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By admin, November 29, 2010 1:34 pm

So, where have I been?! Sadly, not living underneath a rock, but moving jobs has put a huge burden on my recent post-ability :(. Lame excuses aside, I’m trying to kick back into gear and get this uber awesome site rolling again! W00t!

So, apart from shifting my stuff from one side of the office to the other I’ve now changed specialismismisms (extra isms for extra emphasisisis) and now build pretty floaty internet things also known as websites. Despite the fact that I mainly specialise in hard coding backend server coolness, I’m doing a bit of pretty formatting stuff too. Isn’t life wonderful?! Greatest part of my new job?! I actually do get to do some maths! Hurrah! Maths is for geeks and I love geeks and maths and sexy geeky maths.

So, um, gaming?! Yes GAMING! gaming still exists and you’ll be happy to know that even though I gave up blogging for a while I did not give up games (games>blogging, I hope you understand).

Lock him in the fridge!

I’m going to detail a few of my favs in some later posts, but for now you can know:

1. Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light was AWESOME.

2. Despite raving that Castlevania was my greatest find of Eurogamer Expo I have not yet purchased the game (note to my bf: Christmas present!?).

3. I completed FFVII and was so uber my the end I almost obliterated Sephiroth by looking at him.

4. Making a Cloud so awesome in FFVII was extremely time cosnuming, and in the end I was waking up to the cries of the planet (seriously, one morning I woke up and thought “oh, the planet is crying again”).

That's a scary bunny

5. Epic Mickey is on my playlist (you may stop reading the blog if you wish, but it matters not! I will play the mouse in the dark infested Disneyland whatever you say!).

6. I DLed Tomb Raider 3 from PSN for my PSP. First thing I did? Lock the butler in the fridge. “Urrrrrrrrgh”.

7. There are cutscenes in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep. Many, many, many cutscenes.

8. I found the girl I get to do the funny stuff with in Mass Effect.

So things are moving albeit at a rather slow pace. I try to update as much as I can and keep everyone up to date with my viewpoints and suggestions. Thanks for being patient! Natasha

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By admin, September 21, 2010 12:10 pm

Stunning worlds in FFXIV

My currently playing list is racking up I’m almost suffocating under the weight of so many games! Last week was Final Fantasy XIV beta week, unfortunately I couldn’t play as much as I wanted to but what I did see was epic. The game is on general release tomorrow (22nd September) and with my special edition pack I’ll be roaming the Trebia server for real sometime this weekend. If you’re around come say hi! My character’s name will almost certainly have “schuki” in it somewhere.

So adding FFXIV to my cross-platform mix I’m also simultaneously playing Dragon Quest IX, God of War, Dragon Age (slowly…), Mass Effect, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Civ 5 (by this weekend). I may have to start thinking about giving up my job, or at least inventing a tropical illness that’ll get me off work for a few months. Mixing KH and God of War is easily the most challenging since they have different config for X/Circle buttons. I am currently failing at the first boss in KH and blaming this on God of War config (and secretly crying myself to sleep).

Cutscene-a-rama in KH: Birth by Sleep

Verdicts on games so far? God of War’s “throw you into it” style is very appreciated! Moveset is varied and I applaud the way enemies have been designed to get you to utilise all the moves, often in action-adventure games you can learn moves and happily forget about them. My only criticism? The continuous dramatic music that is a little too much for my poor brain at the end of the working day (that is all). I’m in the early stages of KH, and so far all I have seen is endless cut scenes and some unfortunate voice acting. Although KH side-games (as in not KH 1 or KH 2) always showcase some great new battle style, and this is no exception; you rack up moves in your command list and cycle through them ending in a cool finishing move which is different for each move-combo. You can also D-link with characters and enemies and “borrow” their moves, making the list of things your character can do in battle pretty immense.

Not too sure about this guy yet... Dragon Age

My portable game of the moment, Dragon Quest IX, is just about to come to a close. It was a great game with some truly addictive elements. Next up is probably going back to a retro Final Fantasy or the Spyro trilogy (after blabbing about it last week) now that I have my new PSP! So now I am either the girl on the tube with the Zelda DS, or the girl on the tube with the red PSP (and sometimes both). Check ya later!

