Electro-nic a.k.a. Fly to Korea and check into a WoW clinic

I'm unemployed these days, or, to my credit, I'm waiting for the notification of a second interview. In the meantime I could be giving private lessons or searching for other work, but I've found laying around listening to music and playing Tactics Ogre is pulling me deeper and deeper into the shallow hole of Tactical RPGs. Why shallow? Because at some point the fact that you could have let the game play itself (there's an option to turn on the AI for your characters) for the last sixty or so hours hits you like a shovel to the back of your head and you wake up wondering where your time has gone taking meager satisfaction in the fact that the AI is often dumb as bricks frequently adding unnecessary time between your character's turns, attacking the strongest unit with the weakest weapons, wasting items, or having a mage charge blindly into a beserker's axe.
I recently wiped the floor with my mother at Scrabble (non-sequitor that eventually will have a point), and she noted that it was surprising that someone who often spoke another language was quite good at using English. I neglected to respond with "learning a foreign language generally improves the knowledge of your first language and, more importantly games are what I do. Scrabble is less about linguistic ability and more about short game (maximizing points per turn) and long game (keeping vowels and consonants balanced in your letter tray while waiting to use higher scoring letters on multiplier spaces). Valkyrie Profile is a dungeon crawler where you have limited time to train characters to send to Valhalla so playing the game becomes about maximizing the amount of experience you get per battle by organizing the combination of your party's attacks so that your characters either hit enemies up into or in the air almost every attack. The enemies drop experience crystals when they are hit into the air. These crystals multiply the total number of experience points you receive in each fight. Fighting battles like this becomes very tedious. My characters in that game are now several levels above the enemies and while I usually could finish an encounter in one turn, it pays more to farm crystals and this process takes about three times as much time.
Last night, all I could dream about was Tactics Ogre. Two months ago I was almost yelling at my girlfriend because she was keeping me from playing Valkyrie Profile. A month ago I was being really awkward with friends because I wanted to play Dead Space 2 every night all night. In high school, I had a similar addiction to the .Hack and KOTOR series where in a week I had finished a game that took developers years to make. Back then we said we were hooked on the electronic nicotine or the electro-nic.
Now, I have so many things I want to do like get buff; learn to play the guitar and drums; read books; and hang out with people, but I'm hooked on staying in and playing games. It's the thing I've done the most consistently in my life, and is consequently the easiest thing to do and, for some reason, still the most fun thing to do. I found seven or more other games on the internet that I've wanted to play for a long time, and thank god for the godless sin of pirating because I can play them affordably. The other thing I've been doing is going through a song collection of almost 30000 while playing said games, and that is something I've wanted to do for a long time. Before I was playing games and watching TV shows, and that was great too. I've seen some good stuff that I'm happy with and I'm glad to say that I don't need to watch TV anymore. It's better as a group activity like when watching Thai soaps with the girlfriend and family.

So, as much as I'm sad that I've used so much time to play games I think it's always worked for me. Every time I start a new game I feel somewhat intimidated (albeit wildly excited) by the game's system and the possibilities it represents, which is a similar feeling when first experiencing anything new. I feel less challenged by new things as given time I always seem to find some way to get a handle on it.

