I recently played and beat Chrono Cross, and let me tell you, it was quite a struggle. Due to a leveling up system where you really only level up when you beat a boss or when you fight the first few enemies after a boss, I had lots of frustration trying to defeat enemies that were just too tough for me, which was helped when I got the Mastermune, but still. I nearly quit the game several times due to this, and while I can now say that I did enjoy it, I still have mixed feelings about it. I loved the battle system, even though I didn’t like that most battles were pointless due to your stats never going up. I thought the story was interesting, while at the same time, I just couldn’t get attached to any of the characters. Continue reading What Makes a Game a Sequel?→
I’ve already listed all the game I played this crazy year of 2014, and now it’s time for all the games I need to play in 2015 AKA my gaming backlog! Not including games not yet purchased… Continue reading Listmas: Games I Need to Play Next Year→
How wonderful that we’re doing Listmas again this year, as it was quite a fun holiday, and I’m just a person who enjoys listing things, no matter what time of year that may be. This has been a crazy year for gaming, so I thought today’s list would be a list of the games I played this year. Look at me go!
Rayman Legends, PS3, which somehow managed to top the masterpiece that came before it
Final Fantasy VIII, PS1, a game that makes you want to conserve your magic at all costs, only to have it get periodically stolen during the final boss, the only time you feel like you can actually use it
Final Fantasy VI, PS1, the inspiration for the first costume I ever made and for getting me into masquerade competitions
Final Fantasy IX, PS1, a game I strangely couldn’t get into, even when, at the same time, it was pretty darn fun
Chrono Trigger, PS1, a nice break from the turn-based RPG’s I had played up until that point and which included some pretty neat time travel
Chrono Cross, PS1, which was both fun and the bane of my existence, considering they didn’t let you get experience from fighting most of the time, and the bosses could be so darn ridiculous
Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal, PS2, my second playthrough, but my first time completing Annihilation Nation and collecting all sewer crystals, thanks to a map I completely forgot existed before
New Super Mario Bros U, Wii U, which I’m still in the process of playing, with much gusto
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Wii U, which is a lot like the prequel, which accounts for the lessened gusto and less motivation to complete it any time soon…
Pikmin 3, Wii U, which makes fruit far more fun than I ever would have expected; I just wish Brittany would shut up
As I’ve been saying, I have been busy catching up on a bunch of old games I was told were the duck’s quack, and one game I beat rather recently was “Chrono Trigger”, a game made by the same developers as “Final Fantasy”. The story involves our heroes traveling through time in their efforts to prevent the monster Lavos from bursting forth from the surface of the planet and causing the apocalypse. While I would have liked to have had a better main villain than a monster, I definitely see why people have so many good things to say about it. Continue reading I Don’t Have the Patience for Multiple Endings→
With Cary and Jacob already on their quests to complete “Metroid Prime” and “Final Fantasy VII”, respectively, it got me thinking of a quest of my own that I would like to accomplish one day. My own game to complete is “Final Fantasy VIII”. I have reached the final boss, but I just can’t beat it. I have tried time and time again, but I just can’t seem to prevail. And I need help, or else I may never overcome my obvious incompetence, and that’s why I write this plea to all you fellow gamers out there, with one big question….
Some time ago, I replayed “Kingdom Hearts”, a game I had gone through two times prior, and yet, for some reason, this was the first time that something struck me. Video game bosses are weird. Not just the concept (why are they even called “bosses” to begin with?), but…you know what, have you ever beaten “Kingdom Hearts”? Or really, any Square Enix game for that matter. Because, sometimes, they have the absolute strangest abominations you’ve ever seen. It almost seems to be a requirement in such games that the final boss is the most distorted and ridiculous creature they can possibly come up with.
And so, when I was battling the final boss of “Kingdom Hearts” during my third playthrough, it was only now that it hit me just how goofy the end of the game is (goofy, not Goofy). Honestly. I mean, okay, I can accept the earlier fight against Ansem, when he has that funky Heartless thing hovering behind him all throughout the entire battle (which would bother me, personally, as I don’t do well with anyone breathing down my neck, monster or not-monster alike). But, then, once you beat him, you have another fight that is so much more absurd, where Ansem and his funky minion thing have somehow merged with a…I don’t know…a psychotic cruise ship of death that is floating out in nothingness, with faces all over it (including one face with a chin that could poke your eye out…nay, to be more accurate, it could poke your entire face out). And I don’t know why I never thought that much about it before, but the last time I saw this thing…
Sometimes, I like to think about how things would be if I made different decisions. Like, if I had never decided to buy the PlayStation 2, my first venture outside my previously Nintendo-only domain, what games would I be playing now? What would my collection look like? I’m sure we all have times where there is a great game we didn’t plan on getting, but we ended up playing it because of what a friend said about it or because it caught our attention in the store during a search for a completely different game. And when this happens, I often think about how close I came to missing out on such a good game. And maybe we all do that, or maybe it’s just me. Because I think too much into things sometimes.
And when I get to thinking, I realize all manner of things. If I didn’t just happen to spot “Okami” and “Vexx” and decide to give them a try, I would have missed out on some fantastic games. And “Portal 2”, actually, was thanks to good things Cary and Hatm0nster said about it, or I would have never bought the game. (Thanks, guys.) Seriously, I saw it in the stores, and all I thought was, “That game sure has a weird cover”, and that was that. Then, I heard people talk about this game, looked it up one day, and there it was, a game I had seen before and just simply passed by. Small world. Or just, small video game section of the store. I dunno. But, it’s weird. Also, thanks to more good reviews on blogs I’ve read, I bought “Chrono Trigger” and “Chrono Cross”. Never heard of those games before, but now I own them, and I really look forward to playing them. Continue reading Great Games I Almost Missed→
