Horn Is Surprisingly Good

Unlike almost every other entertainment medium, video gamers have a responsibility to support all types of games. Unlike movies, books and music, bad games simply don't sell, but great games can go unnoticed. This is especially true if they are released on platforms that hardcore gamers find "inferior." Horn is a beautiful action adventure that takes place on your iPhone, and you should be playing it.

Horn isn't perfect, but it's definitely proof that iOS games don't have to be as shallow as the super popular 99 cent puzzlers would suggest. Horn has big beautiful environments, a capable forge/upgrade system, and the combat is deep enough to enjoy planning for. The voice-acting is what caught me off guard initially, it's very well done, and gives the bleak realm a charming Fable feel to it. I also get a Dark Cloud vibe as I work to re-inhabit my town with people who have all been changed into big metallic golems called Pygons. The human souls are imprisoned inside, and killing these golems rescues the townsfolk trapped within. Animals have been changed into Pygons too, meaning that every enemy you destroy has a deer or a bunny hopping to safety from the rubble Dr. Robotnik style. 

Horn is such a refreshing change from the iPhone lite-games that Ive been frustrated with lately. I know that the iOS platform is capable of not only matching the quality of games made by other handhelds, but adding unique evolutions to the industry too. Horn is proof of this, and unlike the last iGame you played, Horn hasn't asked me for cash yet, not even once.

The Scary Part Of Pregnancy

I couldn't think of an appropriate picture for this post, so....Pikachu

My daughter is almost here, and while the end of the 9 month odyssey is a time of excitement, it is also the beginning of the scary part of pregnancy. Sitting in the hospital on Friday, waiting to hear just how serious Stephanie's sudden high blood pressure might be is not something I can recommend to new parents. I learned this during our first pregnancy, that stomach-churning fear is unavoidable, no matter how well prepared you are. When my son was born, I cut the cord, then held my breath for minutes as he was rushed over to a little medical table to be checked for any signs of anything unusual. He's healthy and everything was fine, but I remember that scared feeling I had, the scared feeling I have now, as I try to close my eyes and hold on for just a week or two more. 

This time is going to be significantly different. When Oliver was born, it was just me and Steph in the hospital, ducking and weaving through all of the unexpected labor and delivery curveballs together. Oliver is 3 now, and will be there with us. I wonder if he'll notice just how scared his dad is underneath all of the support I try to show. In just a couple short weeks, maybe sooner, we'll find out.

Final Fantasy 2 Makes It Really Easy To Cheat

I'm still in the early phases of my quest to play every single Final Fantasy in a row, and right now I'm carving my way through FF2. This is the only retro Final Fantasy that I have never beaten, which is odd, because in FF2 it is really easy to cheat. 

One of the things that makes Final Fantasy such a great franchise is that every installment introduces a new battle and leveling system. Some are preferred over others, but the variety makes each game really unique and difficult to compare to other RPGs. Final Fantasy 2's system is weird as shit, and the first thing you'll notice is that there aren't any levels. Instead of levels, your stats increase based on use, for example, the more damage you take, the more your HP increases. 

This stat-leveling-through-exposure format allows for shameless exploitation. As soon as the game begins, you can max out your HP by attacking your own party members. Approaching the first boss with 9999 HP is completely possible, and all you have to do is attack yourself to increase your stats. Spells work the same way, the more they are used, the more they level. Hurting yourself and then healing yourself is easiest way to get ahead in this game, making typical grinding non-existent.

There's also a player benefitting oversight that can be found in every single port of FF2. It's easier to explain this with an example, so let's say for instance that you want to level Fire1 to Fire2. Fire1 must be cast 25 times to gain a level, so instead of wasting 25 turns in a bunch of battles to achieve this, all you have to do is select the spell, select a target, then cancel and repeat. Your spells actually level based on how many times they are chosen, not how many times they are cast. You can get Fire1 to Fire16 without taking a single turn in battle, just by picking it, canceling the action, and then picking it again a few dozen times. It can take a little while and be really boring, but you don't have to max everything out to coast through this game.

Final Fantasy 2 feels like one giant experiment and it's easy to see why Square never returned to any system similar to this one. FF2 is different and unlike FF1, it actually has a story but it lacks any sort of difficulty whatsoever due to it's poorly thought out stat system. Maybe I didn't finish FF2 as a child because it was really dumb, not because of how hard it was.

Deadlight

I don't like Deadlight very much. Maybe it's zombie genre fatigue finally making itself known or the annoying idea that every single zombie related anything must have the word "dead" in it. Maybe it's the comic book style cutscenes or the David Hayter sound-a-like, but I feel like I've played this game a million times before. 