The other solution to the electro-nic problem is the Less-is-More approach that I found great in The 3rd Birthday (PE3). It's essentially a squad-based 3rd person RPG where you change the unit you control by "diving" into another unit's body. Unlike Ghost Recon or some of those other games that were really popular but I never appreciated when they were popular, when you are not controlling a unit that unit becomes as silly as a toddler and will frequently do tactically stupid shit that causes that unit to die quickly [Sidenote: I didn't like Ghost Recon so much 'cause the AI-controlled units kept stealing my kills. I should get over this.]. You can remedy this by diving into that unit or aiming your selected weapon at an enemy (The Twisted!) and waiting for a "Crossfire" gauge to charge. When the gauge is full, all units in the area who are behind cover will fire simultaneously and continuously on that particular enemy until the gauge runs down again. You are also given certain genetic abilities which are passive (like an energy shield that provides some defense from attacks) or have a chance to activate when you fulfill certain conditions (Crisis Core has a similar system). The chance these powers have to activate depends on their level and the game's difficulty. At higher levels, the powers are less likely to activate. You also have a Liberation gauge which activates after your character sustains or deals a certain amount of damage depending on the weapon (pistols raise the liberation gauge higher). You also have the ability to buy and customize weapons that you bring along with you into the body you've died (yeah, it's a little bit of a weird concept). There are five basic types of weapons (pistols, rifles, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenade launchers, and the special type like a machine gun or laser weapon). Some weapons are powerful than others. Other weapons have a higher impact on your enemy and allow you to perform an "overdive kill" where you dive into your enemy's body and attempt to implode it from the inside. Sniper rifles allow you to target weakpoints on an enemy's body. Hitting these weakpoints has a high impact on the enemy that also allows you to perform an "overdive kill."
Does it sound intense? I fucking thought it was. It's also damn hard to figure out when to use what and why and how and a bitch to level up your passive and activated special powers, but the game itself only has five levels. Rather than spend all the time to create a longer experience, the developing team focused on making a really-refined short experience. They tried their damndest to make an interesting if not somewhat confusing and bizarre story. The music in the game is great. The voice-acting is pretty damn good. The scenarios in the game are varied and well thought out. I was find with playing the same parts over and over again because I enjoyed the experience of it all. It also gave me an excuse to put the PSP down every once and a while before repeating a sequence. I feel like a better gamer after completing that game.
So, I don't get why people didn't like it. I really liked it. I still wanna beat it on "Genocide" difficulty where they give you an even smaller tactical advantage over The Twisted.

If you make a tighter game shorter, it will be more fulfilling. Parasite Eve 1 was short and still a great game. Fighting an evil floating mitochondria bitch in a New York City carriage with the horses pulling on carriage on fire and screaming like hell was an outstanding experience. Dead Space 2 was shorter than its predecessor but the battles were intense and it was fucking scary throughout. Portal 1 was short, but fucking on-point.

Less is more.

Moving' Swiftly (g)aming Badassly.

The Older Gamer - Resistance: Retribution

I turned 24 yesterday, which makes me older but not old. As I have almost reached my mid 20s, it's important to take a bit of stock and think about what habits I should keep or shed, and...video games aren't going to be one of those for a while. I will be the adult playing the gun game at the arcade, greeted and pestered by his mallrat students. I will be the guy who pulls out a PSP in the back of a taxi or sitting on a train. That's me and if you're reading this, maybe it's you too. I've been playing games since Nintendo now and I've seen video games change. They're implemented more into other everyday devices like cellphones or social networks like Facebook. Video games are easier to play and more attractive either in their lifelike or surreal presentation. The biggest change for me is I want to be challenged.
When I was younger, I could never understand the idea of a hard mode. Why the hell would I want to repeat the same level over and over just to make sure I "got it right?" And the answer I've found is that it (A) makes the game last longer, (B) it brings a level of realism to the game to be seemingly disadvantaged against overwhelming odds, and (C) it is more in line with the developers' idea of how the game should be played because the player must learn to use any advantage given to his disposal. The best example of (C) I can think of is Baldur's Gate 2 where the toughest battles are won by the smallest margins.
Resistance: Retribution is another really good example. Unlike the ps3 iterations where you play a human/chimera hybrid in Resistance: Retribution you're human, a grunt. What makes your character special is his diehard determination to avenge his brother by killing every alien fucker to step in his sights. To win the game on its highest difficulty, you have to learn how to use each weapon and its secondary function, but also when to use said weapon and when ammo is short you better have a backup plan. In doing this, I found myself drawn further into the game. Running out into the middle of combat was suicide. Firing non-stop instead of carefully timing bursts from cover got me killed quite often. It felt more real. One of the bosses is a human/chimera hybrid who taunts you with his new power. Your character's response is "Do you know how many chimera I've killed? Today alone?" and I agreed, "Do you know, shitbitch? A fucking lot! And they weren't no pushovers neither." If you've read Preacher, think of that last fight between Cassidy and Preacher.
In many ways, starting and finishing a game is like finishing a school project so that at the end, you grade yourself on how well you've done. If you've beaten it on easy, you can say "I got to the end. I beat that," but it's a lot more satisfying if you can say, "That game had nothing I couldn't handle." I think that's a bit more rare. I definitely got lucky sometimes in Retribution, but I spent an hour and a half with the final boss, getting down the pattern of pushing the button to knock down the boss' shields without getting hit or fried to death by her bighead lightning bullshit then doing as much damage as I could before she raised her shields back up and I had to deal with a swarm of lesser enemies then knocking her shields down again, doing as much damage to her as possible, then dealing with the swarms, and taking off the last of her health. As a bonus handicap, I had to deal with my PSP's quirky joypad which likes to get stuck so that the character takes a dainty stroll instead of running for his life.
I've watched kids play games and cringed at their lack of timing and strategy, their lack of regard for how long an attack will take and how vulnerable they are while performing said attack, their willful refusal to use the block button, their mismanaged hand-eye coordination that pushes buttons out of fear and excitement instead of as a result of cool collected concentration. So, yeah, I still play games, but I don't play them like a child. The games I play are hard and I make them harder, so I'm fucking good unless you're talking about FIFA or something where I have no idea how to get the stupid ball in the goal and I still think slide-tackling the goalie is funny as fuck.

