particular, the latest, from Minnie, proves that you don't have to be male to be a dick.

This screams "Front Mission ripoff". The main difference seems to be that instead of humanoid wanzers, you have "zoids" in animal form. It does look like this is tied in to the Zoids anime and toy franchises, but the look here isn't the colorful cartoony style I'm used to seeing from them.

Don't know if want.

My backlog, which I've separated out from the rest and placed on a shelf above my computer (just the single-player console games; there's a few PC and multiplayer console ones I/we have to get to as well [Sam & Max Season 1, FF:CC, etc.]. Also, I've played DMC1 before, but have been meaning to go through it again [which meant buying a new copy, as I'd sold the old one]). Ōkami, of course, I'm borrowing from Jeff, but the rest are mine. And yes, most of the ones I bought new are still shrinkwrapped:



How they're actually regularly displayed, with the DMC box set turned around and the Digital Devil Saga pair in its outer slipcover:


Some of my most recent additions to the stack came about because of a thread I started on the CAG forums to ask for PS2 RPG recs. Believe me, I would've never gone hunting for the (rather scarce and pricey) Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 if it weren't for the high heaps of praise several CAGs gave for these games (certainly their Metacritic scores helped convince me as well). The pair ended up costing me a mere $100, including both slipcovers; the soundtrack CD; the placeholder insert for DDS2; DDS2's case, cover insert and manual; and DDS1 still in the shrinkwrap. It was from a first-time eBay seller, so I'm not surprised that I was the only bidder; did pretty good there ;)

Anyway, I think I'm set for games for awhile o.o; Last Monday I finished Tales of Symphonia, which, despite having one of the most convoluted stories I've ever come across in a JRPG and sporting some annoying little design flaws here and there, I found rather enjoyable. I started Rondo of Swords not long afterwards (I try not to play more than one RPG at a time); it's easily the hardest SRPG I've ever played, as a fair number of the maps are tough as hell and there's no options at all to do traditional-style grinding.

I'm also playing Mario Kart Wii (if you gots a friend code, hook me up) and trying to finish Zack & Wiki, but with five treasures left to go, that means having to go back to certain puzzles I ended up skipping earlier because they required some sort of Wiimote waggle timing mechanic (which the game doesn't do very well -_-) and I couldn't get past those points.

Jeff and I also have to finish Mario Galaxy, but he's currently consumed by the newest iteration of Liberty City, which is very NYC-like, but at the same time, sooo not NYC. What we've seen of Aldernay, GTA IV's version of North Jersey (which Jeff hasn't unlocked yet, but has been able to fly over and around a few times) is way more crammed: fictional versions of Newark, Port Elizabeth, Jersey City, the suburbs, and so forth are crammed into a tiny little space. Funniest thing: there's a building in Aldernay that looks a lot like a part of the Meadowlands Sports Complex... however, it's not surrounded by the Meadowlands itself like in real life, but plenty of buildings! Hopefully, once Aldernay becomes accessible without the instant six-star penalty, we'll get to see this building up close and figure out what it is.

New set of Loveless revisions just went up... only one more batch left to go after this!

This update includes one of my favorite chapters, Act III, Scene Eight, as it made me fall in love with platonic!Reno and Rude. No, I've never liked them as a romantic pairing, but in writing this (and reading it over), it really struck me what they mean to each other as friends.

III:8 also contains one of my favorite lines, a Reno POV description of Cloud: It was none other than that spiky-headed blond bastard who seemed to make a hobby out of cheating death, doubtless for the sole purpose of annoying him.

Anyway, enjoy :P

P.S. - Tried to take a pic of my console game backlog this morning, but none of the shots came out well. I'll try again sometime soon. It's not as big as some people's backlogs, but it's big by my standards... especially since it's mostly RPGs o.o;

I'm not the Webmaster anymore, but I'm still getting Teh Wacky in my news posts, so here you go:

WTF does convincing the Orange County Choppers to build a Hardy Daytona replica have to do with IGN's "History of FFVII" article?! Oh, and despite the name, this doesn't seem to have been posted by "our" Travis, as the email addresses don't match.

(P.S. - I still need votes! ;_; See the previous entry for details)

GameSniped's current contest is to find (or make) the very worst video game-related auction on eBay. I entered, and one of the links I submitted has been chosen as a finalist! Naturally, said link is to one of Lionheart's Realm's "Materia" auctions XDDD

All of the finalists are here. There's some tough competition (the Mario 64 box with fake Miyamoto autograph is pretty damn funny), but I believe my entry has a decent chance. If you think I deserve it, please throw a vote my way (once the poll is up and working, of course) ^_~

ETA: Poll's active! Once again, would love some votes *hinthint*

The World Ends With You (aka It's a Wonderful World, aka Subarashiki Kono Sekai, aka who knows what else) is finally in my hot little hands.

I can't remember when I first heard about this game, but it was back when it was Japan-only and had a slim chance of coming out in English. Nevertheless, it struck me as awesome almost immediately. It's been well received so far; let's see if they're right.

Also picked up Rondo of Swords. Between that, Persona 3 FES, and the SMT: Nocturne reprint currently available at Play-Asia, Atlus is getting much love from me this month. I'm also trying to hunt down SMT: Digital Devil Saga 1 & 2 for a reasonable price; wish me luck!

