Time for another helping of Mento Miscellany, "A Blog Mined from the Mind of Mento About Matters You're Meant to Mind". Most blogs don't need horrible punny taglines, but mine is not most blogs. Just a smattering of minor topics this week as people are either too busy gorging themselves on festive avians or have begun the long and painful process of regretting said gorging, and neither of those states really makes one particularly receptive to any deeply introspective video game talk. Time, tide and food comas wait for no blog, as they rarely say. So here it is already:

The Last "The Last Story" Fanboy: A Story

So a cute thing this site does if you're one to review/rate a lot of things is give you a special "award" if you happened to have an anomalous opinion on any given game; a special "fanboy" tag for rating a game higher than one's contemporaries and an equal but opposite "hater" tag for the reverse. Apparently I have one for rating Mistwalker's The Last Story "too highly" and I feel I ought to return back to the hazy past of six months ago and address why I felt I needed to rate it such. Or, at least, figure out why so many others seem to take issue with it. Without actually reading what they said because I'm a busy blogging guy and it's easier to make shit up.

By process of elimination I've deduced the combat is the true battleground. With such utterly redundant phrasing like that, you might be wondering where I'm coming from. Simply that the rest of Last Story is so inoffensively charming (or bland, I suppose) that it shouldn't make too much of an impact on the score either way, not to the deviation we're seeing here. Graphically it's more than one could feasibly expect the Wii to pull off, the music's Nobuotiful and the story's the same kind of derivative but likable goofiness that we've come to expect from the Gooch after so many of his fairytale Final Fantasy games. It's practically Disney-ian, which makes me wonder if Disney weren't a little bit annoyed that he left around the same time they signed on for that thing with all the key swords. Ah well. I'm sure they won't be purchasing any major franchises without the primary creative force behind them again any time soon.

So, the combat. I've heard the many complaints about it. How the AI is basically brainless, how the player character controls like a suicidal schizophrenic, how many battles will simply be won (or lost) without any input or maybe too much input? Question mark? The cover, the stealth and the first-person archery are all busted to some extent. Whether these are spurious excuses or valid concerns, the underlying point is that the person making them did not enjoy the combat and are articulating that distaste to varying degrees of success. Regardless of whether I might agree or not, it's hard to overlook that core tenet in their argument, besides huffily suggesting that they're "playing it wrong" and sulking elsewhere for a spell.

Which is what I'm going to do! See ya!

Quick Look Everything Initiative

So one of the most exciting developments in the grand, ongoing "what is Giant Bomb?" experiment* is Jeff's quixotic mission to Quick Look Everything. The precise details of which are entirely locked up within that wonderful crazy man's coconut, swirling around a massive maelstrom of ideas along with decades-old hip-hop lyrics, hopes of an inauspicious second coming of Game Room and funky alpacas. Currently, this QLE concept is integrated with another new site fixture, that of the Encyclopedia Bombastica. But that seems like a fancy new name for Jeff's long-planned "Giant Bomb Hall of Fame" feature, rather than having anything to do with actually Quick Looking everything. Mostly because, as we are all acutely aware, that an unfortunate ratio of video games are mediocre if not outright garbage. Nothing that deserves 30 minutes of prime Jeff webcam time, at least.

So I've been racking my brain to figure out how they could actually Quick Look Everything and still have time to do all the other stuff they're already too busy to do. Some bright (and opportunistic) sparks in our community hit upon the idea of leaving the crappier stuff to us nobodies to sort out, but with the amount of peer-review and sorting that'll require from whichever luckless mods they rope into it, I can't see it ever taking off. Also I don't believe anyone's made any yet, despite the fact the idea came up months ago. Instead, I've been wondering if we can't go smaller with it. That's always good advice; to go small.

The core purpose of a Quick Look, besides watching Vinny shove virtual Chinese people through windows for an hour, is to provide an elucidating appraisal of what a game is like. Most of this is done by simply watching the game be played. We're a canny bunch in that we can immediately pick up many of a game's finer details by watching its parts in motion for a few minutes, occasionally even catching systems and features that the otherwise erudite Bomb Crew either miss or neglect to mention. So I'm thinking what we really need is a small snippet, perhaps with several limitations to restrict crazy file sizes (video quality, resolution/window size, length, etc.), of someone playing the game with just the game audio. For every game. Put somewhere on their respective wiki pages, preferably.

