Cosmos

You might have remembered my little literature based blog post in the middle of this year, where I asked the readers to recommend any titles of interest according to the subjects I tend to find interesting these days. Well, even after no one replied, I have read several books now, roughly about 3 per month. And it's such a great hobby that unfortunately the younger generations tend to avoid, unless it's their homework. There are always exceptions, of course.

I have read books by well known authors such as Richard Dawkins, Dan Brown and Friedrich Nietzsche, each of them specializing in very different topics, yet nonetheless had me profoundly intrigued. At other times I choose for a bit more obscure, religious based books, such as The Divine Comedy and The Satanic Bible. Admittedly, they left a dissapointing taste.

But this is just random rambling I am talking about now. Today, as my final blog of 2011, I would like to review one of the greatest modern scientific books, which is Cosmos, written by Carl Sagan.

Having seen the mini TV series a year ago already, I knew what kind of contents would be waiting inside. But the good man insured readers from the start that even though both media products are based on each other, they are different enough.

And after going through Cosmos a second time, now in literature form, I was once again astonished. It is one of those science books that gradually lets people open their minds about the entire cosmos we have dwelled in since the beginning.

The late Carl Sagan goes through various topics that focus on the universe, civilizations and science. Chapters about the enlightened city of Alexandria, the evolution of galaxies, cosmic explorations and great scientists such as Johannes Kepler, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton make sure that Cosmos has a mixture of things to tell.

Perhaps the best parts about this book for me personally were about discovering each planet further; why Jupiter is so massive and enveloped with enormous amounts of hydrogen and helium, why Venus has such a dense atmosphere with it's thick clouds and why Mars has a red sky, a red surface and gigantic dust storms. Each planet unfolding bits of pieces, it's like opening up a present slowly, given by someone.

Comprehensing this information, especially when talking about how large the observable universe is, how stars, planets and life arise and how the laws of nature work can delightfully develop the mind. Sagan happens to be, one of the most charming scientists I have ever seen and read about. He is one of the key reasons I am inspired to learn as many reasonable things as I possibly can(as many others have done already) about science, astronomy, physics and other fields of knowledge.

My rating system for books is different than other forms of media. I use the star system, to see how it works out and to keep exchanging between the ways of reviewing.

Rating: ***(out of 4)

Finally, dear readers, I wish you all a very promising 2012, full of flourishing living moments.

The Factory

Officially called DeFabrique, however, for the sake of this blog, and any English readers, let's call it by it's title listed above.

As my current work location, the place is a large maze, as all the newcomers and temporary workers constantly tell us. Working as an assistent in the spot of catering has shown me varied days of work. Entertaining as it is, it has even inspired me to pursue getting a degree as a basic cook, and anything I am willing to do beyond, despite having a degree for a different field already.
 
It's history goes back as far as the early 20's, and to this day, it holds titles from it's age when it was still an actual factory. Titles such as The Warehouse(which is not the actual current warehouse), Silo 61 and the Jute Cellar are at first confusing, but then it becomes clear that they add to the industrial theme that is still being used.

The Factory is nowadays first and foremost an event organization, where large parties, congresses, auctions, fairs and meetings are planned, discussed and scheduled by our people. When many come over, hired employees are used for different professions such as security, paramedics and entertainers.

Impressive as the interior locations can be, each day being able to look quite different than before, the amount of work to be found in each event can be stunning. Personally, I am most of all responsible for the buffets for colleagues as well as other attending ones. Well known famous Dutch people may even be present, here and then.

Next to the events, The Factory is quite known for it's sub location surrounding most of the inner area, where the sport known as Go-Kart can be done. Starting with this sport at first, it was able to grow larger due to it's success and eventually become the popular party place to be, situated in the middle of the country.

It happens to be an unusual place where all sorts of things can happen, from regular to quite crazy. Personally, factories in general have had quite an interest upon me, so I am glad to be a part of this business.

Retro Blog: Super Smash Bros. Melee

The original title deserves as much attention as it's sequel, but I gotta hand it over to the sequel for introducing to me personally to a world of tournaments, or as it officially is called nowadays, e-sports. Still, talking about all three current games as a whole while focusing mainly on Melee shouldn't hurt.

Around the spring of 1999, a very curious looking fighting game was revealed in a Dutch gaming magazine. Called Super Smash Bros., I was instantly hooked as a young teenager, and I remember hanging up a picture of the game on the refrigerator in the kitchen. After obtaining the game, and after unlocking everything, the most cherishable memories I have with this game is having very good times every saturday afternoon with my best friends since then.

Super Smash Bros. came with it's own unique but simple based fighting system, where easy movements were set in place in order for us to glance at physical moves, as well as special exclusive moves. In essence, all of the character's worlds were put up against each other, bringing with them stages, cameos, items, music themes and of course the main characters themselves.

This trend became the basic for what the fighting games are all about. Introducing us to franchises, as well as recognizing the well known ones, while this crazy fighting system was being put to great use, there is no doubt that Super Smash Bros. remains a classic all-stars based game.

Now I can go all I want into how these games actually play out, but I trust that anyone that is reading this can easily and understandably take note of this, by using either a manual, a YouTube video or just by having played them. After all, the franchise is massively popular, one of the biggest from Nintendo.

After playing several more prominent N64 titles, the GameCube was among us, and the internet with it's mighty influence had arrived. Simultaneously I was getting introduced in 2002 with the sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee and the gigantic fan site known as Smashboards, which also happens to be the first forums I had started with and pretty much was the first true homepage for me personally after a small period of scouting for Emulator ROMS, being very active there until the second half of 2005.

Having watched the teaser trailer of the sequel uncountable times, each time drooling of the thought of playing this on the successor towards the 64 bit console, it finally arrived in May 2002, a half year after the American release, which felt way too long for me. Again, after unlocking everything, I had even more fun with this than the original.

Then, at Smashboards, the Dutch Tournament was announced by Mr.Silver, and curious people responded. Situated east from my hometown, I was obviously hooked as well as my buddies. While we trained together(and personally I trained countless times as well against the CPU, which worked for me, but only in a fair way), we decided to register for this special event happening in late 2002.

And as the first contenders arrived in Ede, the competition had started. The names were filled in, the brackets were used as Double Elimination, the money was given from us all as the price for the first place, and the atmosphere was starting to change.

Never before was I excited that much to get higher in this private tournament. I can remember how pretty much all of us had such a good time competing against each other, discussing the game and the rules we used, and in overall the mood was great.

I met many kinds of people there. Some of them have vanished with no sweat, others from which I held either respect or friendliness had disappeared from my available connections entirely, and some are still my friends today. We do not speak much to each other, but we all remember the awesome memories of the Dutch Tournaments, which by the way were 10 in total, and happened from late 2002 until mid 2005.

There were so many funny as well as thrilling moments that it would be impossible to let myself type them all out in here, or even to remember others which I have forgotten now. Examples such as the quirkiness of some people's behaviors, the trash talking on the internet before and after the tournaments, watching with an audience at the final battle on each tournament, the crazy Mario Party Blood events, shout outs, comments and applauds towards others. It was so awesome, you just had to be there to acknowledge this.

And let's not forget that at the early tournaments, I quickly became at a time the best Smasher of The Netherlands, until my main rival Remen and other rising ones eventually continued to beat me successfully at later tournaments. Indeed, I was known as Flok, where as I used Mario as my main character, while I pretty much introduced wave dashing in our country.

