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Review: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon

I Picked up Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s dungeon not sure what to expect after buying Dragon Quest Swords , You see Dragon Quest Swords I figured Might be good but instead it turned into a steaming pile of Suck after the first 20 minutes of play realizing that you were stuck on rails, In the Sense of an RPG its not because you are firmly stuck on rails with no real choice of where you can explore. BlueSteel really has the game Pretty much nailed in this review on his site.

As For Final Fantasy fables though its a complete turnaround from DQS , I Started out playing and i was taken back how it reminded me of final fantasy 9. Final Fantasy 9 i personally enjoyed due to the fact you dont get clusterfucked by Cut scene movies, The Story so far seems to be fairly decent but what had caught me as the funniest thing was the dungeons. As i started play around in the dungeons something came to mind a game i used to play.

fatal labyrinth an old yet addictive game on the Sega Genesis it seems all the dungeons are randomized and Loot is randomized, If you die you also loose everything you had, that said its best to use the storage in game. I’ve so far made it through half of the game. Some parts are just outright agravating to the point you want to fire your wiimote out a window, but as Agravating as it can get theres always another path you can go and just go back to the spot your stuck in later.

One of the hardest parts of the game is the “special rules” dungeons.. basically you have any number limitations that makes your life harder than being awake two weeks straight without an ounce of coffee, If you feel like your going to fail a dungeon best thing is to bail out and retry it, because the randomization affords you a luck factor of getting an easier setup.

Overall so far, I really like the game, but due to the content it may fly under the radar for alot of people , Its a great experence so far. also it lends a little nastolgia to old school gaming.  The gameplay effectively nonlinear in a way. but inorder to advance the story you have to play with the story.

The name roguelike  Rpg as everyone calls it is sort of fitting but theres a sence to why stuff is randomized.

but as far as FFFCD Its Definantly worth a buy because the replayability is up there.

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StarSucks Closings


Been too long since i’ve last updated but i caught this little bit in the new, From the boston globe that Starbucks isn’t doing so well.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – One coffee drinker’s bad news is another coffee drinker’s good news, it seems.

Financial woes at Starbucks Corp <SBUX.O>, which is planning to close 600 underperforming U.S. stores, is evoking glee and little sympathy from aficionados who say they resent the coffee shop giant and favor small independent cafes.

Its sad to see coffee places close but as far as starbucks goes.. I cant really give any sympathy myself for this.  There expansion was at breakneck speed and in the end it was there own fault.  I’ve been in Starbucks on Occasion , When theres no other coffee within miles. But you can see why Starbucks fucked up, google maps shows it perfectly.

Like why the hell are there 3 starbucks within 2000 feet of each other. Its like someone went on a bombing run of Providence with Starbucks all in a straight line.

seriously there cant be that many uppity people in providence that need there starbucks that bad. but there way of putting up stores is just bad.

I’d hate to say it but if you look at dunkin donuts its much more logical than starbucks…

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Would you pay $15 dollars for a coffee? Not me..

I have my limits on coffee but $15 dollars is way out of my limit , for that price the coffee better do something like cure diseases. while not as expensive as cat shit coffee its still too damn expensive.

From WFMY News 2 :

Some people in Washington are paying $15 a cup for a rare and expensive cup of coffee.

Advertisement

Vancouver, WA — It’s said to be some of the best coffee in the world, but its $15 a cup price tag may be a bit hard to swallow for some drinkers.

The brew is called Panama Esmerelda is made from a very rare coffee bean. They only get 8 cups of coffee from a half pound bag. And the half pound bag costs $100. The coffee shop in Portland is the only shop in the nation to bid on the expensive coffee beans.

Drinkers say it has a different type of taste that it worth the money.

that last line gets me.. It has a different taste, sure why not have a little crack with your coffee that would have a different taste too..

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Games: Guitar ____, Rock_____ (insert random word in blank space)

First guitar hero… that wasn’t so bad. Than rock band… Now Rock revolution, And so it begins.. the Rock____(fill in blank with something Cool sounding) Wars.

Whats next Rock Philharmonic, *You need 45 Controllers to play, a small loan , your first born and a contract for 3 years. it maybe just me but i have no damn interest in a simulator simulator (your simulating someone simulating playing a song). I just cant stand games that you do not truly play – It would be like playing Unreal Tournament by playing the player that controls the character thats boring as hell. After all doesn’t violate some sort of paradox rule? Just imagine playing Mario brothers by the Guitar hero method .. red red green green and you screaming the whole time GO RIGHT DAMNIT.

Sure its *new* to gaming … NOT SO MUCH, Cue: NES power pad(wait thats more fun).. Dance Dance revolution, Or for that matter any sports game where you Can only play by simulating the seasons. Sure Maybe the first time around its fun but after that i’d see it getting boring as hell.

But what i find Is the silliest fucking thing to this is with the DLC + Need to buy 74 Plastic toy instruments its getting ridiculous. This is all falling into the horrible black hole of your typical EA game.. Rather than improve on the game structure and make it better, Redo the whole came and complicate the fuck out of the Interface and controls, Guitar Hero has your guitar, Rockband has Drums + 2 guitars, Rock Revolution has a Even more complicated 7 button drum set plus who the hell knows what.. Perhaps the Special Kazoo controller, guitar Hero IV not to be outdone will have also a six button drum Annoying taping banging sound kit.