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By admin, September 17, 2010 1:39 pm

When I was growing up I too had the cute-character action-adventure bug. This all started with a love for Mario that I still can’t kick and continued when I found the butt-kicking and uber cute purple dragon Spyro. Kawaii! All fangirl statements aside – the original Spyro trilogy was easily one of the best action-adventure games series I have ever played. Developed by the incredible Insomniac games, Spyro combined a great mixture of intuative game mechanics, awesome gameplay with cool side quests and a bunch of stuff to collect complete with percentage completion. Dude! This post is about the original Spyro trilogy: Spyro the Dragon, Spyro: Ripto’s Rage / Gateway to Glimmer, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

Why did I love it so much? Yes, yes he is a very cut dragon, but that won’t keep me playing a game for 20 odd hours. There was a perfect balance of worlds and levels. Often games get the wrong mix when they make HUGE levels but only very few of them (Level Amount Fail) or create very small worlds (World Size Fail) or small worlds with lots of tiny levels (Negative Level Size Fail). Spyro had great sized themed central worlds all linking to levels each with their own mini games and hidden areas.

Awesome worlds

Simple gameplay had Spyro running, gliding, head-butting or breathing fire but little else. The genius came with Insomniac creating amazingly varied and challenging levels so you can put your Spyro skills to the test. Very like the old Mario games, the simple gameplay lets you become so uber at controlling the character that you’re able to show mass skills in the more challenging levels, and challenging they get! “Super Powered Gliding” levels need you to keep on the track whilst going super-fast to reach high areas, and trying to find all 100% of the finite number of gems will have you going crazy! I remember arrival at the boss level with 99% of the gems only to find out I had missed one gem in the back-and-beyond of one level. Doh! The status menu will help you locate the level where it’s hiding – but can you find it?

Spyro 2 and 3 both came with mini games and skill points, so on top of your awesome normal storyline mode you had some challenging-but-achievable accolades to earn that give you extras at the end of the games. Storylines were always simple and graphics were at the correct level for the time. Gameplay and dry humour were consistently brilliant. The guys at Insomniac had fun with the series and put so much of their personality into the games and it shows with the amazing reviews and dedicated fanbase. I’ll continue replaying these games for a long time yet!

Flame on! He is a Dragon!

Spyro fans can download the trilogy from the US PlayStation Network store and play on their PSP! In the EU? Get a platinum copy! It’s worth it!

Link to SpyroHints.com, back in my pre-gamefaqs days I used this site to get hints on the tricky parts! Yes I was young. The site is still up! And awesome as ever.

Insomniac: If you ever read this, please let me come visit your studios next time I’m in the states? I’ve been a huge fan for a very long time :).

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By admin, September 6, 2010 3:38 pm

By spamming the Square Enix site I have officially made it onto the FF XIV beta! Now, I’m not a huge MMO player, but I have a long Final Fantasy background and have (unfortunately) been disappointed with the last few FFs. I enjoyed XII but with the lack of a real protagonist and a weaker storyline I felt it was lacking in something. XIII made me want to cry; the storyline was well constructed but the haphazard missions bolted onto the end and the ultra-linear gameplay (note: gameplay not storylines, I know FFs are always linear storylines!) meant I enjoyed it a lot less then I expected. My new theory? Maybe MMO will be an interesting direction for FF. Although I’m not too sure I want them to give up on the epic JRPGs just yet.

Yes I’m excited! What I loved about FFIII and Dragon Quest IX is being replicated in FFXIV: changeable job classes! And it’s easy; by changing your main weapon you can move between classes wherever you are on the map. Jobs belong to four main types (War, Magic, Land and Hand) and each has it’s own set of quests and mini-games. Battling seems to be a little more rapid, there are a few cool added extras like the ‘retainer’ bots that sell things for you in towns, and solo playing is acceptable. The great emphasis on class changing and making the game more available to a wider audience is a good move. I can’t wait! Eurogramer have a great roundup of the closed beta here.

