Goodbye old friend who was not actually a friend.
I am back, LusiKnights! What is that? Nobody noticed my absence last week? Everybody thought I was supposed to have left here weeks ago anyway? Pshaw! How about I talk about some video games now, will that please everybody? No? Well I do not have anything particularly interesting to say otherwise, so it will have to do this week, cut me some slack guys.
DIE FFX DIE
I honestly stopped playing my Vita for months because of how much I could not stand Final Fantasy X. FFX used to be a game that I never particularly liked, but would get occasional cravings for now and then, but now it is the monster that almost took away my beloved Sony handheld. Strangely, this playthrough was the only time I was able to appreciate the good things about the battle system and the Sphere Grid, but as I stood tall with the support of these systems, it also left me exposed to the blunt smack to the face that is the rest of the game. This playthrough also made it more obvious how ineffective the localization was, missing the target on both its aims to capture the original intention of the script and present it in a digestable way for differently wired brains. It seems to me to be an incredibly difficult job, but Square Enix had done it well in the past.
Anyway, I realized that I had to push through the final Jecht fight if I ever wanted to play my Vita again without the ghost of terrible final bosses and the phantom of the dull droning of overwrought dialogue hanging over my head. I also realized that focusing only on the game would only result in failure like it had so many times in the past, so like a true Canadian I flipped on a hockey game to ease the pain. And before I knew it, I had defeated Braska’s Final Aeon for the final time. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Box Boy!
This is a cute little five dollar puzzler on the Nintendo eShop that seems worth the purchase based on the three worlds I played. The challenge levels seem tough as nails.
Very sweet and thoughtful.
Never Alone
I tweeted that Never Alone was the first draft of a good game and I stand by that. It is a well-told and surprisingly poignant story that attempts to be reflected in gameplay, but it does not hit home. The right groundwork is there, however, and I am glad I played all the way through. As I continue to try and slowly forge my way as a game developer myself, I want to try to recognize specific reasons why I think a game does not live up to its potential from a developer viewpoint instead of just from a player standpoint. I think being a more active gamer makes me a better developer and I think actively thinking about developing makes me a more appreciative and critical gamer. Speaking of…
Sad Ryan
I do not talk much about the game I am currently working on because I did so much talk surrounding Lusipurr’s Fountain of Perpetual Disappointment that I feel like my main priority should be action this time. But we are finally at a stage at which I do not mind detailing an update. There are eleven levels created out of the planned forty, there is some music written, and most importantly, it is starting to look and feel like the game we first envisioned when I play it on my phone. It is just a simple tap and swipe game, but the reason for such a simple design was so that I could actually complete a game. It is still taking a lot of time and work, so it goes to show just how much more I bit off than I could chew with LFoPD. Not that that game is shelved forever, I will just need a real budget to ever return to it.
Oh, but it DID finally get greenlit on Steam, so there is that.
Final Thoughts
Axiom Verge! Bloodborne! New platforms for Shovel Knight! Transistor! Bastion! Is Titan Souls any good? I have been doing a better job this week to remember to actually play games in order to reflect on them properly, but – as has been expressed on here many, many times – I just wish that that time existed in a void. We need to re-organize society. Any ideas? See you all next week.