I figure a video's worth a thousand screenshots, which in turn are worth a thousand words. But maybe that's just the messed up wiki points system talking. In short, a brief and perhaps peripherally-situated video will tell anyone browsing a game's wiki page much of what they went there to learn. And I'm sure Dave and Alexis are very open to site improvement suggestions right about now! Facetiousness!

* It's a video game website.

Dust: An Elysian TaleTail No, I'll Go With Tale, Thanks

Destitute as I am, I elected to wait until I received some bonus XBLA points from a recent birthday of mine (I still have those, yes) before finally deciding to buy Dean Dodrill's one-man project of a furry anime Metroidvania. As I'm sure everyone else is aware of at this point, the game is excellent.

Dost thou eyes deceive you? Approbations for what is assuredly some kind of DeviantArt animal-human-on-animal-human filth? No. And yes, but no. I was never one of those people for whom the ugly character design was a dealbreaker. Heck, I hear "Metroidvania" and I'm there like a flash. That the game around it is so competently made and infectiously fun to play is something of a bonus. Though on a smaller scale than other games like it in some ways, mostly due to a mere smattering of the exploration-enhancing accouterments that tend to be front and center in any game like this, it's an impressive and expansive project even before you start factoring in the whole "one dude did everything" aspect.

Dastardly as the combat might be early on, it's easy to get into the groove of having your floaty bat thing disperse magical glowy thingies and then redirecting them with your twirly sword doohickey. If that's hard to follow - I am using very technical terms here, after all - I recall Brad's Quick Look showed off this technique adroitly. Despite becoming the de facto method of dealing with pretty much every enemy encounter in the game, it's still way more fun than most combat systems in these 2D action games have been in the past. Specifically those like BloodRayne: Betrayal and its other Indie 2D throwback ilk. It seems it's all too easy to fall back to the simpler times of 2D brawlers/slash-em-ups without actually doing something about that rather nagging "oh yeah, everyone stopped playing this sort of game years ago for a reason" issue.

Distasteful of its graphics you may be (the stuff that isn't the characters - that is, the environments and the animation - are absolutely top-notch by the way) the game is absurdly good for what it appears to be on the surface. It's fine and dandy to say to someone, "Hey, you should support this guy, he heroically made an entire game all on his lonesome. Throw some coins into his guitar case why don't you?" like some sort of charity case, but in Dust's case it's very much worth your time and money on the basis of the game alone. Like the similarly low-scale yet somehow gorgeous and fascinating Fez and Bastion, there's enough going on here beyond its curious backstory to captivate you.

Dust: An Elysian Tail. It's a video game? And you should buy it. Preferably if you haven't already. And even more preferably if you've got some GOTY decisions to ponder next month, because another dark horse entry can't hurt.

Oh OK, The Last Story Then

Talking of eccentric combat systems, I suppose I'd best back-pedal and talk about this Wii RPG some more. If there's something Giant Bomb as a collective entity cares about more than anything, it's Japanese RPGs and the Nintendo Wii.

In The Last Story, the player controls Zael who receives early on a power called "The Gathering". The moment you activate this power, Zael becomes a lot stronger, can start resurrecting people and, oh yeah, draw the attention of every enemy on the map like a big ol' flashing beacon that says "kill me, this guy here, the one that can bring his friends back to life". Being that one hated enemy in every JRPG (and Doom 2) is an interesting role reversal in itself, but the Gathering is what elevates the game beyond its Gears of War-esque hack-and-slasher superficial appearances.

Because at this point it becomes less crazy oh-my-god-what-is-going-on-oh-god-what action (though some element of that still exists, granted) and resembles more of a real-time strategic set-up where the player's resourcefulness and situational awareness are at the forefront. The reason your compatriots are idiots? Well, that's because this game straddles the line between something like Gears - in which everyone wisely hides and takes occasional potshots and are entirely incidental, because the player should be doing all the work consarnit; and Lemmings - in which your unique, almost godlike powers are needed to keep all your dumb followers from marching into the nearest lava pool. It's a hard balance to strike; being supernaturally gifted is pointless if your entirely competent mercenary team can just steamroll enemies efficiently enough already, but it also stretches the limits of plausibility if said crack mercenary team is routinely being bested by the strategic genius of "some guy with a stick".