At one point, the DT's even went international. Starting with number 6, The Doug, as if a new challenger had appeared in Melee itself, came in from Britain and proceeded to take the first place away from us Dutch men. We were all shocked as well as amazed at the foreign skill he showed us, but between you and me personally old rival, I still remember the half final match between us. Specifically, about the amount of matches needed in order to go to the final battle. What happened was that I won the first 2 matches, which would had let me won originally, but the group decided to enlarge the matches to a total of five. You then beat me four times in a row, but I will never forget this moment, hah!

I think that it was Dutch Tournament number 10, the final one, where another infamous foreigner came to beat our ass. It happened to be Captain Jack, a Japanese Smasher which I did not attempt to play that day, because I held the weird opinion then that this guy was too much for me. What I realize since then is that this was a stupid mistake from me, and that my opportunity to fight against him was gone. And after DT 10, many of the veterans went further with their lives.

Really, I could talk hours upon hours more about Melee and essentially the competition of these crazy tournaments, but I think that everything which I wanted to say has been said. Melee itself by the way can become very hectic when it comes to competitive play, but this was only known exclusively by the community supporting it. In the first place, Melee, like the original and Brawl, are played for fun. But we all know what else these games are and still are capable of.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who was involved and attended the ten Dutch Tournaments hosted by Mr.Silver. My time during these moments was enjoyable, hectic, special and most of all, memorable. I will never forget this period of my teenage years guys.

But of course, my story with this incredible franchise had not ended. In E3 2005 I believe, Nintendo showed the world the next rewatchable teaser. Super Smash Bros. Brawl was announced, and the community discussed the game until the very release in 2008. The Smash Bros. Dojo, an idea maintained by Masahiro Sakurai, was used by Nintendo to keep us updated and hyped about the large sequel project.

Brawl was promised to involve a large group of renowned video game composers from many companies. As such, the soundtrack is one of the best things about this game. Online gameplay was introduced, and while not perfect in any way, it satisfied most.

The character roster, the stages, the items, the trophies, the features, the gameplay, the rules, everything had grown larger, making Brawl the essential fighting game for the Wii. It even let people create their own simple stages, and the single player was largely improved.

As I had promised back in 2005, I decided to host my first and so far my last own tournament, called the Balance Tournament. After a few months of Brawl's announcement, this was set in course and after the surprised responses of a tournament being announced "like 2 years too early", curious ones were vast once again.

Fast forward towards 2008, roughly one week after the release of Brawl, in collaboration with my favorite video game shop Dr.Games, the Balance Tournament was a success. The prizes were nice, the mood was once again enjoyable, I saw old and new faces and I even entered the tournament right away, as a fresh amateur who had just started playing the game. For your interest, others before me had imported the game already and thus had a giant leap of experience among the others.

And after the latest comments in my own tournament thread, I think I even said once that a second tournament could surely happen someday. But, as it stands, it hasn't happened. I was satisfied with the conclusion of the tournament, and went back to my passion of other video games.

Now, at the end of 2011, I type this special blog. And while I did so, I continuously had great memories in my mind from those days in the past, from all three games. In my opinion, Melee is the superior tournament edition, Brawl is the best technically, and 64 is the most nostalgic.

The future shows us that Super Smash Bros. itself isn't over. Nintendo has told us about a possible connection between a 3DS and a Wii U version, and this is only the start of how crazy a part 4 can and will be.

Whatever and however these games and their impact will have, I will always hold the view of the franchise as a whole; as being a celebration of Nintendo's greatest worlds. And I will never forget the enormous fun it provides.

Super Mario 3D Land

Undeniably, Mario's latest adventure on the Nintendo 3DS holds a special tribute towards one of the greatest NES games, which is Super Mario Bros. 3, which also happens to be my favorite Mario platformer.

Super Mario 3D Land is also connected with the 2 Game Boy Land titles, but I don't think there is much relevance other than the name. It's design is closely observed from various kind of earlier titles, including Super Mario 64, the Galaxies, the New Super Mario Bros. entries and as if reincarnated for a new era, Super Mario Bros. 3 elements are floating around this whole game.

With it's precise controls where I only had to get used with the slide pad's movement for a few levels, 3D Land is instantly familiar for anyone who has played with the plumber's platformers before. It takes constructive level design, which gradually emerges towards getting better crafted, while it keeps you busy with collectable valuables, well known and new enemies, remixed and re-used songs from before and a steady rate of variety.

It is, if you think about it, so diverse by it's levels, that it constantly keeps the players busy and guessing as to what kind of obstacles are to be found next. The new and old power items such as the Raccoon Tail and the Boomerang Suit offer simple yet enjoyable ways of playing. And if you have trouble, presumably because of the last levels, there is help available.

The 3D is rendered useful in here, allowing for some interesting level designs here and there. It has also become more accurately to land on spots during the game now because of the third dimensional helping out. Certainly, this is a very good choice as a game if you want to see what benefits 3D brings towards gaming.

After beating the game, unlocking 8 more worlds, I beat those as well and I can safely conclude that it indeed is a better game than the New Super Mario Bros. games, but does not hold up well enough towards the Galaxy games, when speaking of level design, length and presentation.

For a portable 3D platformer, this is a good choice to pick up if you want to spend 5 through 10 minutes each day to swift through several levels, or just beat the whole game in roughly a week. Which means getting a whole lot of Star Coins and seeing the last available levels.

I am also told that the very last level is unlocked if you beat the whole game pretty much twice, but I don't feel like doing that, much like I did so with the first Super Mario Galaxy.  In any case, Nintendo has put up a very fine Mario game once again.

Rating: 8.0

Heroes of Newerth

After laying down Defense of the Ancients back in early 2009, based of Aeon of Strife as earliest as I can tell, this game succeeded it.

The same game concept is re-used in here, but instead of being limited to the engine of Warcraft III, Heroes of Newerth has it's own one, allowing for many more things to be designed here, including a shop, better dedicated servers and voicechat amongst several positive things.

It borrows or steals(take your pick) hero concepts from DotA Allstars, which was maintained by Eul, Guinsoo and IceFrog throughout the years, while creating unique kinds of heroes on S2 Games's own. Sometimes, in present day, even the community gets the chance for their suggestions to be implemented.

Heroes such as Balphagore, Martyr, Ra and Engineer add their own original spin towards the established formula, making it all even more intricate, time demanding and enjoyable to know and use each of those. Especially newcomers, who know by now that the game has become F2P, if this is their first game based of DotA, prepare to get overwhelmed by the content, as well as the community.

That's right, the community is still as bad as I remember from the days of DotA, perhaps even worse, as vote kicking, conceding and constant yelling at the microphone or insulting, blaming, grieving and raging are ways to demotivate anyone. It is the only reason why Heroes of Newerth isn't an excellent game to pick up and play, because there are uncountable multiplayer games where the competition is still intact, yet way less badly emotional.

Heroes of Newerth can either be very entertaining, or very obnoxious, depending on the circumstances, most of all including your teammates and the enemies's. The best matches are usually those where the teams are equal in their overall strength, and they continue to clash, all 10 players available at once during battles.

There are plenty of sites nowadays which can explain how these kinds of games are played, including League of Legends, Demigod, Heroes of Newerth and the upcoming DotA 2, Realm of the Titans, Rise of the Immortals and Blizzard's own version of DotA. So I won't mention how it is played once again(I wrote a DotA blog at IGN already).

