It's not much of a secret that I am terrible at beating games. I wouldn't say I have a short attention span, but longer games usually get somewhat formulaic and repetitive, so I'll stop playing for a while and play something else. That new game quickly becomes my main focus and I forget the former game even exists. Case in point: I have started the original Mass Effect three times. I love everything I've seen and heard about the Mass Effect universe. I love sci-fi and Mass Effect seems like a wonderful world filled with a colourful and vibrant backstory. The first time I played it I got to the first driving section and absolutely hated it, put the controller down and just never picked it up again. The second time I powered on though that part, but ended up getting distracted by another game not too long after. The third time I gave up half way though the citadel stuff because I was doing the same shit I had already done 2 times before.

OK, maybe I do have a short attention span.

Right now, I'm trying to play through Final Fantasy VI. 16-bit (and earlier) console games are a bit of a blank spot in my gaming knowledge. Prior to getting a PlayStation, most of my gaming was confined to the Amiga (and the Philips CDi, but the less said about that the better) so I missed out on a ton of great SNES and Mega Drive games. Apart from the obvious games that have been re-released a million times on a million different platforms (e.g.Mario, Sonic etc.) I've played very few console games from prior to the Playstation. That is something I want to rectify, and what better way to start than with Final Fantasy VI, a game that many consider to be one of the greatest RPG's of all time.

So, fully aware of my attention span issues, I set off on my adventure. It was going along swimmingly. I was loving the story, the characters and the world. The plot was fantastic. It was keeping enough suspense to make it intriguing, but bringing in new plot developments regularly enough to keep things moving forward at a good pace. The story behind the Espers and the War of the Magi was really appealing, and the current war with the Returners fighting Kefka and the Empire was engaging. The characters were varied and interesting, with the world itself being just as diverse.

10 hours in I was feeling great. This was finally going to be the game that breaks my long string of unfinished games. But I always feel like that when I'm playing through the early parts of a lengthy game. Going back to an earlier example, I felt the exact same way about Mass Effect while I was playing through the Citadel sections for the first time. And we all know how that ended.

As I continued, the game started to take it's toll. It became more repetitive. I had to spend time grinding enemies on the Veldt to teach Gau new rages, and to learn new spells from the Magicite. I powered on through this for a while and made my way through Zozo (what the fuck is up with that town?) and on to the Magitek Research Facility. Just over a week ago I reached my breaking point. With the game clock at 17 hours and 51 minutes, I couldn't play any more. Having just infiltrated the research facility, fought a bunch of difficult enemies and gained 7 new types of Magicite, it would time to do some more grinding. I need to learn some new spells and teach Gau more rages. I would be crazy to just plough through the story without learning new stuff first, but I just didn't feel any desire to engage in more repetitive battles.

But, my story isn't over yet. After giving it a break of just over a week I think I'm ready to jump back into it. I want to further the story, I'm happy to do a certain amount of grinding to achieve that. I think I've figured out how to play lengthy games. I just need to take a break for a while in the middle. Normally within a week of putting down the controller on a lengthy experience I would have found another game to occupy my time and I wouldn't touch the game I stopped playing. But I have stopped myself from doing that. I have played some games, namely Frozen Synapse (which is awesome) and the original Rayman (which I haven't played since childhood and is full of nostalgia) but nothing super in depth. And that has kept my desire to continue the story in FF VI alive.

So, will I complete the game? I certainly hope so. It might take another break after a further 10-15 hours, but hopefully I'll be able to remain undistracted and keep on going to the end. I'll be sure to keep you updated on how it's going.

UPDATE 2: Heard back. I was unsucessfull. I'm absolutely gutted.

UPDATE: Had the interview yesterday. I think it went well. I don't want to get my hopes up though. I should hear if I got the job today.

Hey guys. I normally don't like to talk about my personal life on Giant Bomb, but I want some advice and I thought I might as well give you guys a shot. So there is this girl I like... OK, that was a bad attempt at a joke about girl advice threads... Moving on...

As any of you following my twitter account will probably be aware of, I had a telephone interview for a job today. It's just for a call centre job (outbound sales), but I need a job. The phone interview was successful but only just. I thought I was confident, but as soon as that phone rang I turned into a nervous jittery idiot. At the start of the role play I totally messed up and stuttered and asked if I could start again. I think I managed to show some potential, which is why they've given me a proper interview tomorrow, but if I can't improve tomorrow I'm never going to get the job. And since the telephone interview went relatively badly, now I'm super nervous about tomorrow.

