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Hey everyone things are getting a bit shaky around these parts. Yesterday, I tried playing The Last Remnant, but after probably nearly what had to be at least a year I could not remember where I was in the story... so I made a choice, a choice to look at a FAQ to see what I was to do next. As I read this FAQ things started to get concerning, do every side quest, chain huge amounts of monsters, have this "best" character in your party. Basically if you don't do things a certain way you are not going to win... that does not sound like fun to me. I am going to be frank here and I don't think I have mentioned this before, the reason I usually don't finish RPGs isn't because I don't have time or because I don't like them, it is because of this terrible apprehension that I am going to spend 40 - 60 hours on something and then get stuck and not be able to complete the game. It's happened before and for the very reason above you have to something crazy to win the game, you can't just play normally, you have to have your characters set up a specific way, have specific weapons and on and on.

With that said I honestly was truly enjoying The Last Remnant until I read what kind of ridiculous stuff you have to go through to even have a chance to complete the game. I don't mind a challenge, but you should be able to beat the game with your own skill and not just by power leveling and luck. So The Last Remnant is done, I don't think I have any interest to come back to it, but you never know, maybe one day if I have nothing else to do.

So as for continuing this process, I am going to move on to Chronicles of Riddick (360) and see how that goes. I am honestly starting to believe that I am becoming more of an action gamer these days and RPGs just don't do anything for me anymore. I have Final Fantasy XIII and I am going to be playing that alongside Riddick and we will see how things go with the latest Final Fantasy (my track record is good with the FF games, I have finished 7 through 12 (including X-2 and excluding 11). As for Riddick impressions, I don't have a clue, I grabbed this game back on New Year's Eve and never even touched it (game buying addiction FTL). I'll talk to you soon. Loading Complete!

Progress has been made! I finished Tomb Raider Underworld about 2 hours ago and now it's time to tell you all about how things went with the game. After that I am going to tell you about a returnee to the Alpha's Picks lineup.

Final Thoughts: Tomb Raider Underworld
There isn't too much to say about Tomb Raider Underworld other than its a good game that has some issues. The biggest of those issues is the twitchy camera, it flips around, gets stuck on objects and pretty much needs your constant attention. The platforming while pretty fun is pretty hit and miss most of the time. You have to make sure that you point Lara at the correct angle or hitting your landing point can be tough. Even when you are aiming the right way Lara's moves are automatic and a lot of the time the game tries to guess what you are trying to do causing many falling deaths. It's that unpredictability that really hurts the well designed jumping puzzles. The combat is pretty lame and there is not a single boss fight in the game. If you can find the game on the cheap then I'd say give it a shot.

The Fifth Game: The Last Remnant (Square Enix, X360, 2009)
As I mentioned earlier The Last Remnant (TLR) is a returning game from the last Alpha's Picks that I held in 2009. I played it for about 10 hours (that's a guess the game doesn't have a gameplay timer that I know of) and the game hated the failing DVD drive in my first Xbox 360 and locked during loading screens which would suck after tough boss fights with strings of cut-scenes and loading screens and no chance to save. The other thing about TLR is that it is a sight to behold in all the wrong ways during battles... we're talking a game that can barely serve up 15 frames per second most of the time. It's a mess, which is too bad because TLR is actually a pretty cool game and has a really interesting battle system. I actually really liked what I played of TLR so I am excited to get back to it.

In other news. I spent some time playing the Xbox 360 beta demo of the racing game Blur and it's a really neat game, it's kind of like Mario Kart with its power ups, but has fairly realistic car handling. Blur was the reason that it took so long to finish Tomb Raider. Also I picked up Final Fantasy XIII yesterday (Mar 9) afternoon but I am not sure when I am going to play it, I might use it as motivation to complete Alpha's Picks. I'll talk to you soon, I'll probably try for Saturday at the latest. Loading Complete!

As you all have read I nearly went mad trying to complete Star Ocean: The Last Hope. After a bit of thought and a day spent playing some Modern Warfare 2, I have decided that it is not worth my time to complete Star Ocean 4 and I am just going to move on to the next game on the list Tomb Raider Underworld. But to hold format, first my final thoughts on Star Ocean 4 and then my impressions of Tomb Raider Underworld.

Final Thoughts: Star Ocean: The Last Hope
Read the previous blog entry that pretty much sums up how I feel about this game. But in short: stupid pointless long winded dialog and the 30+ minute resulting cutscenes, annoying characters and voice acting, pretty graphics and a decent real-time battle engine with one single cool mechanic (blindsides).

The Fourth Game: Tomb Raider Underworld (Eidos/Crystal Dynamics, X360, 2008 )
I have played about three levels or so into Tomb Raider already so I am not really sure how long this is going to last, but hopefully it won't take more than one update. So what did I think of it? It's an okay platformer that would be better if only it wasn't so shoddily programmed. Glitches are the story of the game, you'll fall through ledges, the collision detection will refuse to work, the character will get stuck in the level geometry and the camera is a total spaz. Yeah, it's one of those games... IF ONLY...

