Radiata Stories

Recently I started playing Radiata Stories again, partly because I wanted Laura to see it, and partly because I wanted to relive it myself. It's the game that made me interested in tri-Ace as a developer. It wasn't Star Ocean, it wasn't Valkyrie Profile, it was Radiata Stories that made me start paying attention to this innovative RPG developer.

So, I'd like to talk about what it was about this game that caught my attention so thoroughly.

Juggling Media Consumption: Video Games

Given that I'm going to class these days and, therefore, have homework to take care of, I have a feeling I won't have nearly as much time for video games as I did a week ago. And I already didn't have much time to play, so it's going to be rough.

Still, it's an important hobby to me, so I'll find time somehow. Here's what I'm juggling now:

Let's Talk Final Fantasy

This Cracked article about how Final Fantasy is losing all of its fans sparked a discussion on Facebook. This discussion got me researching, and since I already did the research I figure I should probably write a blog about it.

In short: I think the problems with modern Final Fantasy games has to do with the people involved.

Never Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Ever Fight a Dragon

I've been spending a lot of time playing Dragon Age: Inquisition when I'm not working. On weekends I can get sucked in completely, as I did yesterday. So, I'm going to talk about it a bit, specifically about fighting dragons.

Ode to F5

No button more trusted in exploration,
Journeys or quests or investigation,
Than my ever-present partner in crime, F5:
For in classic parlance, he's infinite lives.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - First Impressions

The first Dragon Age game was the ultimate evolution of the Neverwinter Nights series: an epic fantasy RPG telling a sweeping story with cool characters, with tight, party-based, tactical gameplay, and varied, interesting environments, all in a rich, original world no longer tied to someone else's D&D campaign setting.

The second game also told a compelling story with cool characters, but it did so while sacrificing the original's scope and environmental design while making the combat system tedious and unnecessarily time-consuming, presumably to pad out the game. This balanced it out into an overall mediocre game that I must assume simply had some budgeting issues.

Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third installment, seems to have solved that budget problem. My every complaint about Dragon Age II has been addressed, though it's not without its own set of issues.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel - Spoileriffic Story Review

The Pre-Sequel takes place in between Borderlands 1 and 2, so if you've already played Borderlands 2 you pretty much know what's going to happen already anyway. That said, it's always the journey, not the destination that's important, so if you haven't played The Pre-Sequel yet, you have been warned.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel - No Spoilers Gameplay Review

This past weekend, just in time to pick up Dragon Age 2, I finished Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. Does anybody else actually play these games for the story? If so, you'll probably like this one, since it's probably the most story-based game in the series.

However, I'll handle all that spoilery story stuff in another post. This one is all about the gameplay

Movie Review #43: Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva

Last week, Cox's service went wonky in this area for a few days. We could access the Internet, but everything moved slowly, and download speeds were far too low to stream video. So, while looking around for something to watch that didn't involve streaming, I happened to come across a movie file I got back when Jeff and I were regularly watching movies based on video games in order to discuss them on the Fangamer Podcast. That didn't pan out, though, which is fine, since that meant I got to finally watch it last week!

Short review: Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva is exactly what you'd expect from a Professor Layton movie: there's puzzles, a mystery, a grand reveal somewhere along the line, and altogether a fairly cute story. However, the movie format doesn't bring much else to the table. It's a competent, adventurous movie, but watching it won't give you a deeper understanding of yourself or the Layton universe.

My D&D Mythology

When I first created a D&D campaign back in 2004, after having only a session and a half of experience, one of the first things I did was sit down and create new deities for my campaign setting. The D&D books have their own deities like Pelor, Whosit, and Whatsisface, but none of them really called to me.

Oddly, I was familiar with the Dragonlance setting long before I started playing D&D, and their deities seemed way more interesting. Moreover, there was a theme of balance in that setting that attracted me. Rather than simply lift Paladine, Takhisis, and the rest straight from Weis and Hickman's pages, though, I created my own pantheon using the Dragonlance one as a loose template. The result was 18 deities, two for each alignment. I'm going to talk about the general mythology in this post.

Addiction

I read Cracked articles a lot. They're generally funny and often on-the-nose, even if the titles of their articles are clickbait, and sometimes their research is questionable. Still, it makes for good reading material when I'm bored and stuck somewhere for a while.

Sometimes, though, the articles really make me think. Not long ago, in fact, David Wong wrote an article called 7 Creepy Ways Corporations are Turning You into an Addict, which is maybe worth a read if you can stand the advertisements on the Cracked website. (The phone app is about 70% less obnoxious.)

Today at some point I thought to myself, "man, I really wish I had some Sweet Tarts," which, along with that article, was kind of a kick in the pants to explore my own addictions.

Super Smash Bros 3DS - First Impressions, Part 2

I stopped talking about the new characters last time because I covered five of them and there's still 10+ to go. So, let's jump right into it.

Princess Peach

For the past couple of days I've been getting reacquainted with my main fighter from the past several Smash Bros installments: Princess Peach. After reading an article about her recently, it occurred to me that perhaps I should detail my own history with this character I may or may not beat you with on Smash Bros. (I'm not really that good, but my friend code is 4296-3311-2359.)

Star Wars: The Old Replublic, Another Saga Over, Part II

With a Imperial plot and a couple of Sith Lords now properly lightsabered to submission/death, and with hutt now free to eat the last remaining species of a nearly-extinct animal so a criminal can find some treasure, let's see what the rest of the crew was up to on Nar Shaddaa.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, Another Saga Over

About two months ago I renewed my subscription to Star Wars: The Old Republic for 60 days. That subscription is coming to an end, and I have no plans to renew it just yet. In short, I have things to do, and the game is quite a distraction.

That said, I made a lot of progress with my characters in the game. All eight of them are at about level 30 now, and I feel pretty accomplished about that. I've never sunk this many hours into an MMO before, and while it's not a habit I intend to maintain forever, the story aspects of SWTOR keep pulling me back, inviting me to see it through to the end.

That said, I'm going to try to review what I've done so far.

Gamestop's Incentives

I spent several blogs going over Gamestop's Circle of Life, the cycle that drives business for the company. As a part of that I explored two of the most notorious things expected of Gamestop employees: convincing customers to pre-order upcoming games and subscribe to their discount card.

I did not, however, make any mention of the incentives the company gives its employees to make such sales. That, I figured, was worth an entire blog on its own.

Gamestop: The Circle of Life Part IV

The final part of Gamestop's Circle of Life was the one I took to the most. However much I objected to the pre-order system, I made up for it in my fervor for selling subscriptions.

Gamestop: The Circle of Life, Part III

I told you guys that I could pretty much write about Gamestop forever. The can of worms is officially opened, and now I'm having trouble thinking of anything else to talk about.

Having covered pre-orders and trade-ins, it's now time to talk about used games.

Gamestop: The Circle of Life, Part II

Last time I started explaining about Gamestop's Circle of Life, the engine that drove the company. To recap, the circle goes like so: Reservations > Trade-Ins > Used Games > Subscriptions > Reservations. I then proceeded to talk about the intricacies of the reservations system: particularly its inflated importance, the politics of it, and the social pressures that led to many employees spending more money at their job than they should.

This time I'm going to talk about the company's trade-in and used games system, which has its own share of intricacies you likely never considered.

Gamestop: The Circle of Life, Part 1

As per the voiced interest, here's another post about Gamestop.

It may surprise the 16-year-olds eagerly applying for the job, but Gamestop has a pretty decent turnover rate. That is, employees come and go pretty rapidly. What's scaring so many people away from this coveted "dream job"?