I'm sorry to just be adding to the huge pile of people saying similar things now. I really wanted to write something yesterday when I heard the news but I literally couldn't string a sentence together let alone lay down any of my thoughts on the matter. Now with just over 24 hours gone since it was announced, I feel maybe I can say a little of how I feel.
Ryan always was and always will be the heart of Giant Bomb to me, the glue that kept all the crazy and amazingly different personalities of the GB crew from drifting apart. I read the news on the train home yesterday. Like any other day, the second I had signal on my phone I was straight on Giant Bomb to see what craziness would be in store today, but I wasn't expecting anything as crazy as this. I'll be honest I cried walking home.
Obviously I've lived long enough now to have seen death before, but Ryan's passing is the first case of me being that upset over someone who, really, I never knew. It felt like I knew him though, all those hours of podcasts, those thousands of videos and live streams that I could always rely on cheering me up on shitty days or just being the icing on a great day. Those things will continue I'm sure, but they wont be the same.
I've called myself a fan of the work Ryan and Jeff have been doing since the early Gamespot days. I followed them after that into the blogs, then arrow pointing down and finally here, to say that they have been a part of my life in some way or another for the past decade is no exaggeration and to think that going forward Ryan won't be, well... I still can't really accept it.
It's weird the things you think of in this situation, as well as the obvious stuff like the sympathy for his friends and family, the terror at thinking I'll never hear him on the Bombcast again or hosting a live stream, it's random little things. Watching the GTAV trailer today, I couldn't help but feel sad that Ryan would never get to experience it, and that we'd never have the privilege of hearing his thoughts on it.
When I got into the games industry I always assumed one day I'd get to meet the whole Giant Bomb crew, even if I did have the honour of meeting them now, it won't be the whole crew.
Anyway, I'm sorry this hasn't read very well... it's more of a random set of thoughts than anything but I still had to say it.
I'm sorry to just be adding to the huge pile of people saying similar things now. I really wanted to write something yesterday when I heard the news but I literally couldn't string a sentence together let alone lay down any of my thoughts on the matter. Now with just over 24 hours gone since it was announced, I feel maybe I can say a little of how I feel.
Ryan always was and always will be the heart of Giant Bomb to me, the glue that kept all the crazy and amazingly different personalities of the GB crew from drifting apart. I read the news on the train home yesterday. Like any other day, the second I had signal on my phone I was straight on Giant Bomb to see what craziness would be in store today, but I wasn't expecting anything as crazy as this. I'll be honest I cried walking home.
Obviously I've lived long enough now to have seen death before, but Ryan's passing is the first case of me being that upset over someone who, really, I never knew. It felt like I knew him though, all those hours of podcasts, those thousands of videos and live streams that I could always rely on cheering me up on shitty days or just being the icing on a great day. Those things will continue I'm sure, but they wont be the same.
I've called myself a fan of the work Ryan and Jeff have been doing since the early Gamespot days. I followed them after that into the blogs, then arrow pointing down and finally here, to say that they have been a part of my life in some way or another for the past decade is no exaggeration and to think that going forward Ryan won't be, well... I still can't really accept it.
It's weird the things you think of in this situation, as well as the obvious stuff like the sympathy for his friends and family, the terror at thinking I'll never hear him on the Bombcast again or hosting a live stream, it's random little things. Watching the GTAV trailer today, I couldn't help but feel sad that Ryan would never get to experience it, and that we'd never have the privilege of hearing his thoughts on it.
When I got into the games industry I always assumed one day I'd get to meet the whole Giant Bomb crew, even if I did have the honour of meeting them now, it won't be the whole crew.
Anyway, I'm sorry this hasn't read very well... it's more of a random set of thoughts than anything but I still had to say it.
Hey guys, back again for a brief review of Final Fantasy XIII-2, anyone who knows me will know that I didn't take to well to Final Fantasy XIII, so this might be a surprise for people to read, anyway if people want to hear more from me I might come back and break down the design decisions made in this game that really make it a better game than Final Fantasy XIII in greater detail.