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By admin, September 2, 2010 3:12 pm

I finally feel like I’m through enough of this game that I can write a well-informed review! OK so you guessed it, Dragon Quest is a JRPG and it pushes collecting and missions to a new limit. The good? Loads of stuff to get your hands on and great character creation. Bad stuff? It takes ages to get anywhere and simple storyline that takes a while to get moving. But I still can’t stop playing…

Your main character starts out as a Celestial, a guardian angel blessed with immortality living it up in the floating Observatory. Your daily life involves descending to earth to aid the puny mortals in their life troubles. The minions then give you Benevolessence, which you offer up to the sacred tree Yggdrasil to make it blossom. Astonishingly you’re the last Celestial to offer Benevolessence when everything goes horribly wrong. Yggdrasil blossoms but brings with it a terrible storm which knocks you from the floating city and hurtles you like a meteor to the earth below. You awaken without your wings and you’ve lost a great deal of your Celestial powers. You now must find a way back to the Observatory and discover what went wrong.

So you begin the game as a bit of a n00b, having no powers and little explanation for your existence, but things progress swiftly and characters start realising your amiable ability to take on any task for no pay (but hey, it’s a JRPG so monsters carry money!). The storyline lacks any real bite but what is fantastic is the gameplay. Travelling between villages you’re out to solve various problems to capture Benevolessence or restore Yggdrasil’s lost figs. Extra missions are handed out by random NPCs dotted all over the place and some come with pre-requisites. Each job class has its own set of missions, fuelling you to get your team working on those job classes to at least level 40 each. Battling is the age-old Square Enix turn-based style. Each job class gets specific moves but I’m yet to see anything really special about any particular move-set, fire doesn’t seem to have any added effect to ice monsters so elemental ingenuity seems to be lacking.

Darling that just won't do..

You design your whole party including their class and kit them out in various lurid outfits which you either purchase or alchemise. Character creation and costume changes is easily the most fun and addictive part of the game.  You want to battle copious amounts of monsters to find new items and alchemise your cool new outfits. You’ll run to new towns bypassing enemies you can’t face just to gawp at the items on sale in the armour shop in some random town.

Shortly after the first major storyline you’ll gain the opportunity to change jobs. My heart almost gave way when I found that my main character (aptly named Schuki) had to drop back down to a level 1 warrior from a level 28 minstrel when I asked to change class (Lvl 1?! NOOOOOOO!). But wait! Yes you drop to 1, but you can still wear all the armour and weapons for that class (even the new cool super defense boosting stuff) and you keep any stat boosts you gained from your last class. You will, however, forget spells and abilities that your new class doesn’t have. Dropping Schuki to lvl 1had little effect on her attack, and she could then quickly ride through the levels gaining more skill points that would have taken her a lot longer to learn through just sticking with one class. Moral of the story? Mix it up and change classes! Schuki plays as any classes with swords (I like swords). Not all classes are available from the get-go, naturally you’ll do some missions to unlock classes or be ‘invited’ to join such nobel ranks.

Hitting the road and kicking butt

The world map is immense for a DS game, it does take you a good deal of time to hike your butt across the world but it’s worth it for the hidden alechemy items you find scattered across the globe. I loved the non-random battles, although battles are still random while sailing over the ocean. Interestingly enemies in the sea get increasingly difficult when you enter near continents you shouldn’t be visiting yet only allowing you to fully explore as you become stronger.

Dragon Quest has me completely hooked. The storyline is kitsch just the the FFIV style graphics, but the character creation and missions are highly addictive. It’s a shame that there’s little character development beside your main character although it almost feels like Quantum Leap with the protagonist and guide being the only stable characters. If you have friends you really like get them a copy too, the multiplayer element is awesome, allowing your main character to ‘visit’ your friends game and help them out in their party in-game. Dragon Quest does tend to eat time and missions can take a while to complete, but if you’re a classic JRPG fan you’ll enjoy every minute.