Previously In Dan's Gaming History...

by danielkempster

Hey guys. I've been a little slack on the blogging front over the last week or two, so I'll begin this entry with an apology. There should have been another couple of episodes of the Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge series last week, as well as the April instalment of Letting Off Some Steam last Saturday, so I'm sorry those blogs are yet to see the light of day. This blog is neither of those...

Pokémon Y

Yep, I'm still playing this

I have no idea how this happened. Three years ago I was expressing nothing but indifference to the Pokémon franchise, feeling disappointed with the apparent lack of innovation in the then-newly-released Black and White versions. Fast forward to the present and I've become almost obsessive about the series, having played through almost every single core game in the back half of last year and continuing to be invested in the series through the start of 2014 as well. Nowhere is this obsession more evident than in the game clock on my Pokémon Y save file, which currently stands at an unbelievable 490 hours. I'm pretty sure I've never invested that amount of time into a game before, and certainly not in a single save file - before this Final Fantasy X stood as my highest hour-count at a comparatively meagre 120 hours. So yeah - I have played a lot of Pokémon Y.

This guy is the fulcrum on which my entire team is set. I love it.

So what have I been doing in the game all this time? Well, breeding, training and battling mostly. My main aim has been putting together a team of six specially-bred, finely-tuned Pokémon to take into competitive battles online, and after a lot of time spent at the Daycare and in Super Training, I think I've finally settled on my team of six - Galvantula, Tyrantrum, Excadrill, Politoed, Scrafty and Charizard. The basic goal of the team is to set up hazards and take out any major threats, so that Charizard can come in, Mega-Evolve into Mega Charizard Y and completely wreck house. The team is a lot of fun to use and comes good more often than not, although it does have a glaring weakness against powered-up priority moves (the popular combination of Belly Drum and Aqua Jet on Azumarill has undone me more times than I'd care to mention). I've had a lot of fun getting deep into the meta-game of competitive Pokémon battling, and being able to build a strong, synergised team that battles well has been a really rewarding experience.

Now that my team is finished, I'm trying to ease off on the Pokémon a little bit. A few of my friends who are also playing the game have agreed to starting a small, friendly league in June, so I'll probably go back to the game in late May just to get back to grips with battling so I don't go into the tournament too rusty. I'd also like to try and get back around to actually, y'know, catching 'em all at some point as well (I currently only have around 500 of the 718 available Pokémon in my possession). Until then, I'll have the FireRed Nuzlocke to fill the Pikachu-shaped hole left by Y.

Final Fantasy VIII

It's taken thirteen long years, but I've finally seen the credits roll on FFVIII

Final Fantasy VIII has been one of my personal gaming bugbears for over a decade. I received a copy of the game for my eleventh birthday way back in February 2001, and despite a number of attempts to play through it between then and now, I'd never seen the adventure of Squall and co. through to completion. I honestly couldn't tell you why - as a die-hard fan of the franchise through my teenage years, there's no rational explanation for why I never finished it. I just... didn't. Last month saw me finally lay the game to rest and remove it from my Pile of Shame, the end of a two-month journey that, on reflection, definitely had more highs than lows.

There's no denying that Squall is a massive arsehole...

There are a few things about Final Fantasy VIII that didn't bother me when I was younger, but which just don't wash with me now. The game has arguably the series' worst protagonist in Squall Leonhart, a guy who's probably supposed to appear stoic and reserved but really just manages to come off as a moody, pubescent dick. I get the reasoning behind it, given that he's scared of getting close to people in case he loses them, but... does he really have to be such an arsehole about it? It also makes it really difficult to believe that any of the game's other characters admire him, because seriously, who would realistically look up to a man whose stock response to any situation is "...whatever."? On top of that, the game's second act is really uninteresting from a narrative perspective, relying far too heavy on the usual JRPG cliché bullshit in a ham-fisted attempt to start tying its plot threads together (amnesiac protagonists, anyone?).

...but Rinoa's playful cheeriness is usually enough to make up for it

Thankfully the game makes up for it in other areas. The combat and character development are excellent, largely thanks to the incredibly flexible Junction system. Treating magic as a resource as well as an ability leads to an addictive balancing act of trying to find the best magic to boost your stats, while at the same time leaving yourself plenty of magic options in combat. It's easy to get lost in, and hilarious fun when you find a way to 'break' it and turn your characters into super-human fighting machines through unique combinations of Junctioned magic and abilities. The resource management is fun as well, hunting down items that can be either refined into useful magic or combined at Junk Shops to make more powerful weapons. The story picks up after its woeful middle third, jumping off the deep end in a way that's so silly it's difficult not to smile and suspend your disbelief just for the fun of seeing it unfold. Finally, as a counter-point to the terrible main character, I think Rinoa might be one of my favourite female leads in any Final Fantasy game period. She's pretty well-written, combining almost childish levels of idealism and naivety with both strength and determination in a way that's really refreshing, especially when juxtaposed with Squall's general asshattery.

