NOTE: This review was originally written for the PC Beta of FF11. I have no intention on ever purchasing the full version of the game as I do not like MMORPGs. (Additional Note, original date is approximate)
Apparently Final Fantasy is a lot like Star Trek. Both are only good when they end in an even number. Also both have the one exception to this rule in slot 7. Guess 7 really is a lucky number. That isn’t to stay Star Trek 1/FF1 are bad really, just really long and boring.
And now for your reading pleasure, the Lameazoid three part Anime Central EXTRAVAGANZA!!
Anyway, was back in December a guy I know asked if I wanted to go with him to Anime Central in Chicago in April. For the uneducated, Anime Central is an Anime convention. So I agreed and here we are today.
Friday After a long boring car ride, and a conversation on just what we each mean when we say “Chicago”. He (Jason) seems to think Chicago is just some small bit of buildings near Lake Michigan. I prefer to think that the entire northeastern quadrant of Illinois is “Chicago”. But hey, considering he lives in Chicago (according to my definition) what would he know about what to call it?
Maxis
Some games you just love to hate. Or maybe it’s the other way around, you hate to love them. Then there are those you love and those you hate completely. I’m thinking The SIMS is just one I hate really, but I REALLY want to love it. This game is really easy to compare to Diablo 2. Both have similar play perspectives. Both have similar gameplay mechanics really. Both are games I really enjoy when I first start playing them but hate absolutely after about a week. Finally both are games I keep coming back to.
1989 Squaresoft | 1 Player
Graphics 6/10
So so graphics. They are OK, but this is for NES standards. It is a Square game, and
they tend to have pretty good graphics for their games when they are released, and this
is one of their first games so it’s pretty early. Some of the monsters are easy to tell
what they are supposed to be but others seem like random blobs.
I think it is best to start out by saying that I like Digimon in general. I like it a lot really. Season 2 was stupid, but Season 1 and 3 are great. In the whole Pokemon vs Digimon thing I pick Digimon hands down. The monsters are much more bad ass, the story is ten times better than “Let’s train our monsters to kill eachother for prizes!”. Anyway, I really like Digimon. So hey, a Digimon Playstation game! Neat. And it’s an RPG. How can you lose? Well apparently pretty fucking easily. Digimon World, is one of the worst game I have ever played. And I have played a LOT of games. Off the top of my head I’d say it’s the worst Playstation game I have played for sure. This is probably the only game of the many I own I regret buying, at full fucking price no less. I think I bought this game the day it came out for 40 dollars. What a rip off. I would have gotten more entertainment (both quality and time wise) out of burning fourty one dollar bills in my backyard. I think I played this game for like an hour before becoming completely pissed at it and never played it again. Let’s start with the good I suppose. The graphics are nice. The people look really stupid, but the monsters all look pretty cool. The environments are pretty detailed as well. That’s it I think. Now what we are all here for, the bad parts. Gameplay. This game has as much gameplay as a dead slug. No wait, that’s an overstatement, a dead slug would still have some fun parts, like pouring salt on it or splatting it on a wall or some shit. Anyway, don’t go into this game expecting a game like PokĂ©mon only with Digimon characters. Its nothing like that. PokĂ©mon the game is pretty fun. Maybe you are instead expecting some sort of RPG that follows the story of the show. Don’t go for that either. None of the show kids appears in this game. Why they didn’t just make an RPG based on ths how is beyond me. What DO you get for your hard earned money? A really pretty looking Tomagotchi that isn’t portable unless you have one of those LCD deals and a battery pack of some sort for your Playstation. You will spend more time cleaning up your monster’s shit and feeding it than you will actually battling other monsters. I swear this thing is worse than having a real fucking pet. It is always hungry or tired or needing to shit. Well ok, raising a Tomagotchi isn’t that bad really. Here is the kicker. You get like 1 piece of food or per day for your monster. That will last it like 3 hours then it’ll be hungry again. Also unless you want your Monster to turn into something crappy when it evolves, you have to take it to one of the 2 toilets on the whole island. Did I mention you’ll never make it to these toilets in time and it’ll shit itself all over the place anyway. But wait! That’s not all folks! Yes battles. Well its more like “Sit and watch two monsters wander aimlessly for an hour while you scream and pound the controller hoping something happens” than a battle. You don’t control the monster in the battle. The battles are really slow, the monsters will wander around and hit each other every few minutes.In the meantime you provide moral support by cheering the monster on. You can also train in a training ground to make your monster stronger. Which is a necessity if you want your monster to actually win any battles. Let me describe the several games I played of this now for you. So you can get the big picture. In the begening I picked Augumon to start with. I don’t know what Gabumon is supposed to be but it looks kind of lame next to the Dinosaurlike Augumon, so I picked Augumon. Plus Augumon is supposed to turn into the big kick ass War Greymon. After loosing several battles. Or maybe it was winning. Anyway, battles give shitty stat increases, I found the training grounds. After lots of hard training generally I could finally win battles pretty easily and start working on the story. Actually I’m not sure what the story is exactly, something to do with bringing Digimon back to the Digimon village. Finally my Monster Digivolves. Ok, I went through like TWENTY Digimon in my time playing this game, each time, no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried to raise it right, it would end up trning into the SHIT EATING SHIT MONSTER. This thing is weak as fucking hell and looks completely retarded. I think once I ended up with “Tentacle Rape Mon” and another time I had a Seadramon. The funny thing is, I once saw a post on a message board of somone who was TRYING to get the shitty shit monster. Aparently they had gotten all the other monsters and that was the last one they needed. HEY GUY LET ME PLAY YOUR GAME THAT THING IS THE ONLY ONE I CAN EVER GET. Well there are slight advantages to having the shit monster. You don’t have to feed it. Just let it crap on the ground it will feed itself. That’s right, it eats it’s own fucking feces. Actually now I’m wondering why I hated this game. Not too many games let you own a monster that eats it’s own shit. Anyway, after getting the shit monster it would eventually die for no apparent reason then the leader of the village would bitch to be about taking better care next time ad he would give me a fresh monster to corrupt. I suppose there is a good chance my monsters kept dying due to thier diet of shit but I’d like to think otherwise. Anyway, After a good time of playing I got tired of trainign my monster up to a good level only to have it die or scat poisoning, plus I had only managed to do one quest, at least I think it was a quest, anyway, I finally got sick of this piece of shit game and decided to hate it forever. I think if I had my shit monster here it would probably really enjoy eating this one.