As someone who has played and been a part of the video game industry since the early 90's its safe to say I have a long and storied history with the Final Fantasy franchise, my first experience of Final Fantasy VII was the tipping point which changed me from a casual player to a full time gamer after all.
However my love of the franchise has dwindled over time, as the rest of the worlds games became more advanced and interactive, Final Fantasy became almost stagnant before eventually taking a turn into just being downright boring in Final Fantasy XII and barely a video game in Final Fantasy XIII. Now I've already made my opinions on Final Fantasy XIII hugely clear through other blogs and reviews so its safe to say I came to Final Fantasy XIII-2 not expecting very much, in fact I bought it more out of a tradition for owning each major FF release rather than any excitement to play it, however I was pleasantly surprised.
The first and most obvious change to XIII-2 was the introduction to the game, which lasted a little over 20 minutes before I was running around an environment that was slightly more complex in layout than Final Fantasy XIII's corridors, leveling up my paradigms, earning skills, money and finishing small side quests.
The game still holds on to the high graphical standards of the series
The battle system as well, while not totally overhauled has had enough sensible changes made to it to stop some of the issues with random deaths that could happen in XIII. For example in XIII it wasn't very uncommon for me to have lightning attacked by an entire group of enemies and killed in one combo before having a chance to defend or heal her, causing her to die. Whats the issue you say? Why not just use a phoenix down like you would the rest of the party? Well for some reason the death of your controlled character always meant immediate game over, something which has thankfully been shown the door in XIII-2, if you die you simply switch from one character to the other, giving you a chance to heal or use a phoenix down before continuing the fight.
Another major change to the battle system is the leveling isn't capped to your progress through the story meaning that coming up against a boss that you personally found to be to difficult means that rather than being stuck and having to look up a solution online or simply bash your head against it until you randomly succeed you can now instead simply leave and grind.
Grinding isn't bad either as the new monster system that has been introduced gives you a good reason to want to fight battles to earn either new monsters or items that can increase their abilities.
Due to the use of a time travel structure throughout the game if grinding isn't your thing and monster collecting doesn't do anything for you the third option is to simply move to a different time period and advance a different section of the story, coming back later to stomp all over the boss that gave you trouble before.
On the subject of story the game contains the usual amount of Japanese quirkiness and incredibly cheesy dialogue that people either seem to love or hate but this time it's all wrapped around smaller stories and side quests for the most part broken up into different locations and periods of time while the over arcing story actually shows some incredible movement away from the usual love story interwoven with a mad man wanting to destroy the world.
A villain with a noble cause?
OK it still has a mad man wanting to destroy the world and Serah and Snow are still very much in love but the motivations of the bad guy actually make a fair amount of sense, making him more of a noble martyr rather than just a man wanting to destroy the world simply because he can and the love story is relegated so far from the main thread that it's only ever brought up occasionally in passing as the game decides to instead focus on the new friendship being created between Serah and Noel as well as the search for lightning.
Pre-release there was a lot of stories surfacing about the music in the game, and while it doesn't quite meet the incredibly high standards of previous entries in the series it does still have some stand out tracks and is more than passable for the industry standard.
Overall Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a vast improvement over XIII in almost every way and while other reviewers have mentioned how a love for Final Fantasy XIII is required to gain any enjoyment out of this game, I can safely say as someone who has no fondness for Final Fantasy XIII outside of it's music at all, that it simply isn't the case.
4/5
=================
So what do you guys think? I actually really liked the ending as it is, although I get the feeling it will get changed or altered in someway via a sequel or DLC.
Also, I may review Catherine and Kingdoms of Amalur soon if the feeling takes me.
Every year in the weeks leading up to the holidays I stop thinking about the future of gaming and start to instead think about the past. The 12 months that have just passed to be precise and almost naturally a list will form itself.
This then, is the continued tradition of posting my top ten games of the year on Giant Bomb and if you'd like to have a quick recap here are 2009 and 2010's lists.
Sadly this year I didn't manage to play everything that I had wanted to, and a few obvious omissions have been made that probably would of made my list had I simply had given the time they deserved such as Bastion and Superbrothers Sword and Sorcery
Overall I would say 2011 was an interesting year for gaming, while I feel that many franchises began to get a little repetitive due in no small part to the longer than usual lifespan of this generation, here are my top ten.