Anyway, with two fresh new DS games sitting on my desk, I'm now fully prepared for when GTA IV comes out and Jeff monopolizes the TV =P

The BSP's been updated with those promised Loveless revisions and more. Biggest update I've made to the site in awhile.

Going out of town for the weekend, so I'll likely be offline most all of that time. See you next week!

I've had Biggs on the brain lately. Has to do with that AU FFVII plotbunny I've got kicking around. And no, he won't be an alcoholic like he was in the Wedge backstory in Loveless.

Title: Biggs
Characters: *points up*
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Rating: G

Also, I recently got a comment from one of the OverClocked Remix staffers on one of my Best of OCRemix posts, so that was a nice surprise.

New batch of Loveless revisions on their way very soon! I promise ^_^

"Canon is for birthdates. Fanfiction is for how they celebrated." —mistressrenet, here.

As previously mentioned, got a lot of game soundtracks lately. Out of those, I have not yet listened to the five (five!) disk set for Ōkami nor the two-disk one for Super Mario Galaxy (yeah, it's the limited-edition version; just had to spring for it, especially since the price wasn't bad). The three-disk No More Heroes set has been listened to, but I won't review it today as I've only gone through the soundtrack once in its entirety. Thus, today's reviews are of the two single-disk albums I picked up; one a soundtrack, and one an arrange disk. I'll start with the latter first, as it was easily the more anticipated of the two.

( The Black Mages III: Darkness and Starlight )

( Gyakuten Saiban 4 Original Soundtrack )

And finally, a brief game review:

( Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories )

P.S. - For those of you who like this sort of thing, I posted a new Portal fanart today, featuring GLaDOS-tan (or at least the GLaDOS-tan that I came up with) and Chell.

New Ace Attorney game with Miles Edgeworth as the main character. It's gonna be a more traditional-style point-and-click adventure game called Gyakuten Kenji, or Turnabout Prosecutor; the English title seems to be Perfect Prosecutor.

There's gonna be plenty of Gumshoe in this as well.

*squee*

Today I tried to play Metal Gear Solid for the second time since buying the thing some years ago, and this time with a DualShock 2 and USB converter rather than a keyboard (yeah, it's the PC version). I got a little ways further than I did the first time, and have come to the conclusion that this really isn't my type of game. A few things that struck me:

1 - The story is interesting, I'll give it that (this time around, I watched all the briefing tapes before starting a new game), but there's a ton of cutscenes besides. And I thought Final Fantasy games were bad...

2 - Snake's moveset is really limited. I had trouble zooming in and doing up/down movements while doing so, and the lack of jumping drove me nuts. Which brings me to...

3 - The game has not aged well.

I was kind of surprised how old the game looked, but on further reflection, maybe I shouldn't have been. FFVII's PC version is passable graphically, and FFVIII PC looks even better. However, MGS uses 3D environments in addition to character models, and all of them are skinned. Huge-ass pixels everywhere.

It's kind of odd, but the older 3D games that hold up the best are, in my experience, 64-bit ones (read: N64) and those that make extensive use of flat, pre-rendered images and sprites (FFVII, FFVIII, and several games made specifically for PC). Of course, the static images that MGS uses (in the briefing videos and codec sections) look perfectly fine.

Besides the 3D graphics (and as I pointed out above), there's the controls. MGS is an action game, but the limited moveset doesn't hold up to today's standards. With the old 2D action games, it's more forgivable, mainly because there aren't 3D spaces to work with and thus you have a good idea of what to expect. When I control Snake, I want him to be able to jump and climb in addition to the moves he has to work with now.

So in short, I don't think I'll be playing through the rest. I feel it would test my patience.

Before booting out of Windows, I installed Sam & Max Season One, which I bought not too long ago. You can imagine my annoyance once I learned earlier this week that the game is being ported to Wii, as I'd much rather play it on that platform. Don't know if it'll come with the PC version's extras, though. Oh well :/

Finally, my recent order of game soundtracks (and a certain arrange album) from CDJapan arrived today; possible reviews later.

(Not a big fan of posting twice in one day, but...)

Replaced the Chrono icon with this new one I've been inspired to make (and finally did so today). Because the greatest RPG of all time now reminds me strongly of ShadowTravis @_@

And because it's Klavier ^_~

BTW, my default icon's been changed to the Prinny ("Dood.") one, since I use it so much anyway...

ff7_oldschool

ETA - A quick P.S. for the Citadelers: it's run by Ethereal Queen. +1 Props.

I CAN HAS SYCOPHANT NAO?!

Plus: Quit dropping my name! One of these days you might break it! Also, Chrono Trigger is not my favorite game!

The FFVII Citadel's RSS feed (represented as ff7citadel here on LJ) hasn't been working properly. I've had to manually edit the feed files for the last couple of updates (which has presented problems of its own), and after trying a couple of things, the generator we use still doesn't want to work.

I'll try and sort out the problem as soon as I can. Until then, please visit the main site for news and updates (the latest post just went up this morning).

ETA (3/22): The RSS feeds will remain down for some time. This is a problem that goes deeper than I initially thought, and might necessitate a move away from Greymatter altogether (that is, if enough people want to have the feed around). If it comes down to a script change, it'll have to be done in April. Again, sorry about any inconvenience.