This sub-genre of action Real Time Strategy seems to have originated partly from Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis in 1989, although I cannot backup this claim. Anyway, enough with the history lesson.

If you are looking for a team based competitive online game which can be very enjoyable and which constantly gets updated with new content, balance changes and bug fixes, Heroes of Newerth would be a good start. Other current valuable options within the genre are still the ongoing DotA Allstars and most likely League of Legends(I haven't played it).

Xenoblade Chronicles

This ain't "just" a game. It has the unique status of an authentic Japanese Role Playing Game on the Nintendo Wii. Excluding Monster Hunter Tri, last year's big third party game, Xenoblade is the largest available RPG on the last period of active months for the Wii.

Mind me, I know that the game is developed by the first party known as Monolith Soft., responsible for the Xenosaga trilogy on the PS2, Baten Kaitos on the GameCube and previously created Disaster: Day of Crisis on the white console.

There is just no way around it. If you are by any chance a faithful JRPG fan, Xenoblade will deliver for you, in one way or another. It's grand presentation is marvelous, and it's interface is designed in a simple but helpful way. This is, without a doubt, one of the Wii's prettiest games.

The gameplay reminds me the most of Final Fantasy XII, except that it is here executed more smoothly, more exciting and best of all, it fixes small things common to the traditional thinking design that only RPG veterans will notice, regardless of it being an action based one. For example though, skipping large areas of walking grounds by the use of landmarks is well done and well needed for a giant design such as this.

I had barely traversed through the landscapes and I can say already that I love the soundtrack accompanying me. The songs feel calm, exotic and grand to me. The battle theme, that can change according to the hectic tension each battle provides, actually never bores me, because it is that good.

As far as the story goes, it starts out pretty normal, aside from watching two gigantic gods fight each other. Shulk leads a calm life alongside his childhood friends Reyn and Fiora, and spends most of his time inside interiors. It is not until abnormal circumstances arise involving Mechons and the legendary Monado sword that the plot is starting to move and from there on out, no matter how large the game is, the plot thickens and continues to grow in an intriguing way, while every party character is very much likable with good portraits of human emotions.

Some of the traditional RPG standards, such as normal attacks and mana, are both ignored. Instead, normal attacks activate automatically, and health regenerates the same way after battles. A special system called Chain Attacks is available once you use Art(the equivalent of Spells or Abilities in here) skills effectively, which definitely reminded me of Mega Man X: Command Mission's Final Strike. Once activated, you can chain Art attacks for free on an enemy, and if you chain well enough according to the game's rules, you can do even much more damage.

Next to this, each character has their own special ability to use in battles, which fills up the more attacks are successfully done. Such as Reyn being able to drag enemies towards him using aggression, or Shulk being able to reflect off special incoming future attacks.

That's right, future attacks. This RPG involves a future concept used during the story as well as combat and when picking up certain items, showing you possible future events happening. Stronger enemies usually start using dangerous future attacks, which you can overcome by either calling in for help from your allies, or using one of your own counter Arts, such as letting the enemy fall asleep.

Xenoblade also incorporates a crafting mode, letting you create certain gems out of crystals and cylinders, which make you able to equip their bonus attributes on your character's equipment. There is another kind of gameplay, called Heart-to-Heart. It basically is about building off affinity towards party characters, which then unlock bonus scenes at many parts of the game, giving you more rewards.

The Art skills themselves can be leveled up by collecting enough AP(action points if I remember) using various ways. Each character can also learn special Skill Trees, most of them being active passively, while experiencing around. And if you collect enough items in an area and place them in the so called Collectopedia, you can get access to bonus rewards. Even trading items amongst party characters can give more affinity and thus more options to see Heart-To-Hearts.

Convenient tutorials are placed alongside the first parts, explaining the gameplay well and understandable and the amount of it is also quite impressive for an action rpg such as this. Even tedious repetition in battles(should this happen, although I doubt it for most of us) as will be noticed by the ones preparing to beat the game can easily be bounced of by changing characters once in a while, offering just as much entertainment because of the diversity in them.

The only dissapointing note for me in this is that many of the side quests, next to the many others in this huge game, are tedious to complete, because certain characters only appear at certain times during day or night. Other than this minor point, nothing else of serious error can be mentioned by me.

For it's sheer amount of fun, length and lasting appeal already is Xenoblade an absolute must play for RPG fans.It's graphics and soundtrack are top notch, it is rewarding on it's own to traverse the god's bodies(which are the world maps of this game basically) and listening to these dazzling songs while the great gameplay kicks in plenty of times. Even the difficulty is fair and spot on for me.

It's amazing how a single game can let me enjoy a dying console as excitingly as possible until the last few promising games are released and the next generation is amongst us.

Rating: 9.0

The Reigning Horror Icons of the 80's

Halloween, I tell you. The more I have touched horror media, the more this holiday sticks into my mind, and during this year, specifically, I decided to hold a marathon surrounding two of horror cinema's largest franchises from the 80's, while I also watched two anthologies. It continues to be too bad for me personally that this holiday isn't celebrated nationally really over here.

There are a ton of movies surrounding this genre, and about 95% of them are absolutely horrible as far as average film qualities go. However, for about a roughly 20% of them in a whole as I predict, and I target horror fans then, they are worth watching, if you can forgive poor budgets, bad actors, cheap and predictable scares and many times stupid plots. And only about a mere 5% out there are truly recommendable for everyone, from critics to average joes, if you can handle the horror.

However, I won't talk anymore about the genre as a whole from now on. Instead, I would like to focus on three horror icons from the 80's that everyone is aware of if they have done basic research into these kind of films. I am talking about Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

I know that there are other horror franchises out there, and some of them just as large as these three in particular, but as the title said, these three were simply all over the 80's, presented with their strong debuts, and from those inceptions onward, they kept getting worse and worse until you found the deepest pits of the art of milking awful sequel movies. And believe my word then, because I have at last saw each and everyone one of them, including the latest remakes, and three dedicated documentaries towards each of them.

I won't be talking about every sequel, instead, I would like to summarize each franchise with a few paragraphs.

HALLOWEEN

On this date, since at the very least several centuries, Halloween is celebrated, which at first was entirely different in its concept of a holiday than it is in present time. The well known Halloween franchise touches upon both concepts during its course, but the movies are, more to the point, about an immortal serial killer named Michael Myers.

The original film never clearly stated Myers's motivation in detail for doing these homicidal acts. Instead, they decided to let it remain a mystery, which therefore buffed up the tension of the story. Halloween and its antagonist tend to focus on babysitters, their friends, foster parents and other innocent humans usually residing in the fictional place known as Haddonfield, where they are killed off one by one.

The franchise is if you ask me, pretty average. Not even the earlier titles had left me profoundly fascinated by its design, or its cinematography, or its use of sounds. Nevertheless, they are worth watching up until Halloween 4. After that, it can no longer be saved, because the writers kept using terrible scripts to advance the story, and Halloween 6 and Resurrection are the lowest ranks for sure.

Favorite title: Halloween II(1981)

FRIDAY THE 13TH

The well known formula of Friday the 13th is "sex and gore", centering on the deaths of countless drunk and horny teenagers throughout the massacre films. It is a pretty popular game to send death wishes towards the many stupid characters.