I love Assassins Creed, After feeling like the only person alive who enjoyed the first one I was so happy to see Assassins Creed 2 turn peoples opinions of the series on its head. It was something that only got better with Brotherhood, which added a lot of depth to the series. Revelations on the other hand is a step backwards, not only is it almost identical to Brotherhood, with only a few new weapons to keep us interested, it also spends as much time as possible trying to keep the player down. What do I mean by this? Well for example every action in the game causes Templar Awareness, buying a shop, finishing a mission, bumping into a pedestrian, all of it and when that bar fills you are essentially forced to play a dreadful tower defense minigame that comes down to a tactic of 'do I have enough cannonballs saved up to kill the tank?' and when your new gameplay mechanics are only implemented as a punishment for the players actions, things need to be rethought out. It's obvious why this happened, they are hard at work on Assassins Creed 3 and wanted to keep us interested/make some quick money in the mean time. The revelations don't come thick or fast enough for this to be worth most peoples time.
A short experience, yet still one that stuck with me throughout the year, Stacking is a great unique concept and as much fun to play as it is to simply watch, each character has so much personality, which in itself is no small feat when no one speaks and they all essentially have the same character model. The puzzles felt clever and rewarding and the unique character moves made me excited to jump into a new character and give them a play.
I love Street Fighter, but Street Fighter doesn't love me, I'm not great at it and have come to terms with the fact that I never will be, however 3rd Strike was a revelation for me, heralded as one of the most hardcore games in the franchise I went in very skeptical as to if I would like it, but its a more aggressive game that really plays well with my style than Street Fighter IV and with the added parry system it can create some truly magical moments.
Dark Souls hates me, Dark Souls hates you! In fact Dark Souls enjoys watching us suffer, it's incredibly difficult to explain why Dark Souls in on this list, it's the only game I've not finished, not by a long way but for a good two week period it was all that occupied my mind and the subject of all conversations at work, with information being traded from player to player, each piece as valuable as gold if only because it would help you from losing all your souls just one less time. One day I will jump back into this nightmare of a game and I will emerge victorious.... or maybe I'll lose and come out a nerve shattered broken mess of a man, who knows.
An important lesson can be learnt from Uncharted 3, and it's that first impressions really count. While Uncharted 2 was an incredible adventure and easily made my 2009 GOTY #1 slot, Uncharted 3 feels like a step back in someways, the enemies have returned to being bullet sponges, taking more damage than humanly possible, with some of the heavily armored enemies being almost impossible to kill, the higher emphasis on hand to hand combat, while flashy, was wasted on higher difficulties as it was guaranteed to get you killed by others while you were fighting. Add in a new aiming system that felt broken at launch and was only addressed when literally thousands of fans had to complain (and even then they had the nerve to name it the 'alternative aiming system') my first impression of this game was more indifferent than I could ever of wanted. No one wanted this game to be more amazing than me, which made it such a disappointment when it wasn't.
The original Batman: Arkham Asylum was one of 2009's great surprises so I was expecting a lot from Arkham City and for the most part it delivered, however it suffers slightly from the same problems as Uncharted 3 of just feeling a bit samey, it doesn't stray very far from the original formula laid out for it by Arkham Asylum and while that alone isn't enough to make it worse than the original, the slow start to the story meant that the first 3rd of the game feels a little dull and empty, especially compared to the incredible way that the game ends.
A game I think is going to be missed off a lot of lists unfairly, due to it being released so early in the year, LBP2 takes the premise that the original LBP created and expands on it in such an incredible way that it is now possible to not only create fun little side scrolling platformer levels but entirely new game types, Some of the best fun I had with this game involved finding some of the crazy levels people had made online, from street fighter clones to dual joystick shooters LBP2 was something really special and the fact that all your DLC purchases and levels were carried over meant it came out of the gate with a huge amount of content.
Being the sequel to Portal is a lot to live up to, it's original fresh gameplay and story telling devices made it something very special, but somehow Portal 2 didn't disappoint. It added a lot of new mechanics to make the puzzles both more complex and interesting, as well as some incredible new characters that have more personality and charm in their secondary roles than most lead characters ever do. It also has the single best local co-op mode of the year, if you thought some of the puzzles with two portals got hectic, try it with four.
