EightBitSiblings Play – Ocarina of Time – Part 1

Aspiring To Be Like My Avatar

I’ve always wanted to get into the Persona series, so I decided to give Persona 3 a try while on vacation. I quickly found myself hooked, and am near completing the game.

There are a few attributes of Persona 3 that caused me to be so enthralled in its story, and those attributes have given me some insight about how I operate as a person.

Persona’s learning curve is quite steep, but its basic setup makes sense. It’s a dungeon crawler wrapped in the sugar-coating of a dating-sim/life-simulator. In the day, your character goes to classes and builds relationships with others, and at night, you team up with your classmates to battle deadly shadows using “personas”, physical manifestations of your psyche. The better your relationships with other people, the more powerful your persona can become.

Having recently finished high school, it was interesting drawing parallels to the kind of student I was at the time in comparison to my character, and his habits. In real-life I was definitely a slacker in high school. But virtual me studies before bed every night. In Persona, that results in instant feedback, a fun sound-effect, a light appearing above your character’s head, and a notification that reads “your intelligence has increased!” I’d love to know exactly when I’ve gotten smarter the instant it happens because of the work I’ve done. But that isn’t the case how it works in real life.

Then there’s the fact that building relationships in Persona is so damn easy. You have a few choices to converse with a character when you hang out with them, and the right one will increase your “S.Link”, a visual representation of how well you get along with them. I would kill to have a system like that in real life. As a socially anxious, introverted person, it’d be a Godsend, taking out all the messiness that comes with interacting with other people. You have a general idea of what you can and should say before you have to say it, and there’s no time-limit to respond to a character that’s talking to you. Sometimes, if I wasn’t sure what to say of the choices given to me, I could just look up the correct response online. You don’t get that sort of safety in real life, an aspect that made Persona very comfortable for me to immerse myself in.

What struck me as most revealing, however, is how my Avatar was so willing to jump at any opportunity presented to him. Culture club? Sure! Kendo? Why the hell not? Wanna hang out? I’m free Sunday, let’s go. This is in stark contrast to the Eight-Bit you all know me as – withdrawn, playing it safe, making up his mind about how things will turn out, before they can even happen. Sure, the end goal in Persona was to power up those S.Links and increase my personas’ power. But Persona 3’s excellent writing caused me to get attached to the characters as well.

I love videogames. It’s the reason this blog exists. Even when I’m burnt out on playing them, I still follow the news, think about the theory. They helped me learn how to read, make decisions, all that great stuff. But playing Persona 3 was the first time I could say that a game taught me something substantial about myself. Controlling my Avatar became a mirror to examine myself, my strengths and my flaws. I’ve created characters in other games, but in them I was decorating houses and slaying goblins, which are far from the realm of reality, unlike going to a virtual school.

Now, nearing the end of Persona 3, I’ve decided to aspire to become more like my Avatar – to jump headfirst into things, even when I’m not sure how they’ll turn out. Though the risks are a little higher in the real world, at least I don’t have to fight any demons.

Final Fantasy XIII 16-Bit Retrospective

With an emphasis on retro.

So this is cool, what with Square Enix releasing a video to catch up on the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy in the form of SNES era Final Fantasy games. Gotta say though, not having followed this particular FF game myself…things certainly take a turn at XIII-2…but it’s cool nonetheless. Gave me a mind to play Chrono Trigger again.

Anyways, take a look for yourself below:

Excited for Final Fantasy XIII-3?

Now Playing: Fable

Fable has been…a unique experience, to be quite honest. I’ve found both positives and negatives in the last six hours I’ve played.

First, the positives. Fable has a lot of very unique concepts, for a European Fantasy Action-RPG. It could easily be another generic high fantasy burn, but it isn’t. For one, it doesn’t take itself very seriously. I realized this as soon as I found out that with the press of a button, I could fart in front of passerby, causing them to flee at the sight of me. Point to Fable.

It’s also very, very pretty. Even though its a game that clearly shows its age, the environments shine from the testament of good art direction. The fields are appropriately warm and beautiful, while the caves are, in relation, dark and creepy. I was able to repel any boredom with the thought of finding one more cool environment.

I enjoy the focus on your character, the Hero, as well. I’ll save details for the full review, but the way the world interacts with, and-almost with a sense of narcissistic joy-revolves around you, gives you a sense of power and placement within the world.