As I understand it, the interview tomorrow consists of some in depth questions followed by a role play in which I'm given some details about a product/service they sell and I have to act as if I'm the salesperson and sell this product to the interviewer. I think I can do it, but I'm worried about getting nervous and making some big mistakes and screwing up.

Now, I'm basically looking for any interview tips you guys have. Particularly about calming your nerves prior to an interview, but anything you think might come in vaguely useful would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys.

EDIT: OK, one of the other problems I have at interviews is the part when they say "do you have any questions for us?". Apparently it's just as important to come up with some questions to ask them as it is to answer the questions in the interview properly. I always prepare a few questions prior to the interview, but they always answer them in their introduction talking about the company so by the time they ask me for questions, I have nothing to say and I'm forced to give a cop out answer of "No, you've explained everything really well". What are some good questions to ask them?

So I'm sitting here watching the Champion's League final between Barcelona and Manchester Utd. It's the biggest club football match in Europe and millions of people tune in to watch it on TV. The half-time whistle blows and the inevitable irony occurs when the presenter says "It's been an action packed half and we have plenty of stuff to talk about with our pundits. So instead of talking about it, we're going to watch some adverts". OK, maybe it wasn't those exact words, but it might as well have been. Either way, the ironic things TV presenters say isn't the point of this blog, it's the content of the adverts.

After an advert for the newest Ford Focus (an advert which claims the car can park itself in a tight space, and proceeds to show the car parking itself in a space big enough for a bus) an advert for Modern Warfare 3 comes on. A game not due out until November. That's 6 months away. Soon after, an advert for Battlefield 3 is shown. A game that is yet to have a solid release date, but is certainly still many months away from release. It got me thinking, who are these adverts aimed at? Are they actually going to do anything to increase sales? And how much does such a prime advertising slot cost?

For some bizarre reason, I'll answer my third question first. After a little bit of googling I found an article from digitalspy.co.uk claiming that a 30 second ad slot during ITV's coverage of the match is estimated to cost £200,000 (that's about $330,000). That's actually less than I was expecting, but remember ITV is only broadcasting to the UK, and I'm willing to bet that Activision and EA would have also had these adverts running on other European stations. It's all going to add up and will end up costing a whole lot of money. And even if it is just a drop in the ocean for a company the size of Activision or EA, what is the benefit? Is an advert this far out really going to help generate sales? If not, the advert is completely pointless, isn't it?

This is how I see it - People like you and I, people who frequent video game websites obviously aren't the target audience. We've already seen the trailers, we've already read about the two levels the press have seen and someone has even put one of the trailers to a fitting new soundtrack. It's pretty safe to say that you're either already hyped for the game, or nothing is going to get you hyped for it. A television advert isn't going to make any difference. So who is it aimed at? It must be the more general game playing public. The type of guy who picks up the latest FIFA, CoD & Need For Speed games, and maybe other games they've seen advertised that look cool. They don't visit Giant Bomb, they don't care about game announcements and they don't watch trailers online.

But do these people care about a game coming out in November? That's so far away, I can just imagine the thought process of one of these guys going from "Sweet, a new CoD game. Can't wait to play that" to "November? Fuck that. Why would I care about this now?" through the course of the advert. And even if it did appeal to them and get them hyped for the game, is it really going to have more of an impact than them seeing an advert for it a week before release? I don't think it will. I certainly can't see the early adverts generating enough sales to offset the cost of them.

That's my two cents on it. It seems mostly common sense. Maybe I'm missing something obvious that the business executives in Activision & EA are aware of.

So in a random PM reporting a thread that needed to be locked, a war has erupted between the British mods and the American mods over the word "revision" and the differences between British English and the dumb American English in general. I thought that I'd create a blog on it for two reasons. Firstly, I'm sure some of the community may be interested in the argument, and secondly, so we can stop annoying the chap who created the PM by constantly replying to it and reply here instead.

It's also worth noting that the debate has spilled over onto twitter:

And Formspring:

You may or may not know this, but there is a small section of the Giant Bomb community who have formspring.me pages. Formspring is a social networking type thing which allows you to ask people random questions. Think of it as twitter, but solely for asking & answering questions, and without an annoying character limit. Both myself and ZombiePie have formspring accounts.  
 