The original Saints Row was a pretty decent GTA clone, aiming to copy the slightly over the top gameplay that San Andreas had created. Saints Row 2 seemed like a response to those who didn't like the more serious that GTA 4 took on and finally Saints Row the third, began to feel like it's own beast. It took all the craziness that had began to really emerge in Saints Row 2 and made it it's main focus. From beginning to end this game is 100% brainless dumb fun, and that's ok, after adventuring all day in Skyrim or slowly picking off bad guys as batman, it can be refreshing to have such random mayhem.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was my first deep jump into a western RPG, previously they had consisted of young beautiful people with spiky hair, saving the world from pretty evil men with long swords. Oblivion changed all that and was such a great experience, I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours running around the huge open world creating my own adventure so when Skyrim came out I had high expectations, expectations that were not only met, they were beaten. Of course as I played this game on the PS3 I have run into a lot of the problems that have become associated with Bethesda games on that platform, and while they are annoying and do ruin the experience in someway, it simply shows how wonderful this game is that it still takes my number one spot by such a large margin. Even after a good 60+ hours with the game I still feel there is so much left to see and I can't wait to find it all.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, hopefully I'll be back to blogging again sometime in the new year, until then I hope everyone has had a wonderful christmas and have a great new year! Bring on 2012!
As time goes on and people get older they change, or at least they should change and for me one of the things that has needed to change over the past few years is my attitude towards the internet. It seems like a very easy thing to say that you will take any piece of information on in a level headed way and to respond to it with only something that will add incite to an established debate, in reality it can be all too easy to simply be the person talking crap on the forums, spouting some half formed opinion you just thought of based on a half truth somebody else only half understood themselves.
When you’re young, or not in the games industry it doesn’t really matter, the internet will always be a place for anonymous people to vent their anger at the latest outrageous DLC, or to remind people how liking something that they themselves don’t like makes them inferior. But when you do work in the games industry, regardless of if you are a coder, animator, designer or even QA there comes a time when you have to realize you represent not only yourself but your company and as such saying nothing is always better than saying something stupid.
I’d like to point out before I go on that this isn’t me preaching to anyone, or trying to make some huge statement, it’s just justifying to myself why I think it’s time for me to stop posting on the forums. I’ve never gone online with the intention of being an asshole, and in real life I strive to be as nice to people as possible, but it would be stupid to let my online habits jeopardize my future in the industry.
Basically what I’m saying is I won’t be posting on the forums anymore, I may occasionally write a blog here or there, and I will still visit the site daily for videos and content.
If anyone wants to chat or keep in touch or whatever PMing me is the best way, after all I’m still going to be visiting daily, I’ll just be hopefully keeping my opinions to myself a bit better.
Welcome to the first proper "JRPG CHALLENGE!!" covering all the antics that I've got up to in the month of February!
This month, as shown by our schedule I tackled a recent Square Enix RPG known as Final Fantasy XIII! Or, I would have had if my LoveFilm had not decided to send me a copy of Nier instead. So this month.... Nier! Nier was kind of an interesting game for me, of all the games that were not originally listed in my schedule Nier was probably the most requested and seemed to be held within a high regard. So when I got the disk in the post I was at least excited that I could see what all the fuss was about.
The first thing I was confronted with upon starting Nier was how ugly it is, I know that sounds like a bit harsh but this game is bordering on looking like a PS2 game. Some of the geometry in the game is really flat, walls have no shape to them at all and everything just looks kind of boxy with some really blurry textures. Character design is also a gripe for me, none of the characters were very visually appealing at all and had very little consistency throughout the designs. Emil for example after his transformation looks like nothing else in the entire world. He actually looks more something I would of expect Jeff and Vinny to fuse in the Persona 4 endurance run rather than the so called 'weapon' that he is. Are you sure you'd like to Fuse your Emil Persona?