It's a single track side-scrolling platformer just like Limbo or Shadow Complex. What makes Deadlight different than those great modern platformers is that Deadlight has really frustrating jump controls. They feel imprecise, which becomes a problem when the game demands that you make very tough precision jumps. You'll die a lot, but unlike Limbo's super fast restarts, every death in Deadlight is followed by a loading screen. It isn't a super long time, but after failing the same long jump 6 times in a row because you pressed "A" 10 milliseconds too late, it becomes infuriating. I actually screamed in frustration and Oliver came in to check to make sure I was okay.

The darkness that this game uses in every area is cool and very clever at times, but Limbo did it better. Some scenes in Deadlight look like they were blatantly stolen from Limbo screenshots. Take this roof with the water tower on it, look familiar? This game isn't bad, and I will complete it (I paid for the fucking thing after all), it's just a game that will feel very familiar as you play through it. I guess every game can't be unique and groundbreaking. 

I Beat Final Fantasy

I beat Final Fantasy 1 this morning, completing the first step of my pilgrimage through the entire franchise. For someone who believes that your gaming patience deteriorates as you grow older, I really hung in there, committing to the unbelievable tedium of level grinding. The original Final Fantasy is a very tough game to beat, and I'm proud, that at 26 years old, with a hyper 3 year old and another baby close to arriving, that I was able to still prepare properly for Chaos, even with the 45 minutes a day that I manage to play during nap time.

FF1 is so difficult because it is entirely possible to be unable to proceed in the game if you didn't prepare well enough. There are no phoenix downs in this game, and the only spell that revives a dead party member becomes available several hours in. The normal way to reverse a KO is at a church, which costs money. If 3 characters die in a tough fight, and you can't afford the revives because they are 800 gil each and you blew all your money on lvl 4 spells, then you're fucked. Reset, pick a new party. This happens because Final Fantasy 1 lets you choose your own configuration of party members before the game begins, and you decide wrong, then your quest to kill Chaos could very well be impossible. 

In addition to the custom configuration of team members, Final Fantasy has many more curveballs that keep the game unfair and difficult. You can't hold more than 99 potions, which only heal 20hp each, and becomes a very serious problem late in the game because the dungeons are long with no way to heal MP indoors. There are no MP restoring items in the game at all, aside from tents and cottages, which can only be used on the world map. Sailing on a boat does not spare you from random battles, the same goes for your canoe. There are also two separate dungeons in the quest that have the fun little gimmick of DRAINING YOUR HIT POINTS AS YOU WALK AROUND.

Something I never noticed until this play through: Bahamut sure has a lot of crucifixes in his cave

If you level your team properly, take the time to forge Excalibur and find the Masamune, then you have a reasonable shot at defeated Chaos. The final battle in the game is the hardest, (not typical of FF games at all) and this time around, Chaos did something that I had never seen him do before: he healed himself. I was on a steady path to victory, my tanks were absorbing hits, my white wizard was healing correctly, and I was spamming flare like a cheap bitch. Chaos then cast Cure4 on himself, something I had only read about him doing, and apparently an extremely rare occurrence. I still won however, because after he cured, he never threw tidal wave at me again, maybe the two are connected.

This is not a picture from my play through, the others are though!

 If you have never played the original Final Fantasy and are interested in doing so, I strongly urge you to experience it for the first time in it's original 8bit glory. I know that it looks like shit, and the remake for PSX adds some convenient stuff, but the only reason you want to play FF1 is because of it's historical significance right? Playing the original version of Final Fantasy is like reading the bible; you may not agree with most of the bullshit inside, and it might bore you to death sometimes, but you are literally experiencing  the most important piece of history that the medium has to offer. Role playing games as we know them today started right here.

God isn't real.

Beware The White Man

Did you hear about the Nevada cattle standoff? A man who has twenty years of unpaid fines and tickets owed to the American government rounded up a gun toting militia to confront the feds when they rolled up to finally enforce the law. The federal agents, there to remove the rancher's cattle from legally protected land, backed off once they saw the militia. Right wingers applaud and cheer for what they think was a victory by intimidation, while the rest of us know that the reason the standoff ended is because reasonable people don't shoot each other over cows.