I'm really glad I've finally finished Final Fantasy VIII. As it stands it's definitely my least favourite of the three original PlayStation Final Fantasy games - although its not bad by any means, my personal ties to Final Fantasy VII and the general brilliance of Final Fantasy IX were always going to be tough to stand up to. I get the feeling I probably would have enjoyed its story and characters a lot more if I'd managed to play through it in my teens, rather than waiting until my mid-twenties when my tolerance for teen angst melodrama has started to crumble a little. More than anything, though, it feels great to finally have put that personal demon to rest after thirteen years.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Following last year's Metal Gear ~~May~~ Madness blog feature, my good friend Duncan noticed that there was one glaring omission from my Metal Gear marathon - namely the combat-action spin-off from PlatinumGames, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Not wanting me to miss out on Raiden's cyborg-ninja adventures in a post-MGS4 world, he gifted me a copy of the game for Christmas. I spent about a week playing through it in early April, and came away from it a lot more impressed than I was expecting to be.

I'll get this disclaimer out of the way now - I don't play a lot of these kinds of action games. I enjoy the God of War series, but that's more because of its unique take on Greek mythology than because I like chopping dudes in half with chain-blades (although I will concede, that's pretty fun too). I've never really been able to get into stuff like Devil May Cry or Onimusha, so I had understandable apprehensions going into Metal Gear Rising. Thankfully they proved to be unfounded - Rising is a brilliant thrill ride, cramming plenty of both Kojima's and Platinum's distinct brands of crazy into its admittedly short story to satisfy my Metal Gear itch. The combat is fast-paced, stylish to watch and viscerally rewarding to execute. I did have some problems with the game's more active parry mechanics, although I put that down to being conditioned by "hold-this-button-to-parry" games like the aforementioned God of War rather than any fault with the system itself. I also thought the final boss was accompanied by an unnecessarily fiendish spike in difficulty - my total game time ran to around eight hours, of which over two were spent just trying to beat that last boss battle. Those complaints aside, I found Rising to be a lot of fun, and I definitely won't be leaving it out of any future Metal Gear marathons. Thanks, Duncan!

Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Revelations feels like a potentially brilliant game that spreads itself way too thin

I'll be honest - I wasn't expecting to be in a position where I could talk at any length about my feelings towards Assassin's Creed: Revelations right now, having only started the game just under a week ago. However, in just five days I've already made it to the fifth of the game's seven DNA sequences. Considering ACII and AC: Brotherhood were both sprawling open-world masterpieces that took me about a month each to play through, Revelations feels incredibly short by comparison. The city of Constantinople is pretty big, and there's plenty to do in it, but I think that's part of the problem - Revelations seems to spread itself way too thin in terms of its multitude of gameplay mechanics. In addition to the usual open-world fare the series is known for and the return of the Assassin's Guild stuff introduced in Brotherhood (which has been further expanded upon with additional layers of complexity to consider), there are also (pretty poorly-implemented) tower-defence sequences and weird Portal-esque first-person puzzle sequences involving Desmond.

Ezio may be older and wiser, but his eye for the ladies is as keen as it's ever been

What this all adds up to is a game with a ton of deep and complex side content, all of which sadly seems to have detracted from the core gameplay and resulted in a significantly shorter story than past Assassin's Creed games. For me that's a real shame, because the culmination of Ezio Auditore's story arc is what I primarily came to Revelations for. To that end it's certainly proving satisfying so far. For what it's worth I think Ezio was one of the better-written protagonists of last generation, and it's great seeing an older and wiser incarnation of the character, but still susceptible to the same weaknesses. The core open-world gameplay of the series is still just as fun as it's always been as well, even if it's starting to feel a little 'been-there-done-that'. It's just kind of disappointing that the experience looks like it's going to be over much sooner than I expected.

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So that's what I've been playing over the last month or so. Again, apologies for my lack of blog activity over the last couple of weeks. I'm going to try and rectify that by putting out Part Seven of the Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge before the end of the long weekend, so keep an eye out for that either tomorrow or Monday (most likely Monday). Until then, thanks very much for reading, take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

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Currently playing - Assassin's Creed: Revelations (X360)