The beginning of the game doesn't do anything to remedy this situation either, far to much time is spent going back and forth, not just on the side, with fetch quests which populate the majority of the world but even within the story it's very disjointed. For example early on in the game you are told to visit Popola in the library, then to return home to your daughter Yonah, then back to the library to speak with Popola again, then out to the fields to collect something before going back to your house and finally back to the library again. This could be ok if something happened during this time but the majority of major conversations between characters, while voiced, take place with them simply standing staring at each other. It's not until very late in the game that the cut scenes become actual cut scenes with things happening in them.
The world feels kind of empty as well, and not in the way that the game wants it to through the story, this is mostly because NPC's are pretty static with only a few of them even moving at all. Even then however they only ever move in very obvious patterns such as back and forth, or to three or for points in a town before turning round and walking the same route again.
However, I don't dislike everything in this game, I actually really enjoyed the music, even if the theme that plays while out in the wilderness is apparently on a 25 second loop as I actually woke up humming it one day. I also appreciate the game for having the balls to kill of both major and minor characters at will and with very little warning. For example the two young brothers who work at the scrap yard have a pretty hard time in this game, firstly losing their mother and later having the older brother cut in half by falling rubble, it doesn't sound like much but it's things like this that help to create an atmosphere that actually makes you wonder if you will beat the last boss and get a happy ending or if everything is already doomed.
The major point people mentioned to me before playing Nier was the incredible story that apparently lurked within this game, and I've got to say I kind of disagree. The idea that makes up the main arc of the story is a very interesting one I will admit that but it is told pretty poorly and it's method of delivering the ending is downright evil. For example when you finish the game you will unlock ending A, an ending that to be honest made very little sense to me and was a major disappointment. After the credits rolled and I was ready to send the game back to Lovefilm however I was given the prompt by the game to reload my final clear save and play through 'Kainé's story' for ending B. What this means however is that you have to play through the second half of the game for a second time only this time with an occasional bit of extra dialogue either within Kainé's head or from the shades that you are about to fight. It really tries to drive home the point that the shades are in fact human rather than you and try to gain some emotional response from me, but I just found it down right annoying, The second half of the game is already way to similar to the first half with you going through the only 4 dungeons in the game each again, but to get very little new information out of it was just frustrating. I personally decided to stop after the second ending as I felt that what I was getting out of the game was no longer worth the time I was putting into something I had already finished, but to get every part of the ending you have to play through that second half 4 times. 4. Times. Here is a graph to illustrate my point.
I hope you like the second half of that game, because your going to play it 4 times :D Imagine if another game made you do this, Final Fantasy VII for example. Imagine it shows you the beginning of the ending before demanding you go back to the death of Aerith and play it from there if you want to see the rest of it, 3 times!, Craziness! OK, I think I've probably made my point with that, but it's still kind of crazy.
It's kind of weird to think back on it, even though this blog has an overly negative tone to it I still kind of enjoyed Nier, even with it's simplistic combat, unlikeable characters (except for Emil) and ugly looks I still had a good time.
Anyway that is all we have time for in this months edition of the JRPG CHALLENGE!!! Come back next time when I will have either played Final Fantasy XIII or pushed it to the side again to play Rogue Galaxy!
Ladies and gentlemen, I propose to you the stupidest idea to enter my mind in possibly, oh I don't know... a week? and that Idea?
First things first, I feel I should clarify what this challenge is, and why I am attempting to do it. The idea is to play 12 JRPG's over 12 months taking me from Febuary 1st 2011 to Febuary 1st 2012. My reasoning behind this is simple enough, I used to consider myself a huge JRPG fan, Final Fantasy for example consumed most of my childhood playing time and I thought that is the way things always would be.
In more recent times however I find I have almost an internal conflict between the JRPG player in me and the more sensible me, who enjoys playing good modern games. So that is why this challenge exists, by forcing myself to play 12 JRPG's in 12 months I should finally be able to put it to rest, ether I DO like JRPG's and that's fine, or I DON'T and I can finally stop throwing hissy fits at the endless whoring out of franchises such as Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts.
So what are the games? Well here is the list of current contenders, I feel it's worth mentioning that while this is "Soaps Horrible JRPG Challenge" it's not to say that any/all of the JRPG's mentioned are horrible, some of them seem pretty promising, but the actual Challenge itself is horrible.