If you're running around like a headless chicken in that game, it won't hesitate to turn you into McNuggets. Likewise, if you ignore the rest of your team to showboat too much, you're going to get Pearl Harbored. It's an acutely engineered system that, admittedly, can either demand too much or too little from the player in equal measure, but there's a lot of deviation and nuance in each of the encounters you face. It's not as well crafted a battle system as it perhaps ought to be, but I guess I was enamored by how different and interesting it felt. It's kind of odd that I perhaps overrated it because of its combat, when others are underrating it for the same reason. Hey, opinions, eh? Check your mileage with that one, folks.

And with that, I'm going to end what I ironically called a short blog. A little too much food for thought to go with the little too much food for stomach that you're presumably all in the process of digesting. Happy Thanksgiving/random Thursday everyone!

BONUS COMICS!

The Last Story

Dust: An Elysian Tale

Fuck. There's no "quote" button in the blogs. Gonna have to get creative.

Just a smattering of minor topics this week as people are either too busy gorging themselves on festive avians or have begun the long and painful process of regretting said gorging, and neither of those states really makes one particularly receptive to any deeply introspective video game talk.

That explains why we were the only ones commenting on my blog today.

Without actually reading what they said because I'm a busy blogging guy and it's easier to make shit up.

Plus my Last Story blog doesn't come until next week.

By process of elimination I've deduced the combat is the true battleground.

I take more issue with the story, honestly, for all the bad stuff it pulls, but we've already had this conversation, and already will. The present is always an illusion.

the music's Nobuotiful

No.

I don't have anything to quote here, but still wish to discuss that Quick Look stuff.

I don't know. I'd say combine some of the ideas floating around here: outsource to the community (because there are so many people here with oddly specific knowledge in games), and keep it short. Maybe five to ten minutes for a Quick Look? It'd work especially well for older games, given how short they can be, anyway.

Again, not much to quote here other than "The Last Story's combat is pretty strategic".

I don't know. I don't remember it being terribly tactical. The Gathering, at least for me, was one part "now I gotta go revive this fucker" and other part "WHY DID YOU WAIT UNTIL HALFWAY THROUGH THE GAME TO EXPLAIN THIS VERY IMPORTANT CONCEPT!?". Other than that, the battles did have some cool moments (I liked a bit of the stealth and at least shades of strategy), but largely turned into clusterfucks. Trust me: nobody likes fucking a cluster. Too many end up dead, and you always end up pregnant, regardless of condoms or even gender.

I'd add my own comics at the end, but my artistry is bad enough to prevent such a thing.

@Video_Game_King: Ha, man that final boss music is a trip. But the rest of the soundtrack is some pretty traditional Uematsu orchestral ear Prozac. Well, all right, the boss music for a certain antagonistic NPC sounded like something the Aquabats would put together, but the rest is straightforward enough. As for the story, I found it very comparable to Final Fantasy IX, given that both are Sakaguchi trying to tap into his very specific and old-fashioned preferred style of story-telling. Maybe with not quite the aplomb, though. (Or you didn't like FF9's story either, which is also explicable.)

We shall agree to disagree, I believe. No more back-and-forths about the game from me (besides this reply, I guess). Especially since I did a little research to find out what game you're likely to couple the Last Story with, and I am way more interested in reading what you have to say about that one.

No, I don't remember hating FF9's story too much. I mean, it's been a while, but I remember not liking FF8's story, if anything (although for reasons I no longer stand by).

Especially since I did a little research to find out what game you're likely to couple the Last Story with, and I am way more interested in reading what you have to say about that one.

You browsed my banner gallery, didn't you? A preview, then: I really wish I was better with Paint.NET Photoshop so I could make my Jam Boi joke work.