The combat is also pretty fun once you got the hang of it. The real-time, back and forth rhythm of attacking, blocking, and performing flourishes, while constantly gaining more and more experience for not getting hit, leads tense moments. Learning patterns and knowing when to do what leads to triumph-not just stats on a screen.

Now: some cons. While this may seem redundant, at times, the game felt a little too…well…gamey. By this I mean, the constant alerts of new quests, going back to the Guild to increase my stats, and explanations of items I had found, were a little much. This is especially noticeable if you are progressing through the game at a quick pace. Multiple notifications will hit you once, all by the same narrator, leaving you confused and not knowing what happened.

Though for the most part I enjoyed the combat, it could definitely get monotonous at times. Lots of button-mashing. This may simply be a product of being only a few hours in to the game, however.

The same can be said of how linear the quests seem to be. Again, however, I can (hopefully) assume that the game opens up as time progresses.

One last small tick of annoyance: Whisper. Lord, I cannot stand her. I have beaten you every single time we’ve competed! Stop saying it’ll be different next time and except that I’m good! I admire her stubbornness  but it’s definitely starting to get on my nerves.

That’s about it! I’ll give the full review soon. Keep an eye out.

Mass Effect Review

Ah, Mass Effect. Unless you’ve been living under an Anti-Gaming rock, you’ve heard of the Bioware developed epic sci-fi space opera series (quite a mouthful). Here are my thoughts on a game that has had a huge impact on the gaming industry.

You are Commander Shepard, Alliance Soldier. On a mission to investigate a distress call on Eden Prime, you become entangled in a plot to destroy the universe as we know it.

While the overall plot is interesting in it’s own right, I was more impressed by the self-contained stories of the characters on Shepard’s crew. The characters are engrossing, dynamic, and believable. You want to learn about them, and you grow to care for them. The characters are not static: They are pushing forward and making this their story. This is my favorite part about Mass Effect’s plot. Although, the story of saving the galaxy is suitably epic on all counts.

ME1 is barely a shooter. Let me say that now. Though there are shooter aspects, cranking this sucker up to any level above normal is going to kick your butt if you treat it like Half-Life 2, and you’ll be memorizing the game-over song quickly. ME1 is all about management: Managing your weapons, managing your team, managing your powers, at all times, off and on the battlefield. It makes for quite the complex game, though you need only delve deep into the system to get the strongest equipment.

Combat in this game is fast and fun, a cover-based shooter that is tactical and action packed at the same time, letting you pause the action to get a breather and issue orders to your squadmates. But, it’s not always fluid: Getting in and out of cover can be glitchy at times, and an issue I repeatedly ran into on the PC was my weapon stuck on overheat. A simple restart fixed this issue, however.

The other half of ME is exploration, and is my favorite part of the game. ME, as I said before, is a character driven game, and interacting with characters is a core part of the experience. Dialogue is engaging and interesting, and there is no shortage of new conversations to partake in. Chats are dynamic, allowing one to choose options to progress, either with a goody-two-shoes paragon option, or a take-no-prisoners renegade option. These options drastically change how the story unfolds, to the point where choices can affect future entries in the series. One aspect I take issue with the paragon and renegade portions are that they can lead to one choosing the top or lower portion over and over again, making the choice aspect seem artificial at times. Still, the feature is welcomed for being able to inspire re-playability, if your you’re curious as to what things are like on the other side.

The graphics in Mass Effect leave little to be desired. They still hold up today, with great, unique artistic direction and interesting locals. Though the models can seem semi-lifeless at close-ups, they do the job.

Meanwhile, on the audio front, Mass Effect has some suitable music, that does its job, but is forgettable for the most part, with the main theme and “flux” being the exceptions. Sound effects are appropriately sci-fi, and voice acting of the characters is top notch.

ME1 takes a hit on its presentation. Menus can be clunky and difficult to navigate, and the inventory system is horrendous. I tried to spend as little time as possible in the menus, simply because I didn’t want to deal with the unwieldy weapon and armor management. This was despite the fact that I found myself enjoying upgrading my squad with the best items. This results in an intermediate learning curve, but nothing that’s impossible to deal with

Mass Effect 1 is a great game. Through it’s engrossing storyline and balance of combat and exploration, Mass Effect succeeds at being a top notch science fiction gaming epic.