Yesterday I decided to ask him the super important question "Who from the Giant Bomb mod team would you have on your zombie team?". I was expecting a quick response listing a couple of names and reasons. I was wrong. ZP went to a huge amount of detail about roles for each of the majority of the moderators. He even wrote on my wall afterwards "I spent more time writing and thinking about your Giant Bomb mod Zombie Team question on formspring than I should have". It seems like a real waste leaving this on formspring where few people will read it (and also, I want to see Hamz decapitate ZP), so here it is:
 

SUNDERLAND BEAT CHELSEA 3-0 AT STAMFORD BRIDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
SUNDERLAND BEAT CHELSEA 3-0 AT STAMFORD BRIDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
SUNDERLAND BEAT CHELSEA 3-0 AT STAMFORD BRIDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
SUNDERLAND BEAT CHELSEA 3-0 AT STAMFORD BRIDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
SUNDERLAND BEAT CHELSEA 3-0 AT STAMFORD BRIDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
SUNDERLAND BEAT CHELSEA 3-0 AT STAMFORD BRIDGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
 
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Heys duders.it's st patrocks day and ive had a lot of guinness. I think im at the stage where: 

• I can talk and type legibly
• I am tallkign bullshite

1. Why did i drink this much?
2. hOW MUCH DID i DRINK? 
3. hOW DID i ACCIDENTALLY PRESS TH ECAPS LOCK KEY?
4. why, in a shoping senter with one automatic door and lots of manule doors does everione go in and out in the auotomatic foor and no one used any of the the manyual doors?
5. what does the user name mracoon mean? is it mr racoon, m racoon or just one thing mracoon?
6. why do i want to constantly tipe the word awesomeness?
7.  awesomeness awesomeness awesomeness awesomeness awesomeness awesomeness awesomeness awesomeness  awesomeness   
8. drinking = awesomeness  
9. jesus, how am i already up to 9
10. why did i think posting this woudl be a good idea
11. dont drink its bad for you. trust me kids, dont do it
12. y0u twittr people are bad for encouraging me.e
13. i'm about to listen to the laTEST BOMBCAST. WILL IT BE BETTER now WHEN DRUNK OR tomorrow when SOBER?
14. DAMN CAPS LOCK KEY AGAIN
15. sex = awesomeness
16. why the hell am i so fat. someone needs to kick me into shape
17. how the hell have i vome up wiuth so many dumb and stupid points
18. why do i find this joke i jiust mad up about my mates recent ex girdlfriend so funny "why did web cross the road? because she was a dumb fuck and you need stop thinking about her!!!"
19. why did i tell that joke to my friend
20. why am is uch a terrible friendd?
21. why am i still typing nonsens when i cood be in bed
22. i've jus read over this blog gain. i couldn't stop laughting. it's hilarious.
23. i;m sure it isne actually that funny, buyt its booom funny to me.
    

This is a true story!!!!

Tin Foil
Wire Coat Hangers
Red Dye No.2
A Sony Walkman
Elastic Bands
A Car Battery 
KY Jelly
Frozen Pizza
Yellow Paint
Cider
Fork Handles
An Audi A4 
A Hamster & Hamster Wheel

I am addicted to buying downloadable games off steam. I have 130 games on steam, and over half of those I haven't even installed, let alone played. I really need to resist the urge to buy games, and actually play them for a change. Yet when the next steam weekend deal comes along, and it's a game that looks decent, I'll buy it. And I probably won't play it, at least for a while.
 
I need therapy. I have all these great games just sitting there, shouting "Play Me" at me, and yet rather than playing them, I decide to go onto the steam store, and buy buy buy. It drives me crazy. I just can't resist the urge to buy a game when it's staring at me on steam, saying "Buy Me".
 
I'm also somewhat addicted to steam achievements. Ever since Giant Bomb got achievement support, I've wanted more achievements. And this worsens my buying spree because I'll see a game that has steam achievements, and buy it, mostly for the achievements. GODDAMN YOU GIANT BOMB!!! YOU'VE MADE ME AN ACHIEVEMENT WHORE!!!!!!!!!!!
 
So, if anyone knows of a good psychologist in the north east of England, let me know. Oh, and he's got to be cheap, because I haven't got a lot of money after spending it all on steam games.