I'm a very unapologetic fan of RPG's from the late 90's to the end of the PS2 era. It's not really a surprise then that when Mistwalker was announced as a company, I was stoked. And when The Lost Odyssey came out, I was even more stoked, because it looked like they were going to be the shining bastion of traditional turn-based RPG's. And then? They weren't. No one was. You know this, so why the fuck am I saying all this? I don't know, other than I'm all trippin' on tryptophan and the small dose of roofies that questionably female thing at the bar slipped me.

In a way, then, The Last Story was never really going to be for me. It looked good, but everything about the game from the previews to the Let's Play-esque stuff I could find without commentary (fuck, I really am starting to hate shitty commentary in YouTube videos - and I do mean hate) kind of let me down a bit. It felt gimmicky, and not a little like a game aimed at a Western market that Japan doesn't quite entirely understand. Nor should they. If someone in the next generation of consoles should snap up a chance at producing traditionally Japanese turn-based RPG's and actually release them here in the States, I know they'd have at least one customer. Maybe that's all they'd have and that's why they shy away from it. But screw it. I miss the Wild ARMs, the Suikodens, the "real" Final Fantasies. As much as I love games like the Disgaea series and Atlus's brand of crazy, I'm craving something from another time. I thought Mistwalker could fulfill that need, and obviously, they want (or are prodded) to move in different directions. I can't blame them, but boy, does it suck.

Who's the black-haired guy supposed to be? I don't remember him too much from the game. Is it supposed to be somebody from Lost Odyssey, based on what @Sparky_Buzzsaw said?

@Sparky_Buzzsaw: That's unfortunately where the JRPG is right now. Established series like Tales and the NIS SRPGs can (just about) be all business as usual, but every other series (including Final Fantasy, since it always has to make things difficult for itself by redefining what a Final Fantasy game is every sequel) is struggling with this sink or swim decision to either stick to their old turn-based ways and lose an entirely apathetic western audience or try something new and risk alienating absolutely everyone. FFXII and Xenoblade did their darndest to be a little more open-world and Western RPG-ish and succeeded in drawing a crowd, but for every one of those you get these weird experiments that don't necessarily pan out like the Last Remnant or, as the case may be, the Last Story.

The JRPG is destined to be one of those niche "Oh, Japan!" things that pop up on digital distribution networks along with all the titty shmups and tittier visual novels. It's a little depressing, because it's one of the few genres for which a massive budget can really work wonders. (Sure, it's probably true that all games would be better off with a bigger budget, but JRPGs really prosper when they have a big cinematic feel to them.)

@Video_Game_King:

I dunno man, I thought I got his hair perfect. (I did not think that, really.)

How did I forget about him?

The JRPG is destined to be one of those niche "Oh, Japan!" things that pop up on digital distribution networks along with all the titty shmups and tittier visual novels.

Also, doesn't this imply that JRPGs aren't all about titties? I'd say that I've played some that are all about the titties, but I honestly can't name any right now.

@Video_Game_King: There was, uh, that... that one game... sometime that wasn't about the... err...

I, uh, should go. Things to do. You know. Stuff.

@Mento: Maybe that's what the RPG industry needs, in a funny way. Think about the conditions before Final Fantasy VII exploded on the scene and they were pretty similar. RPG's were mostly a niche thing at that point, relegated to budget-like circumstances and sold only in the darkest corners of game shops. I know the world loves them some Final Fantasy VI now, but back then? If you'd heard of it, you were pretty unique. Maybe this lull is just what the JRPG industry needs to really give the genre a boot in the ass. Hey, it worked for the adventure genre, so why not? I can hope, anyways.

@Sparky_Buzzsaw:

Although I don't know what you're talking about, I can still say I've probably played worse.

@Sparky_Buzzsaw: @Video_Game_King: Must every discussion on this damn website devolve into talking about naked cartoon pussy? It's like our own special little variant on Godwin's Law.

Again, I'm certain I've had worse/stranger conversations than this.

Beats my blog conversations' weird way of always turning to Garbanzo beans. Everything that needs to be said about chickpeas has long been mentioned, and yet, that's what it always devolves into. The Internet, man. The Internet.

Just for the record: It's impossible to overrate The Last Story. The game is simply amazing. Save for the framerate, which is just a horrible.

I have the strong urge to write a blog about it myself.