The more intelligent among you will have twigged that I have picked more JRPG's than there are months in a year . This is were you could possibly make an impact in this exciting* challenge! I'm giving myself a longer list in case I find it hard to find some of these games, or just can't face one of them.
If you have any games to add to this list I'd be very grateful for it, but it must be said that I am only looking at more recent JRPG's, yes I'm aware of how amazing Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6/7 Xenogears, Vagrant Story e.t.c are but that is not the point of this challenge! The challenge is really about seeing if I can stand playing new JRPG's as they are churned out of japan or if it's time to hand in my fan card, take my coat and hat and leave.
For some people this might not seem that difficult, but when you take into consideration that I only get to play about 10 hours a week on average these days and that most JRPG's stretch into the 40-50 hour mark easily this could be taking up most of my gaming time.
So what do you think? I will probably start with Final Fantasy XIII as it is something I've been meaning to finish for a long time but sadly lost my chapter XIII save when my old PS3 died :(
A little bit of background reading, I'm a graduate having studied Interactive Video Games Design at the University of Gloucester which ended in July 2010. Since then I've been looking for a job within the industry and also attempting to improve my skills as an artist both 3D and 2D work. However due to the current climate for work getting a job within the industry has proven difficult and here I am six months later still unemployed, which can be a bit of a downer.
Ok, so I've been working my hardest to improve my skills throughout the previous months and have decided that I would love some feedback from the Giant Bomb community. Here are 3 pieces that represent my standard of work, although at the moment I would say I'm improving and changing how I draw so much that some of this stuff is already outdated.
This is the oldest of the three pieces, I created it in black and white to try and concentrate on my tone as I can struggle with colour. I personally feel the shading could be a bit darker now. This is a more recent piece, I was trying to use a wider range of colours and to create realistic skin tones and details on the bike. I really like the leg shown as I think that and the foot look pretty realistic.
This is my latest piece, unlike the other two this one used zero reference images at all, I think I still have a long way to go before I can even attempt to create work without references but it was a fun challenge. So that's my work at the moment, what do you guys think? I suppose it's hard to pass judgement on anything like this without having seen any of my previous works so here is a piece of concept art I created at university for a game project, it reflects my level of skill at the time, lack of ambition and the tight deadline that I was under when I made it.
I'm actually kind of ashamed of this now, but I think it's an important piece of work to understand were I have come from in my development and even looking at it now I can see lessons I need to learn in my current art work. So yeah, that is it. I hope you guys enjoy looking at my crap and if you have any suggestions or general feedback I would love to hear it. If anyone would like to know more about my work or to simply follow what I do you can PM me on the site or follow me on Deviant Art at http://camisadoblue.deviantart.com/ (sadly a necessary evil) and if this proves to be anything other than a huge failure I may consider making more issues of this blog.
So earlier this year I suffered a critical blow when my launch day PS3 finally kicked the bucket and gave me the dreaded Yellow Light Of Death, as sad as this was I was also slightly excited as it meant I would now have an excuse to upgrade (or side..grade, whatever) to the PS3 Slim.
When I got my Slim I rushed straight into playing on it and now, 2 months later I have built up a pretty decent amount of saves and data on that system.
Now, I've finally decided I'd like to finish / go back to some of the stuff I played on my old PS3, but how can I access the data?
I assumed I would simply be able to exchange the hard drives, copy the files I wanted to an external hard drive and then paste them back over the the slims hard drive, keeping all my awesome data and progress in one place. From what I've read though, inserting a new hard drive into a PS3 will cause it to format the drive, losing all data.
I then read about using an ethernet cable from PS3 to PS3 slim to take the data but AGAIN it will wipe all the data off the receiving hard drive and I doubt that would even work with a PS3 suffering from YLOD.
So here is were I need the great and nerdy minds of the giant bomb community to help me.
Is there anyway for me to access the data on my old PS3, take the files I want from it and paste those files onto my new hard drive? Or am I just going to have to say good bye to my 95% completion on Just Cause 2 (e.t.c) D:
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