If you have ever walked into a big box store you can normally hear the rock band drum set from across the store and normally you want to kill the person on the drums because they pound away at the things like a Drunken steroid Infused gorilla. Honestly I cant stand this type of game because its a horrid step backwards, Now if the companies making these games would let you plug in a REAL Instrument to the game and actually play the song, I’d likely not have to say a word about this crap. But, Since this crap is turning into a monster its going to be horrid.

This game type is mutating at such a fast rate its getting scary. Rockband I think will have the most room for mutation since its evil EA overlords will probably whip there slaves into making some awful brain feasting zombie game, where in order to run it you must buy the all the options.. Wait there already doing that, Rock band wants you to bend over and take it a little harder with the Light and smoke Stage kit for 99$

Whats next, The Rock Band bender washout years kit, Complete with 9 tons of blow and acid with optional hookers, (Groupies sold separately).

I know these companies want to make a buck, but hell come up with something innovative will ya?

like, why not add some actual gaming to these games, add a part where you have to manage your band, A TRUE career mode. manage the band , or hire a manager that could quite possibly rip you off, fend off fights in the venue? Add some Extreme personalization by having your own true “rock band” by each player that plays has there gamertag(xbox) to each part of the band creating a true (even tho simulated simulated) band – with the possibility of offline gaming where all people don’t have to be there at once. One guy does the guitar part, you get a notification that your “bandmember” has attempted a song and You have to do your part. that would lead to better online multiplayer gaming. with this setup You could have Bands that play against each other and Have a Fame rating or something to that effect. If your “rock band” breaks up you also get a penalty or a bonus depending on how that player was.

(note: Rock Band has a mode like this but it seems more linear, see wiki Entry)

It just gets to me on how a game with such a lack of depth is so popular. Drives me completely nuts when i hear people that say “OH YEAH I CAN PLAY THAT SONG” and you finish the sentence with “on your Console….”. but these games need more depth more options than *Red green yellow yellow etc etc*

with the idea I have… you could have battle of the bands …. rather than single ratings or how many “fans” you have..

Hopefully in the future, these games will not be the clusterfuck they are coming out to be right now by adding all the craptastic accessories and needing them all to “play” the game, and game that requires you to buy stuff thats twice the cost of the game is kind of ridiculous in my opinion. I am sure some people enjoy these games but… till they come up with a saner method, instead of flooding the market with 90 tons of crap your going to forget about after you get bored and Have a load of plastic instruments floating around, I think I’ll stay away from these genre….

Just a side note… Strangely interesting that the publisher is listed as MTV GAMES for most versions of Rock Band at Gamestop.com ..

Makes me wonder if they are trying to hide there name in order to stop people that go “EA SUCKS ASS” which they do in 99% of cases.

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101st post =p.

Wow.. 101 Posts. thats a bit crazy by my standards, and no i did not feel like saying 100th post.. its way too overdone.

Today brought wii out with the original cable thinking I’d have a nightmare setting the thing back up for my monitor. I got home and was pleasantly surprised by the ease that 480P stayed on.

After looking through my games collection i started thinking what the future games I’d be interested in.. And the problem i see with the Wii is the amount of Game Vomit. Game Vomit is what i call it when developers just toss anything they can at a system and call it a game. Unfortunately the Wii has Enough Game Vomit to warrant surgery to reduce the amount of crap that the system intakes. Personally I think it makes the *Nintendo seal of Quality* Look Horrible.

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GTA Moronity part II

Went out to pick up a shelf today with bluesteel, We decided to stop at gamestop. so we poked around the Gamecube games and picked up a few. but in the time we saw at least 4 parents picking up GTA 4 for there kids. With the news going crazier than britney spears on a normal day about GTA it seems like parents dont give a shit about GTA/NEWs reports. so basically its a few crazy fucks going off on fictional material in the game that doesn’t exist. but Over all it was pretty entertaining to see that.

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VD-W2 Wii VGA cable part III.

Over the weekend i picked up a few GameCube games, Metroid Prime , F-zero GX, Killer7and Need for speed Hot pursuit 2. Now i previously wrote about the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable, This is the first time I’ve had a problem with the cable. The first game i tried was NFS:HS the game starts up and the display on the monitor goes nuts. Typical, EA and more crap they put out, You would figure as the one of the “top” gaming manufactures, it would support 480p. The gamecube supports 480p , but theres a catch. in order to get the game in 480p you need to hold down the B button on the gamecube controller when starting the game.

this is a small problem in my opinion since i don’t play too many GC games. But, if you intend to play Game Cube games using the VGA cable There is a list too help you out at Mobygames.com .

Overall the cable in my opinion is worth it with the one minor downfall of not supporting GC in 480i , but Most of the good games are supported in 480p for the game cube.

overall i’d say the cable too me is a 9/10 with that small drawback (to me)

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GTA Moronity.