I'm also a pretty shit driver.

Money-making Shouldn't make you (g)ive up your hobbies from Before,

Lynny not Brawny Johnson

The other sister

Square released Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. It had some really poor writing, poor voice-acting, the characters were barely three dimensional, but otherwise it's a solid game. It's a Kingdom Hearts game. If you've played them before, you'll like this one. It's fun. It's colorful. Your attacks are damn cool. The enemies are kind of interesting. The ones I hate the most are the ones that throw shit at you continuously. The biggest difference from other Kingdom Hearts is that instead of only having basic magics and timed button presses to do special attacks, you choose, make, and utilize up to 8 out of over a hundred different attacks plus finish commands and if you use a set of certain commands your command style changes. You go from normal attacks to Diamond Dust, Wingblade, or Ghost Drive attacks. You can also d-link and use another character's attacks and finish commands. You can also Shotlock which is where you lock on to the enemies and shoot magic out of your keyblade or dash through them. If you don't play the game on its hardest difficulty, you are seriously overpowered compared to the enemies in the game. While playing through the story, you go to the same worlds as three different people. Each character has a different set of events in each world, but I did feel some bad deja vu at some points. Finishing all three parts unlocks a final episode and will make you badly want to play the next game.
In comparison, Crisis Core is Square's ugly, down syndrome baby. The story is bizarre and only really touching at those moments when Zack knows he's working for an evil company, but knows that the evil he's fighting is worse. Otherwise it's all pretty goddamn cliche. They keep making these FF7 games and movies, but they don't put in as much effort as they did into FF7 itself. The experience system is interesting as your character and materia level up at random according to a slot machine. Winning battles gives you points that will help you meld your materia, which become very important towards the end of the game. On top of the story, there are missions you can go to. There are about five different environments for this mission, and they aren't that unique. It's very similar to Mass Effect's side-mission system. Feels like laziness, poor craftmanship, deja vu, and all that when you compare it to other games with very unique side missions like...the original Final Fantasy 7, Ratchet & Clank, or Knights of the Old Republic. I still haven't finished the story yet. I'm at the point where I killed the main baddy, but now it looks like I actually didn't kill him.

Japan you need to relearn how to tell a good fucking story, and quit this cookie-cutter make really impressive visuals and good gameplay, but tie it together with a cheesy cliche story bullshit.

The same can be said for that new Alice movie, especially with that fucking Wizard of Oz ending.

Migrating to Southeast asia is hazardous to (g)aming Believers