It started with the accidental drowning of a misformed kid named Jason Voorhees while the caretakers of Camp Crystal Lake were too busy having sex. Driven by a twisted kind of revenge, Mrs. Pamela Voorhees ignites the start of the franchise in the original film, at first killing the original residents, and then returning in 1980 to continue her murdering legacy.

After being decapitated to death, the now grown up Jason watched in horror how his mother died, which in turn makes him all too unforgiving in the countless sequels. He is at first a very strong man who kills teenagers without any sweat, but starting with part 6, he becomes a zombified Frankenstein wannabe monster that still continues to kill people around the lake until he starts doing so randomly, and the latest sequels, Part 9 and Jason X, completely wrecked the antagonist, the franchise and the traditions for me.

There is no doubt that Friday the 13th is guilty of the worst kinds of horror sequels possible for me, but at least the first trilogy of the franchise is entertaining, interesting and even scary.

Favorite title: Friday the 13th Part 2(1981)

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

Whatever you do, don't fall asleep. The female protagonist Nancy Thompson tells us about these golden words of advice in A Nightmare on Elm Street, trying to warn everyone from the frightful demonic entity known as Freddy Krueger, the man born out of a hundred crazy maniacs raping a nun.

The story of the premise, especially what the original already established is simply put an interesting take on the theme of dreams, combining that with horror and its dream similarity; nightmares. Pop up an evil villain from beyond, manipulating everyone’s dreams with deadly results and you’ve got Freddy’s motivation throughout the movies.

And despite that not every sequel was polished well, at the very least does each film have unique kinds of horror for you to find out. Because of the freedom the manipulation of dream killing has, the directors and their teams had free reign and fun to benefit from this rule the original made, thought out by Wes Craven. So basically each movie is enjoyable by itself, even if standard cinema qualities such as acting, cinematography or editing are poorly done. Speaking quite in general now though when talking about what made some of them below average. Anyway, there is no doubt for me that the franchise is very enjoyable, mainly because of the unique horror premise.

Favorite title: A Nightmare on Elm Street(1984)

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is a popular TV series about a chemistry teacher gone bad by the time he hears of his dreadful news of having lung cancer. As if he is finally awake and alive now, Walter White leads a double life of a family man and a “cooker”, who eventually turns into a force of a drug producer along with his partner and former student of him, Jesse Pinkman, a professional but addictive drug dealer. Along the way, both of them must keep their personal lives stable with their hidden illegal work, while their partnership usually hangs on the edge because of the dangerous events happening, and because of their unmistaken differences.

The first season was just a warm-up, and the latter episodes of season 2 is where things started to get more thick and interesting. Some highlights of the series are in S2 a turtle with a severed head on its top walking around in the desert, then blowing up, killing policia, and Walter throwing a chemical on the ground and the building explodes partly in S1. The series continues to hold up well with Season 3, and Season 4 seems to be the best one yet.

It’s one of those series that doesn’t necessarily have a deep plot, but the direction of it and it's characters just continued to let me watch it. Character and plot development both are well done and most of the time, I wondered what would happen next. “Het kijkt lekker weg” I would say, in Dutch.
 

Rating: 8.0(Thanks to Season 4!)

Current State of Affairs for Nintendo

As a multinational corporation that has made many people happy especially in the last several decades, it continues to work hard, innovative and fulfilling towards their large group of costumers, stock holders and third parties.

Hardly anything of actual criticism can be said about Nintendo in present time, but sometimes the course of waiting inbetween quiet periods and exciting ones can be tiresome. Especially when we are talking about the latest generation available.

The Nintendo 3DS has yet to become a hot new handheld for me. Of course, this is it's first year, and look for example how many years the original Game Boy or the Nintendo DS had gotten out of their long life periods. From 1989 to 1998 and from 2004 to still ongoing.

But this is perhaps the first time since the Nintendo 64 days that I hold on to 1 game for so long, that it has been dissapointing so far that my 3DS has literrally been collecting dust since what, May 2011? It's true, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition wears off once you have beaten the game with every character and have seen enough of it's online mode that occassionally lags for me.

As pleasant as the free "Ambassador Program" is for early purchasers of the 3D handheld(which is equivalent with the price drop), as well as the recently available free The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition is with actual new content, it does not cloud the fact that the system still lacks killer AAA titles from anyone.

Due to a lack of worthy 3DS software currently in store, I have been forced to look elsewhere for great modern gaming, and thankfully that role has been fulfilled with titles such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Xenoblade Chronicles at the moment.

The lazy remakes of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Star Fox 64 3D are ignored by me, not only because I played these about 12 years ago already, but most of all because there is no thrilling new content for us to experience. Seriously, if only Nintendo did the same procedure as they did with Metroid: Zero Misson or Super Mario 64 DS for example, then a lot more people would be willing to rebuy a part of their childhood games.

Promising future titles have been hinted and hyped at since E3 2010, and am I the only one that notices this? I know that they are coming, and it's good that we have been up to date with many of them, but it has been annoying me that because there is nothing worthy to play on the 3DS at the moment, I have been reading news for the same titles for far too long.

Finally, in the next month, Nintendo comes out with Super Mario Land 3D, which will be much needed in order for me to fire up my 3DS with pride once again. After that, Mario Kart 7 is next in December, and recently it has been announced by Capcom that Resident Evil: Revelations will be in Europe on January the 27th.

Good things are coming, but the wait has been long. And as for the Wii U, well, Nintendo said that the year 2011 was mainly for the 3DS, and that next year it will be focusing on their latest console. So, in a fair way, I don't have anything to add towards that system, as the news has been scarce about it anyway.

So yes, I know that Nintendo has nothing to be afraid of from whining people like me, but still, it doesn't hurt to give out comments once in a while for one of the most beloved companies out there in recent times. And Nintendo knows what they are doing. They have a gigantic schedule of different responsibilities and promises to make towards different kinds of gamer groups, and it takes time to please everyone.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

The only reason this short but to the point review took a while for me personally because I wanted to "have Deus Ex". That means that I agreed on beating hard mode and boy does it live up to its name, being much more difficult than the original game.

A very well developed prequel to the original, Human Revolution is delightful in the sense that it carries over mature themes like the original, and improves on it by being more graphic, intellectual and making more sense. Implementing better graphics, inserting a new communication manipulation system as well as a well thought out hacking mini game and being more difficult than the first game creates a new entry for the franchise that can easily stand on both feet by it's own.

The 3 reasons why this gets a slightly lower score than it's future sequel is that first of all, the original is a longer game. Secondly, the soundtrack is superior there as well, and finally, the boss fights in this game are uninspiring, wrongfully designed and painfully annoying. The ones in the original were quite obnoxious and even odd for boss battle standards, but they aren’t as bad as the ones in here.

We have seen augmentations before, but perhaps not as polished or balanced as the ones in here. Everytime you would obtain enough experience points, or collect a praxis, you would be able to upgrade one of your inner systems by the use of augmentations. Pretty much all of the upgrades are useful by their own, but do know what kind of playstyle you will be going. If you are going all rambo on the enemies, do not consider to use your scarce upgrades into hacking skills.

Once again does the game end with you choosing for a faction or a “truth” to enter the world. The voice acting and dialogue by the way were marvelous to read and the music was impressive and fitting. The multipath system is still intact, which is good. A minor concern is that the A.I. isn’t the most intelligent, but other than that, Human Revolution will most likely surprise you with its content and eye for details.

