Random Thoughts

I haven't completed (or thoroughly given up on) a game this week, so I haven't done a writeup - here's my thoughts on the games I've been playing.

Fallout: New Vegas

This game started to grow on me the more I played. It has an addictive quality, I found myself playing it a lot despite the fact it is flawed and I wasn't really enjoying myself for the most part...maybe it has something to do with VATS. I don't know. I do intend to finish it, but not until after I've played the next game...

Red Dead Redemption

This game is fantastic. The opening cinematic demonstrates the love that has been poured into this game, and it never seems to stop. It's a Rockstar game, and this is the kind of quality I've come to expect from them. I'll save most of my thoughts for the full writeup, but I will say this: Obsidian, this is how you do 'desert' - the Mojave in New Vegas looks like crap compared to the environments in this game.



Final Fantasy XIII

This seems pretty decent so far, but a lot less open than previous games. I'm several hours in, and I still haven't even come to a town let alone the world map - it's just one long, very pretty, corridor. Of course, Final Fantasy games are designed to be huge, epic games so there's plenty of time for it to open up. A bigger problem seems to be that enemies don't respawn - I like to level my characters for an hour or so at the start of these games so I won't get stuck on a boss or whatever - not possible here, you have the exact amount of experience points the devs want you to have...it's a bit annoying. Also, battles this time round are rated out of five stars, which seem to be awarded solely on how quickly you can finish a battle...so if you play defensively to make sure you don't get killed, you lose stars. They seem to encourage and all-out attack for every single battle...even when it's reckless or even dangerous to attempt it. But if you don't give a fuck about videogame stars and just want to win fights, everything so far has been pretty easy.

The characters are a bit weird in this one too. There's the usual whiny little brat, but here he's actually treated like a whiny little brat instead of being awarded 'main character' status, which is a nice change. There's the idiot who uses his fists when his enemies have guns, the inexplicably cheerful girl, the cold and ruthless girl, and the black man with a bird living in his afro. Wait, what? Capcom got called racist for Resident Evil 5, merely because a game set in Africa had black people in it, but Square gets away with making a character based around 'lol, afros look like nests'? Aside from that, he's probably the most normal of the bunch, certainly one of the most likeable.

If I can just figure out how to permanantly kill the whiny little brat, it'll be plain sailing...



Watching this kinda makes me wish I'd got the Japanese dub/English sub version when I had the chance...