It should be being to be well known that I are an fan of the dying game genre
sometimes being called “Shooters”.
No, I do not mean First Person Shooter, though those be generally pretty well
good as also, I refer myself to side scrolling or upwards scrolling space fighter
games where there is being the general point is to see how much large of a score can
rack up. The best console type examples of this type of console game are including
Life Force, Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie, and Bangaio (there be many others, these
be just example, don not flame me for not mentioning what is YOUR personal favorite).
Anyway, Zero Wing are just being that type of game. The humans be under attack
by aliens or under attack by whomever and it are YOUR job to be fly alone through
swarms of aliens for chance to kill their leader’s time. At least this game is sort
of being to manage to explaining why you is alone fighting aliens, it happens to be
that your Throat Sea Urchin. explodes at the beginning of the game and you is just
barely managing to be able to escape. So you go are going off on to a personal
vendetta on to avenge your crewmates. At least it are being a bit more of an
exposition than Life Force is being to have, which is consist of no into story and
simply thrusts you directly into combat.
It is unfortunately lack of a having story is Life Force belonging only
disadvantage to this title (NOTE: Life Force is essentially the Shooter version
of Contra in every way). Being on the more than negative side, Zero Wing has is
having decent music. Well at least the one track I got to hear is going to be
being decent. After trying for like one half time of hour to be trying to kill
the first boss I having been gave up on trying to be want to finish this game,
shame too, since you are being to getting unlimited continues (always a plus)
and I are think there is being only 4 levels to this game with only four levels.
On with the bad parts to get on with. For started time, the game is having
been made painful difficult by there having slow speeds of the ship. Considering
this was being have been on the same console that giving us Sonic 2, I don not
wanting to believe that processor energy had been had to be anything to have to
be do with it. I am suppose it may could be that I was been trying to play this
game through means of using a keyboard, but still being, repetition should have
come to be me good enough to be able to at least be able to finish the first
boss. Also there is being much much overuse of “burst fire” is happening when
the enemy is fires at you in an burst usually during being in this game’s
belonging to case in an 8 direction star burst. This is not been too difficult
to be in itself to have to dodge but every time there be will also also be an
straight shot approaching to you ship right at you right during the spot you
have to need to be to avoid the burst shot. This could have been somewhat
remedied by providing freely the ship more speed. More speed is happening it
are easier to be able to move dodge out of the way. Life Force occurred slow
ships too but at least you were being able to get upgrades to being able to
fix that.
Oh yes, upgrades. While being that upgrades are not having been necessary
essential to having a shooter type console game, it is helpful to been having
some decent ones when you are having them. The one that is seems to being the
easiest one to acquire is being to be the helper drone upgrade. This is been a
nice warping as usually the helper drone upgrade are the hardest to acquire.
Next we are having lasers, which are pretty much suck in during been ALL
shooter/action game since they is required to be have uselessly slow YOUR fire
speed due to the extra power. Also they are being have to BASEically required
to be follow the path of the gun barrel is which is makes them to be hard to
be aim while you are trying to be dodging. What should you ARE to be doing?
Continuing to be stick around during the path that BELONG of that bullet so
the laser will be a hit or do are you have to being TO dodge out of the laser
of it’s path? The last upgrade occurring to be a bit USeful and is being a sort
of guided missile weapon while it have a pretty high rate of fire, the missiles
are seem to been making a pretty half assed trial to actually be hitting their
targets.
So unless you are starved for a shooter to play, go find something else.
There are quite few very good ones on The Underdogs. (NOTE: We No longer support
the Underdogs.org due to their excessive pop up advertising.) Just don’t bother
with this pile of shit.