If you are looking for a first person shooter with way more to offer than just killing everything on sight, Human Revolution would be a good start, with it's interesting storyline about ethics, prosthetics, conspiracy theories and the evolution of man and machine.

Rating: 8.4

Humanity is Selfish

I was in the mood of craving wisdom, therefore I will give out a few thoughts drifting the mind:

-Mankind is too busy developing their own lives.

-Even the most social person does this in order to satisfy their own ego.

-Terrestrial life is a fact, but is it not almost probable that aliens exist out there?

-Actual relationships embody desire and the involved love thy partners, but their feelings are in reality experienced by themselves.

-We pursue our needs in the name of the self.

-Mutual interests are of course true, but first and foremost the beneficiary is individual.

Concisely, humanity is quite selfish.

My Ear Hummering Story

Once, in my teenage years, there was a time when suddenly my right ear began to hum permanently every day. Something was wrong. Usually whenever I had a cold, both of my ears would "close" and render me hearing things to a lesser extent.

Whenever I would sneeze my way out while closing the holes of my nose, my ears would pop up and "open", allowing me to hear things normally once again. I quickly felt that this wasn't exactly normal either whenever feeling sick, and upon questioning others about it, I have heard mixed reviews about it.

But this time was different. My right ear that constantly was humming, would not stop, ever, for whole days. The effect isn't quite the same as whenever someone stays around a very loud discotheque for too long, or if a loud explosion happened close by. Sure, our ears would make a high beeping sound then, temporarily, but my hummering was easily and arguably worse.

The only explanation I can give of the sound and the feeling is a constant continuation of  hearing "vr/zoom, vr/zoom, vr/zoom, vr/zoom" , each part counting for one second, and at times, especially whenever I was training or being busy with Kenpo Karate, my right ear would go "VR/ZOOM, VR/ZOOM, VR/ZOOM, VR/ZOOM", hindering me hideously while my teachers where speaking to the groups.

Worst of all was when I would go to my bed, and I tried to sleep, while this hummering never stopped. This, in particular, happened for a full year in my life.

Most of this blog post so far has been generally speaking over a course of roughly 3 years. I would also like to say that occasionally it would be my left ear instead of my right one going crazy. But now, let's get further with my story.

After checking with a doctor specializing into throat, nose and ears, he diagnosed that next towards my ears being filthy from inside, in my right ear, a small bone was missing. A crucial one that potentially could had caused this unexpected sudden hummering.

As my ears where getting tested, it came to be known that my left ear hears better than my right, 70 percent towards 40 to be more precise. That was quite a revelation considering the huge difference towards them.

Then it was decided to perform a surgery on the right ear. Now I don't really remember the exact time periods and dates, but let me tell you the results after the surgery; The small bone that was missing(I think it was the hammer bone) got replaced by a dummy replicating it, both of my ears got cleaned and nothing else unusual was found. My hummering was completely gone, And I was happy to acknowledge and feel that.

Fast forward to about six months later, the buzzing effect returned in my right ear. What a surprise. I went to the hospital once again, but this time, my doctor got replaced by another one with the same specialty. What I remember from this doctor is that he usually said upon each visit that my ears looked beautiful plus clean, and that nothing was wrong with them. However, my incident was not gone, so me and my parents pressured him into getting with a solution.

I think that I got some kind of earspray first for a couple of months, with no good results. The buzzing continued to happen, most of the time in my right ear, but never at the same time for both ones. After visiting the doctor for another time, my second surgery was decided. This time, another thoroughly search through both ears and the so called middle ear would once again happen.

The results were that my ears got cleaned, again, my dummy ear was still working properly and nothing else was found. Surprisingly, my hummering was gone once again, and the doctor then said that time would be needed for the right ear to recover fully.

Fast forward to another five or six months, it returned, again. This time I was getting mad and worried. I mentioned before that I once experienced this painful and annoying occurence for a full year once. This was that period, while I regularily had new visits with my second doctor.

And every time, he always said that my ears were clean, beautiful and working correctly, and whenever I spoke of my pain, time to recover would be the answer according to him.

After visiting him like 5 times in a full year, I decided to suggest getting a second opinion of my original doctor that also still worked at the hospital. And upon getting tested by him for my ears, I shockingly heard that my ears weren't working properly at all. I don't remember the exact details, but if my ears would not get a third surgery in a short period, my hearing would damage further and lower down even more.

Without further delay, a fast surgery came and went, while I was also mad at the other doctor now, claiming that nothing was wrong with my ears in a dangerous way. Finally, the results were truly satisfying, and a twist happened. My dummy ear got removed while the ORIGINAL hammer bone got found in my right ear, some part of my body that never got spotted in my first two surgeries. Amazingly, the doctors were able to relocate the bone to its original position, restoring some kind of connection with the Tympanic Membrane (the ear drum) amongst other parts of the right ear, which finally removed the hummering.

It only returns in a minor state whenever I feel sick involving the ears and the nose, but that only happens for a maximum of three days at most. I'm really glad that for the rest of my life, it is gone now. Now only if my actual hearing could be improved in a medical way, then a whole new world would open for me.

Angst

#630

A grim and pitiful look into a serial killer’s life, Angst features unusual camera angles which was nice to see. Story is pretty much about the life of a serial killer, like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer(1986) or Man Bites Dog(1992). With a German voiceover narrating the story, pretty much everything was explained, and the killer’s reason for killing seemed to be consistent. 

He was abused a lot as a child, he did not want to be ever alone and creating fear is what excited him the most. After his release, he wanders around, looking for a new start not for a new life, but for the same old; that of killing people. In this case, he coincidentally targets a group of which they remind him of his family. This long scene is very well done with the camera while the narrator, the psychopath himself, narrated more about his sad past.
 
The serial killer’s actions looked like a novice, but eventually he succeeded in tying them up. The handicapped son ends up in a bath of water, the mother is strangled and gets an overdose of her pills and the pretty daughter is brutally knifed to death and on top of that, the killer literally slurps her blood out of her neck. The music was dark and Angst was a disturbing movie in overall, highly recommended for those looking for a genuine murder act. Almost authentic.

The ending is kind of ironic, how he walks into that café once again and the same people stare at him and his clothes. The fundamental emotion known as fear will always be one of the most fascinating things to ponder about.

Rating: 7.5

Gaming kan Sociaal zijn

This time I am doing something different. Unfortunately for English readers, you won't be able to understand my next blog unless you translate it.

Voor de mensen onder ons die het nog niet zeker wisten en vooroordelen bewust of onbewust gebruiken; gaming kan sociaal zijn. Dit klinkt voor sommigen als een dikke "duhh" maar andere personen zullen zich misschien nu afvragen waarom dat zo is.

Ik heb al een paar jaar een bepaalde document opgeslagen die ik ooit las op internet ergens. Ik vond het interessant om te lezen en daarom deel ik graag nu met jullie dit voor de nieuwsgierigen onder ons, ook al is het alweer een oud onderzoek:

"Henry Jenkins, directeur van MIT en een zeer bekende professor in de gaming, heeft een essay geschreven over de acht vooroordelen die er rondom games en gaming bestaan. Jenkins neemt alle vooroordelen onder de loep en weet deze goed te analyseren en te verwerpen. Het essay is niet bijzonder lang, maar zeker de moeite van het lezen waard.

