MERCH!
Giant Bomb - a website about video games and the people that make them

The Lengthy Conclusion to a Lengthy Bet

by thatpinguino

Recently @zombiepie and I wrote a lengthy series of blogs about our experiences playing FFVIII and 90s adventure games. For months we both slowly went mad as we played our respective games and wrote up our experiences with them. @zombiepie may have gone a little bit madder than me considering he made FFVIII his game of the year, but who can really measure madness? After our blog series complete...

Recently @zombiepie and I wrote a lengthy series of blogs about our experiences playing FFVIII and 90s adventure games. For months we both slowly went mad as we played our respective games and wrote up our experiences with them. @zombiepie may have gone a little bit madder than me considering he made FFVIII his game of the year, but who can really measure madness?

After our blog series completed, we recorded two lengthy podcasts to talk over the games we played in the hopes of getting some kind of closure. I needed to know how someone could appreciate the puzzles in Riven and ZP needed to know stuff like "what the hell happened at the end of the game?" and "who am I?". I posted both of the podcasts to my personal blog, but if you followed our ridiculous odyssey and wanted to know how it ended, here are the two debrief podcasts.

Myst, Riven, and Pajama Sam 90s Adventure Game Extravaganza

FFVIII Claims Another Soul

The Myst podcast is mostly a discussion of what I appreciated about the games with ZP providing context and explanation where needed. I critique some of the design of the Cyan games and praise some of the design of the Pajama Sam games, but the podcast is mostly observational. The FFVIII podcast is a 3 hour vision quest where I try to answer ZP's basic questions about FFVIII. We talk about stuff like the design of the game's combat system, whether the developers knew they were making a breakable game, the characterization flaws that litter FFVIII, the plot holes that the game fails to fill in, the jaw dropping moments of awe-inspiring earnestness, and the acid trip that is the end of the game.

This blog series was so successful that we're going to be expanding on it in some cool ways in the near future. I'll just say that this year's Community Endurance Run might have a lot of Final Fantasy in it and leave it at that.

Here's an archive of our blog posts if you missed them:

Me: Lost in the Myst: Part 1

Lost in the Myst: Part 2- I Wish I Could Save

Lost in the Myst: Part 3- Leaving the Myst

Lost in the Myst: Part 4- Riven Rysing

Lost in the Myst : Part 5- Riven is Trying to Kill Me

Lost in the Myst: Part 6- Finishing Riven

Lost in the Pajamas: Part 1- Hunting Darkness

Lost in the Pajamas: Part 2- Top 8 Things About Pajama Sam 1

Lost in the Pajamas: Part 3- The top 7 Things About Pajama Sam 2

Deepish Look: Riven: The Sequel To Myst- This Game Is The Best/Worst