Sheesh Im sick of the news lately about video games.. there newest plug is going after Grand theft auto 4, No i haven’t played this one yet. but what the hell, you have all these idiots on TV saying that GTA is going to make you… Kill people , beat up prostitutes, Drive drunk, Eat your parents , microwave your cat than serve it for lunch, brew Decaf at your office and watch everyone suffer.

The News has coined the term that GTA is a “cop killing simulator” That kids are playing the game to train to kill people.. bullshit. Last time i looked at a gun it did not have an Xbox/PS3/Wii Attachment to the barrel of the gun. Nor does the game FORCE you to kill people.

The news has been using the tag line of “GTA Morality” all week, the thing is its more like Moronity, 9 times out of 10 these news casters have not played these games. But saying a game is making kids go bezerk and killing a bunch of people is the furthest from the truth .. if you have watched most incidents that have *happened* surrounding some sort of video game, 9999 times out of 10000 the person who Killed people or has done something extremely stupid has some serious preexisting problems. Not only that the responsibility of the gamer and gamers parents should be called into question. Letting your kid play GTA 16 hours a day … THATS NOT NORMAL. basically thats waking up Playing GTA till you goto bed.. yeah something is fucked up right there.

Parents should often evaluate the title before handing it off to kids. Rather than letting your little snowflake buy what ever game s/he pleases, Start in one place.. Look at the bottem right or left corner of the box… right there is a small little sign of what the game contains.

That right there kids is in indication of what exactly your walking into. Its No harder than movie ratings and is actually simpler than TV ratings.

Heres a look at the TV ratings and why there nothing but a clusterfuck

Sure there are 7 ratings but it actually gets a fair bit more complicated. After those ratings you normally see something like “TV-14 AVS” because with the TV ratings it goes way beyond the 7 initial ratings. there are also 12 more subratings.

  • V for moderate violence
  • S for mild sexual situations
  • L for mild coarse language
  • D for suggestive themes
  • V for intense violence
  • S for moderate sexual situations
  • L for coarse language
  • D for highly suggestive dialogue
  • V for extreme gory violence
  • S for pornography/extreme explicit sexual nature
  • L for strong coarse language
  • D was used for TV-M until it was changed to TV-MA in 1998; although was used on of Tripping the Rift

Video games have become the hot topic of the media for one reason, it gets the pressure off them and they can produce all the crazy shit they want while looking like the innocent ones. they need to hold that bus up, because if anything the media has caused more shit than anything. As much as i would hate bring this up. The VT shootings, That guy was tapped, and I saw this one comming a mile away, the cho or whatever his name sent a video to the Media networks. by playing the video, they validated that idiots point.

Every time someone shoots someone , the media is there to suck it up and make it into news. sensationalize the fuck out of it and inject it into your brain till you vomit the Fox/NBC/ABC logo out. Its highly hypocritical of the media to go after games when they have the exact same shit on tv..

Lets look at tonights listings why dont we….

CSI: Miami – Crazy person kills people and they go looking for him .
Medium – person Kidnaps blah blah..
48 Hours Mystery – Murders and shooting.
DEA – Drugs Murdering and shooting.

geez all that is on and it generally shows how they murdered people who did and what tools and normally if you watch the news long enough, you will find the occasional footnote that some stupid ass tried to use something they learned on CSI etc to do a crime.

Hitting the A,B,X,Y Triangle Square Whatever the button is doesn’t represent the act of what your doing, and if you are taking games seriously as they are being labeled, You should stop being a hypocrite and also take concern of your TV , movies and music.

Seriously these newscasters need to stop just making shit up and actually play the game through before even making one report about this. Rather than jump on the fearmongering bandwagon and make up stuff like people training themselves to drive drunk on GTA quote from gamepolitics.com

Savannah, Georgia TV station WSAV-3 reports that the Traffic Commander of the Savannah-Chatham Police Department is also concerned. Lt. Scott Simpkins told WSAV:

How many people are going to go ‘hey if I can master this, I can go out and instead of having a glass of wine or a beer with dinner, I can have 2 or 3 because I’ve been training how to drive intoxicated’? So these are the things that I have to worry about when stuff like this hits the market.

Whens the last time you drove to the store with an Xbox controller..? I thought so.. that does NOT translate to even making sense here. this comment alone is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. its like saying “HEY LETS GO HAMMER A FEW DOWN AND *TRAIN* TO DRIVE DRUNK!”.

They say that the Ratings are broken for Games.. Try watching some DVD’s .. watch any police academy , Airplane.. Countless other movies that swear up a storm and what rating do they have? PG , yes only PG.

what it basically comes down to.. is if you can not tell reality from game.. you shouldn’t be playing games. end of story .

How many kids ended up injured from watching power rangers because no one ever explained to them about violence and used the TV as a baby sitter? why doesnt the media go after that crap? Likely they have kids and if they take away the power rangers they actually have interact with there little snowflakes.

So before you blame some video game because your kids fed the cat to the angry pigeon that lives on your roof, Evaluate all things they do rather than scapegoat it because random newscaster said so.