1. Games leiden tot een epidemie van geweld onder jongeren.

Volgens de statistieken met betrekking tot criminaliteit in de Verenigde Staten is deze in 30 jaar nog nooit zo laag geweest. Onderzoekers toonden ook aan dat mensen die geweld plegen, minder media consumeren dan mensen die geweld liever achterwege laten. Het is waar dat de jongens die betrokken waren bij schietpartijen op high schools gamers waren. Maar dat is niet zo verwonderlijk aangezien bijna elke jongere wel eens gamed: 90% van de jongens en 40% van de dames. Het overgrote deel van jongeren dat gamed pleegt GEEN geweld. Volgens een rapport dat verscheen naar aanleiding van de Columbine shooting blijkt dat de voornaamste redenen voor jongeren om gewelddadige delicten te plegen een onstabiele thuisbasis is en niet de exposure aan bepaalde media.

2. Onderzoek linkt gewelddadige games aan aggressie van jeugd.

Deze onderzoeken komen voort van de hand van een relatief kleine groep onderzoekers die zich bezighouden met media effecten. Dit onderzoek bevat zo'n 300 onderzoeken naar media geweld. De meeste van deze onderzoeken zijn onvoldoende gegrond om er conclusies aan te verbinden en zijn bekritiseerd op hun methodologie. In deze onderzoeken worden beelden losgemaakt van verhalende contexten en dus in feite uit hun verband gerukt.

Respondenten worden vaak in aanraking gebracht met onbekende mediavormen of manieren waarop zij normaal niet met die mediavorm zouden omgaan. Al deze onderzoeken hebben wel een verband kunnen vinden tussen geweld en het spelen van games, maar geen enkel onderzoek is erin geslaagd om een direct verband aan te tonen.

3. Kinderen zijn de belangrijkste markt voor games.

Hoewel de meeste Amerikaanse kinderen computerspellen spelen, blijkt de grootste groep gamers ouders te zijn want jonge gamers van toen gamen nu nog steeds. Inmiddels bestaat 62% van de console markt en 66% van de PC markt uit gamers van 18 jaar of ouder. Ook de game industrie speelt in op deze hogere leeftijden. Veel ouders hebben dit nog niet helemaal door en letten niet op de leeftijdsindicaties op games. Er moet dus meer gedaan worden tegen game reclames die zich richten op jongere gamers met voor ouderen bedoelde content. Ook moeten ouders meer op de hoogte worden gebracht en zich er zelf in verdiepen.

4. Meisjes spelen geen games.

De games industrie is inderdaad een markt die vooralsnog voornamelijk uit mannen bestaat. Het aantal spelende dames neemt echter zeer snel toe. Vrouwen domineren mannen nu zelfs in web-based games. met de komst van The Sims steeg ook het aantal vrouwelijke gamers en dit zal in de komende jaren alleen maar toenemen.

5. Games worden gebruikt om soldaten te trainen, dus kinderen leren ook om te moorden.

Dat verklaart moraalridder David Grossman. Dit zou kunnen kloppen, indien het volgende zou gelden:

* alle educatie en training wordt verwijderd van betekenisgevende culturele contexten

* we ervan uitgaan dat mensen geen persoonlijke mening hebben en klakkeloos overnemen wat hen geleerd wordt

* we ervan uitgaan dat mensen direct dat wat ze leren in virtuele werelden implementeren in de echte wereld.

Militairen gebruiken games voor specifieke doeleinden met als doel er iets van te leren waar ze nut van hebben.

6. Games zijn geen noemenswaardige vorm van expressie.

Games zouden alleen maar leiden tot geweld en zouden ervoor kunnen zorgen dat jongeren de realiteit uit het oog verliezen. Veel games die tegenwoordig uitkomen zijn echter doordrenkt van ethische aspecten. Bovendien hebben gamers de leiding en is het juist interessant voor gamers om te zien welke keuzes zij maken en welke gevoelens daarbij komen kijken.

7. Gaming zorgt voor sociale isolatie.

Veel games zijn erg sociaal. Ongeveer 60% van de gamers speelt samen met vrienden. Zelfs games die alleen een singleplayer kennen worden vaak met meerdere mensen tegelijk gespeeld waarbij een de game bestuurt en de ander tips geeft of de tactiek bedenkt. Veel games kennen een multiplayer optie die online functies kent. Bovendien zorgt gaming voor veel internationale contacten tussen gamers.

8. Gaming stompt af.

In klassieke studies onder apen is aangetoond dat apen prima het verschil weten tussen vechten voor de lol en echt vechten. Voor mensen geldt hetzelfde. Spelen/gamen zorgt ervoor dat kinderen zich kunnen uiten op een manier die niet altijd gewenst is in de samenleving. Dat er kinderen zijn die moeite hebben de virtuele wereld los te zien van de echte wereld is niet kenmerkend voor de games industrie. Dit zou evengoed kunnen gelden voor andere media en hoogstwaarschijnlijk ligt de oorzaak bij het gezin."

Final Fantasy VII through XII

I shall continue now with the second part of my marathon. Remember, these reviews are unbiased because I managed to beat each title this year.

Final Fantasy VII

Rating: 8.6

What can I say? This is together with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time a juggernaut of a game regarding impact back in the 90’s, and during my FF marathon I finally, finally beat my first Final Fantasy game I played back in 1998. As I was passionate back then to beat it, I just could not defeat Safer Sephiroth after barely killing Bizarro Sephiroth before. In 2003, I got as far as defeating Hojo, sickening close towards the end. Both times, either I gave up, or other issues came, honestly, I cannot remember which. 

Final Fantasy VII is simply the best RPG in the franchise yet for its grand department from the 16-bit era, throwing in adorable yet very memorable graphics, another interesting storyline plus villain, a stunning soundtrack, a great deal of mini games(Fort Condor, Bike Chase, Gold Saucer) and just a streaming flow of good RPG gameplay, lowering the difficulty but with the entertainment perhaps risen because of the animations. Not only during battles, but also during story sequences. 

The materia battle system is another noteworthy new feature in FF7, it’s kind of a mix between the Esper and Relic system from FF6 as you decide which person gets what kind of ability/spell/summon/support and then, by gathering so called AP points, these materia stones will eventually level as well, sometimes granting better spells or stats.

The nostalgia is very strong for this one, especially when listening back towards some of the very best songs of the game, such as the Main Theme on the world map, Still More Fighting and Buried in the Snow. The main characters are widely known, I was very impressed with the Shinra Corporation and the main villain is both really. Glad to have finally beaten the antagonist Sephiroth without beating Ruby or Emerald weapon, without getting a Gold Chocobo and without the summon Knights of the Round, just wanted to point this out.

Many of us loved the game back in 1997, and I can definitely agree. Despite that everything has been said about it already positively as well as negatively, Final Fantasy VII will always be a juggernaut of an RPG.

Final Fantasy VIII

Rating: 7.4

The last Final Fantasy I played, before ignoring the series almost entirely through a decade. I got around the end of Disk 3 in 1999, but I barely remember where exactly. Upon beating it now, I remember that I was stuck in the maze city of Esthar. Part 8 is a mixed bag of good and bad things. The bad things are its pace, slow gameplay and ultimately weird story direction. The good things are the setting of it, improved graphics, a decent soundtrack with Balamb Garden sticking in my mind and 2 major systems which I will list below.