There is some fun to be had though and I will tell you about how much of it I DO have when I update you next, I not going to say when because I have no clue how long it will take me to finish. Whatever the case I'm glad a lot of you suggested to me that I move on to the next game, I think I would have tried to continue with Star Ocean, went completely insane and probably given up on Alpha's Picks. Games are for fun and entertainment and if they aren't FUN or ENTERTAINING then they can go sit on the shelf. Later! Loading Complete!

I am ****ing sick of Star Ocean: The Last Hope! I'm 21 hours in to the game and it is now starting to grate on my nerves; I can stand it no longer and it is time to lay the smack down. Star Ocean 4 is one of the most pretentious J-RPGs that I have ever played (the other Xenosaga Episode 1) it truly thinks that you care about its insipid story and ****ing stupid and annoying characters. Okay, okay, most J-RPGs are a bit like that, but even so, at least most of them don't force their characters on you in boring and ****ing utterly pointless 30+ minute cut-scenes. Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah... I was actually yelling out loud at my TV for them to shut the **** up. To make things worse, the character models have no expressions, they can barely move their mouths and can open and close their eyes... not to mention a majority of them have ****ing crappy or annoying voice actors.

What really started this was when about 15 hours in the main hero did something really naive and caused a tremendous disaster that destroyed an alternate dimension 1957 Earth, the destruction of which sent them SOMEHOW back to their own time/dimension. He then starts throwing a temper tantrum in which he acts all introverted, whiny and pretends not to want to be the hero anymore. Boo-****ing-hoo, cry me a river! Just the hell shut up, be a man and stop being all "emo". Some evil woman tricked you in to it; if anything it was her ****ing fault that HER planet exploded. You're all gung-ho to get things done, you make one mistake and you fall apart, Edge Maverick, you fail as a hero character.

The other thing that really pisses me off about the whole Star Ocean series is that the science-fiction aspects are just pointless trappings. You have a spaceship, but you just use that to fly to different planets which are simply the different areas/towns that are usually found on one single world in a regular J-RPG. There are no futuristic sci-fi cities and no cool technology to be found. It'd be like playing Mass Effect 2 and when you fly the Normandy to an unexplored planet and when you get down to the surface you find Dragon Age Origins and you have to play that game instead. Simply put, It's a stereotypical J-RPG wearing a Starfleet uniform.

The characters are annoying and cleched, the story isn't as deep as the character's endless banter would have you believe and anything that a science fiction fan might get out of it is thrown aside for Japanese cleche. This game would have been better if it just stuck to one planet and had the characters deal with that, but the way the story is attempted here with it broken up over multiple worlds makes it fall flat, you just can't grab hold of anything. As I have said before, the worst mistake that a RPG can make is having a lousy story/characters because a "decent" battle system certainly isn't going to hold your attention for 40+ hours.

The worst thing going for Star Ocean: The Last Hope is that at 20 hours in it has almost NO chance of getting better. The characters are still going to be insipid and annoying, the story is still going to be full of crap and I am still going to have to endure 30+ minute "blah, blah, blah" cut-scenes. I don't know if I am going to play this any more... it's not a good game, it's not worth another 20 hours of my time to suffer through it all, so I am going to sleep on it for tonight (it's currently after midnight PT) and I will decide tomorrow. Don't worry if I give up on Star Ocean I'm going to move on to the 4th game Tomb Raider Underworld and keep it rolling. I leave you with this, if this doesn't sum things up I don't know what else will:


Riding a giant pink bunny and you thought Chocobos where ridiculous?! Loading Complete!

Hmmm... I'm not even sure what to write for this one, I've made it over 12 hours in to Star Ocean: The Last Hope and really there isn't all that much to talk about. I'm not very far in to the game I don't think considering that this game comes on 3 discs (though I'm sure they are mostly filled with pointless FMVs). I don't really know what to say about the game, the story has barely gotten started, the characters are hampered by a lack of facial animation and I haven't really been able to make much use of the item creation system at this point.

The battle engine is a bit button mashy for the most part, but it's one unique element Blindsides makes up for the mostly basic combos. The character that you are controlling has the ability to hold the B button and charge up, when an enemy targets you a yellow targeting marker appears on you, at this point if you are sufficiently charged all you have to do is tilt the movement stick in any direction to initiate a blindside, the enemy loses sight of you and you get a free critical hit. Some enemies target you with a red marker and can counter blindsides, here you either have to do a double-blindside (keep holding the movement stick to keep moving and get behind them a second time or wait until the targeting marker flashes, this means they have started their attack and are unable to counter you. It's a fun mechanic, but I don't know if it's enough to hold together a 45-60 hour game.

I think that about covers it for Star Ocean: The Last Hope update #1, I will probably have another update for you in the coming days the longest you'll have to wait is next Wednesday, but I will write sooner if something crazy happens. I'll talk to you soon! I was just warming up! Bring 'em on! Loading Complete!