The Junction system is a complex system at first that lets you play with variables by adding a GF here or there, Magic here or there and then playing around with the various advancements they bring you. It is a detailed system where you can either manually or automatically set the settings, adding for example a certain element to a weapon, or boosting your magic defense with the Ice elemental. While playing around with this, the Guardian Forces level up through AP’s, gaining new stats and abilities for the main characters as well as their own.

Triple Triad is the most addictive mini game I have played in a RPG game. It is a collecting card game, with different rules depending on which region you currently are in. Monsters, bosses, GF’s and characters appear as cards, and generally the rule is to empower other cards by having a higher number than those they present towards either the east, the west, the south or the north. Later on, you can no longer pick cards by yourself, elemental rules come into play and collecting becomes more fun as well as dangerous, unless you abuse the save system. At times, I just had way more fun with it than Final Fantasy 8’s gameplay itself. I think that Triple Triad is an excellent game for a mini game.

I must note that level grinding is very tempting to do here. As you draw out stronger magic from enemies, another new feature, your level stats will go up faster. It is even wise to draw a lot in order to stock up on useful spells, as well as hidden summon GF’s. While the grinding is different here in FF8, I think it both has a high and a low point, for lowering the difficulty, but raising the customization and honestly, I had not seen the art of drawing magic before, so it gets a thumbs up for me. On minor notes, equipment is almost entirely gone and the currency system depends on how well your SeeD rank is, you can no longer grind it.

Looking at it all in overall, with its experimenting ways, FF8 is bold just like FF2, only it is much better. It even can get emotional at times with its odd story. However the bad things I mentioned do make me doubt the overall fun I had with it, thus lowering its rating. And it gets tedious after seeing a GF’s animation for the umpteenth time, because YOU WILL use them a lot, more than any other FF game.

Abusing the gameplay system here is a must. The first time in 1999, I had no idea why my normal attacks were so damn pathetic compared to the GF’s might. Playing it now in 2011, I breezed through the game. The amount of abuse to be found here is broken, no question about that. If you don’t know what you are doing, then be prepared for mindfucks and annoying hazards caused by enemies in the final stages. 

Lastly, this is the longest Final Fantasy game for me yet. I honestly felt that this game was way too long for its own good and that the length utterly destroyed the pacement of the game. And experiencing frame drops during many battles is just a sign of bad design in my opinion.

Final Fantasy IX

Rating: 7.5

After a long break from March through early June, I went back to my gaming deeds and needs and passion. Continueing on the Final Fantasy marathon, part IX happens to be only slighter better than VIII for some better upgrades here and there. As a so called return to the older final fantasies, it still feels quite different from other titles. I honestly didn’t care for the card system this time around, as I was focused on beating the game.

IX also had some decent songs, the story was alright and difficulty was quite normal, perhaps the easiest of the three PSX main Final Fantasies. However, Part IX simply did not grab the same momentum ride I had with Part IV, V and VI and is thus rather average. Kuja was a decent antagonist, but I wasn't fond of the twist surrounding him and Zidane, since it has happened before. Still, it’s not a bad game by any means.

Final Fantasy X

Rating: 5.7

Well, this is where Final Fantasy would change radically for the first time. Excluding only FFVIII’s rather more complex system here, the series always used its battle system traditionally (well FFII didn’t…), and now it truly has changed dramatically. Conditional Turn Based system is the new kid in town, which I actually first experienced with Mega Man X: Command Mission. Everything is fully 3D rendered now, there no longer is a world map and voice acting is also introduced , which isn’t that overwhelming, but I remember it being a big deal back in the day. The playable characters this time are perhaps the worst cast I have seen in the franchise yet.

It also has the most annoying mini game, which is Blitzball. The lip synchronization is horrible, as expected from JRPG’s with voiceovers. And it is cramped with cut-scenes, marking this pretty much the first game for me that has so many, it could be considered a movie instead. I cringe to think about the cut-scenes people have said about Metal Gear Solid 4, which I will play in the future.

The storyline is a major step back towards general RPG storytelling, and is severely damaged because of the linearity of the game. It is mainly about the Yevon religion and the duty of summoners to pray, while an unusual large group of guardians does their thing and in the end a very stupid creature was constantly bothering everyone destructively called Sin. Seymour can hardly be called an effective villain and is rather forgettable other than “that blue guy” from part X. OH AND THE WHOLE BLITZBALL STORY WAS LAME.

Final Fantasy X is the easiest RPG in the series yet, for including an abusive new system called the Sphere Grid to theoretically give any ability or stats to any character and for giving Wakka a friggin certain dodgeball that can instagib normal enemies. However, like FFVIII before, both of them happen to have hard as hell sidequest bosses that honestly are not even fun to try to beat. Which essentially means that the difficulty was either non-existent, or right in your face.

The only thing that was consistently designed is the new battle system here, everything else surrounding the game was terrible. I can’t believe that since Final Fantasy 7 was released, there hasn’t been a greater momentum. X happens to be the worst FF since I beat II some months earlier. I’m skipping on FFXI because I dislike MMORPG’s, especially discontinued ones, and I hope that the next one will be a saving grace.

Final Fantasy XII

Rating: 6.9

I must take my words back from FF X. XII happens to have changed even more, because the gameplay is totally different now. In fact, it all bears a striking resemblance towards MMORPG’s, but offline then. It is interesting and entertaining at first, but eventually becomes quite repetitive, like pretty much any generic RPG, but actually, I wasn’t really bothered by XII that much. Except for uninspired music, scarcity of gil and some enemies that are way too strong and could instant kill party members at certain points in the game. But that is all really.

I liked the changes this time more than before, as the game’s presentation is well done, including professional voice acting, better lip synchronization, a more decent cast (Not hard to overcome X’s) and a David Attenborough sound alike narrates the events happening, while a cut scene skip button IS available. The gameplay is only a bit less controllable, because normal attacks are automatic now (Active Dimension Battle).You can still cast spells, use techniques and items and summon beings. A new Gambit system is now used, which really is a luxury sounding name about how to let the A.I. issue orders by themselves. Lastly, the Sphere Grid has now turned into the Licence Board, which by design is less intriguing, but I think by available upgrades better balanced.

The story, NPC’s and such is alright. I did not read every wall of text the many NPC’s offered, but I’m sure that most of it was well written, looking at the text of the cutscenes. The story is passable for offering political themes in some kind of medieval based setting with of course science fiction and fantasy elements. While XII is a step back up in the right direction, it does not has, let’s say, the same magic and memorable characters that VI or VII had for me. XII also is perhaps, the most unlikely main Final Fantasy game yet, simply because it’s designed world looks so much like any generic MMORPG nowadays.

Well, this marks the end of my Final Fantasy marathon. I must say that I have seen average, great and disappointing titles, all for different reasons. It’s good however that each title is quite different from each other and it feels like a huge achievement that I managed to beat all of the main entries excluding XI, XIV and XIII. I will probably never try out the first two, and I am simply unable to play XIII yet, but I have heard very bad ominous things about it….can Squeenix be saved from my criticism? Until the future.

Final Fantasy I through VI

Back in January, I decided to do a crazy Final Fantasy marathon and finally beat all of those famous RPG's for once. So then I started on the first one, all the way up until number twelve while ignoring eleven and thirteen for different reasons. It took me until June to beat them all, and now I present to you, my opinion about each of them. The blog will be split up in two parts because many reviews await:

Final Fantasy

Rating: 5.9

Barely playable today. And by that I mean poor difficulty flow, tiresome level grinding with little benefits mostly, expensive currency, confusion among equipment and perhaps worst of all, limited use of spells. By far are later Final Fantasy titles more playable, more challenging(that’s right) and more fun. Which is quite logical, this being the first Final Fantasy and all. The first segment of the game is at certain spots just harsh with the difficulty, there is some research to be done if you have no clue what works and what doesn’t.

The game does pick up once you collect the better items but by then I already judged the whole game because of the struggles I experienced. Here, Squaresoft did their best and I approve of their efforts, but not every NES classic stood the test of time. I just wanted to get over with this and finally start beating Final Fantasy games for once.

Final Fantasy II

Rating: 5.5

Wow, just wow. Final Fantasy II might be the oddest experimental NES sequel I have beaten yet. After Super Mario Bros. 2, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, I stumble upon this much lesser loved title in the huge franchise. And another point of thought is that it brings out some of the most conflicting emotions I’ve had during reviewing a game. On the surface Final Fantasy II ain’t no big deal. It is your typical sequel title done right, the characters and plot are a vast improvement over the original, the inconveniences such as limited spell usage is practically much lessened, it’s a bigger game, the graphics are here and there improved, more music, better level design and other small things I noticed.

Then what in the blazes of the RPG universe does that lower rating mean then!? I’ll tell you, as others dared to set forth the message from the odd Famicom RPG title before; it’s the one and only unusual level system. 

Sure, the gameplay is largely intact and in some areas improved(such as healing in a much more relievable way, rather than using a potion 40 times on a hero in the original or otherwise I would had to use one of my limited healing spells), but the leveling system was both stunning and tedious for me as I played through this.

The catch is that every stat, spell and weapon level through specific ways, not just all blended as regular with experience points, but all pretty much separated. If you slash an enemy with a sword long enough, the sword itself will level up. If you cast Cure on someone for about as 100 times, it will level up. If your character gets hurt so much that it will be in its kneeling position, vitality will rise. If you emptied all of your magic or if you cured a certain character to max health, your intelligence in magic will level up. If you use physical damage on enemies long enough, you will gain power but will lose intelligence. I am not making this up.

What Final Fantasy II dared to do here is try to add in reality issues and thus suggested that if someone was violent enough, that person would lose intelligence. That just blows my mind, but let’s not mix fantasy with reality too much now. All I will say further from this system is that while I truly applaud Squaresoft, even more than before for trying this bold direction, it turns out to be an incredible frustrating game mechanic the longer you played.

I had to use extreme measures in order to beat this very frustrating and very, very tedious way of getting stronger, such as by speeding up the game and yes, even the infamous pseudo bug everyone is talking about. The original game was moving slow, but here it was as if time was slowed much more because of the individual leveling of everything and by my full opinion do I feel that this process completely shattered the appeal of this sequel. 

Simply put, if you did not level up your 3 prime characters and optionally your 4^th character properly, the game would drag your ass from Mysidia to Dist and leave you for death on the ground by its use of the late evil(literally in all its way) bosses. I really am starting to hate the confusion among properly preparing for certain things in NES titles, because here it is a large issue for me. Seriously, for some of these games, walkthroughs are a must. Status effects are even more annoying here and the late jump in difficulty is as wide as Russia, it’s very poorly done. The game was encouraging and even fun to play while venturing through a large portion of the game, getting further with the plot. But once you got to the final areas, well, enough already, the difficulty is just YUCK.

So much writing about this poor yet fascinating title, It’s a miracle that online NES reviewers such as the Angry Video Game Nerd haven’t touched upon it yet.

Final Fantasy III

Rating: 7.5

Finally a Fantasy that is actually decent enough to be an RPG, and by far the most fun to play out of the NES trilogy. Interface is finally improved towards RPG accessible standards, and it’s a huge relief to visually know what is equip able on whom. A system that was hinted at in the original Final Fantasy has now become a full fledged so called Job system, where characters can change their classes at any time, given that their equipment is depleted in the process. It isn’t a balanced system, but it sure is fun to see the diversity in these classes. 

The pace of Final Fantasy 3 is just right, the same goes for its difficulty. Sometimes there are hard bosses, but the Job system and local news of the towns are your 2 friends then. The levels in the game also had enjoyable placed secret areas with goodies awaiting, the music is the best yet and this seems to be the largest game of the trilogy, with the final areas becoming harder and harder. What else can I say? Both FF2 and 3 saw the birth of plenty of FF trademarks, Chocobos and Moogles for example. And it’s relieving to end the NES games with a good third part, nothing wrong with it at all.

Final Fantasy IV

Rating: 7.6

The most traditional of the Final Fantasies yet, with traditional music, traditional magic point usage and a traditional storyline, this time with actual emotional main characters to care about and well, kind of an opposite back then, you play as a Dark Knight for an evil empire. But that will soon change as you progress further in FF IV. Looks like gameplay, graphics and music became better yet again, and that is why I easily give IV a higher score than III. Regarding gameplay, I keep noticing small changes in it while I play each of the games, such as the interface, the battle speed, the way towns work etc. 

As for difficulty, it is more relaxing to play through than the NES trilogy, hence making it easier, but not that it becomes a breeze, especially when looking at the final dungeon. Final Fantasy I might be the classic game for many, but IV is the most accessible and the most personal RPG of the series so far.

Final Fantasy V

Rating: 7.8

Improves yet again from its predecessors, having a MUCH NEEDED dash button (I do not think this was implemented before), a much more polished Job system, a storyline with effective humor, an even better interface, smoother and faster gameplay and the music in overall is positive. Possibly also the longest FF yet, even longer than III, V is just a solid RPG in overall. Especially consider playing with the Job system here and figure out its remarkable advantages for the player. 

The main villain can finally be called somewhat memorable, because of his desire to consume everything, plus Exdeath is just an odd name. Most of all, Exdeath is just more involved than Chaos, Emperor, Dark Cloud or Zeromus in my opinion. The difficulty seems even more lowered than before.

Final Fantasy VI

Rating: 8.1

And now Flok has come to the first massive leap from previous titles, Final Fantasy VI. In the past I tried to play this title because of its massive popularity, but I never got into it, nor did I get further than the Opera part and entering Vector for the first time. Playing it now during my Final Fantasy marathon is an enormous joy, not only because I can see the connections with earlier titles, but now I can also see the very good qualities this game brought upon the RPG genre, including a massive playable character lineup where almost any time it would be up to the player which 4 characters he would use throughout the journey.

The graphics are finally improved in an obvious way, the music embodies the settings even more, the gameplay is pretty customized, reminding me of the Job system in FF3 and FF5, but this time with a twist, the summons(Espers) of the game play around with stats and spell boosts now. The Relics system is a nice touch, the characters fight in their own interesting way, each one getting more unique than the other.

And the story is the first one I can say is poured with quality in overall, most of the main characters have developed backgrounds and emotions, the citizens of towns are more alive and best of all, Kefka is simply a classic power hungry villain with a maniacal personality of insanity. Contrary to popular belief, this game can be hard, especially when you have no knowledge of weaknesses or strong acquirements, and the Fanatic’s Tower and Kefka’s Tower are just that.

This marks the end of the first part of this marathon of RPG reviews.