Why is the conservative right so happy about this? Regardless of whether you think the cows should be able to eat this protected grass, (the grazing is directly killing an endangered species of tortoise, hence the law), the Nevada rancher owes the government a lot of money. However, turn on Fox News  or bend your ear to an afternoon of Ted Cruz nonsense, and all you hear is aggressive language about America's "moocher class". Why is it that collecting food stamps or relying on your government to help you with affordable health insurance is considered mooching, but allocating two decades of fines and penalties isn't? Oh, yeah, I forgot, the Nevada guy is white. And he wears a cowboy hat.

This is my main obstacle when trying to see eye to eye with the Republican party. A black mother who gets fired and needs to rely on food stamps and an unemployment check to provide for her children is a burden to us, but a cattle rancher who looks at his government debt with apathy needs defending. With guns. Cliven Bundy, the rancher, owes the U.S. government 1,000,000$ in fines and penalties. From now on, I will immediately picture his leathery face every time I hear the term "welfare queen".

It's this racist double standard that saps my usual political sense of humor. White republicans want to keep their guns, pointing at the constitution as a holy thing, but have no problem promoting the destruction of the 16th amendment. Saving American jobs is a major Republican talking point during immigration debates, but furloughing 100,000 government workers during the shutdown was something they strived for. We spent a decade in a Republican initiated, vague domestic hunt for brown terrorists when in fact, since the 9/11 attacks, 21 people have been killed in the name of Islamic extremism in the U.S., whereas the number of people killed by right-wing extremists stands at 34 after the three deaths in Kansas. Shaming minority tax payers who use government assistance, labeling them as lazy, and then grabbing your sniper rifle to defend a Nevada cowboy who refuses to pay the fines for the laws he's broken is a laughable example of right-wing hypocrisy. It's also sedition.

I find it ironic that rich white men complain about the lower class having a false sense of entitlement, when all the policies they approve of tend to support their idea of who America really belongs to. What gets them mad enough to shoot up a shopping center is the fact that most of America doesn't agree with them anymore, and in a matter of a couple decades, the majority of Americans won't even be white. Progress is happening, but in the meantime, don't look over your shoulder for the jihad, but keep your eyes peeled for what has always been, and forever will be, the most dangerous and lethal force the planet Earth has ever known. The American white man.

Final Fantasy 1

As you know, I'm playing every Final Fantasy in a row, and I'm in FF1's Mt. Gulg right now. Over the past 9 hours of gameplay, I have been strongly and unpleasantly reminded of just how hard this game is. For instance, I forgot that the original Final Fantasy has a volcano dungeon THAT DRAINS YOUR HP AS YOU WALK AROUND. That's right, if you touch the bright red part of the floor (and it's 100% necessary that you do so) you lose HP. 

Look at this shit! I know that 8bit RPGs have no mercy inside their carts whatsoever, but this is a multilevel dungeon with no saves, no instant exits (the warp spell is still hours away), a giant rape boss at the end, and all the while sapping your HP as you walk. I farmed gil until I could afford 99 potions prior to this joke of a dungeon and I ran out on the 4th floor.

Look! FF1 had ochus!

The Universe Evens Itself Out

Two weeks before Oliver was born, we had to move to a new apartment in Chicago. It was total chaos and Stephanie went into labor before we were completely unpacked. This time around, everything has been going smoothly, and apparently, the universe doesn't like that. So, I sprained my ankle, 1 month before my daughter is scheduled to be born. 

Being stuck in the same spot for hours on end has allowed me to fall in love with Ex Machina all over again. The first time I read it, I was in high school, politically aware, but generally apathetic. Reading Ex Machina now is a completely different experience. For instance, when Mitch and a staffer argue about lobbying and polls, 26 year old me understands what they are talking about. I catch so many more references and jokes than I did the first time around.

I'm also using this financially devastating injury time to finally start my big Final Fantasy project, and as you can see, I named my first group after my favorite presidents. FF1 is no joke, and I haven't completely beaten an old 8-bit rig in quite a while, so I hope I don't have too much rust. When in doubt grind, right?

Suikoden 3 Has Been Beaten

I may have prematurely announced my big Final Fantasy project, (I'm going to play every single one in a row) because when I said that I was going to do it, I was in the middle of replaying Suikoden 3. It's one of my favorite childhood RPGs and a game I figured would take me 40 hours tops since I have the entire thing memorized. That was a week ago and I just finished it this morning with a final time of 75:35. 

Look at that final team, people really underuse the Futch/Bright combo. 

I have this little nagging suspicion that I never actually beat suikoden 3 when I was younger, because the entire endgame feels foreign to me, but I certainly beat the shit out of it this morning. I'm going to start Final Fantasy 1 immediately, and since I always have a retro game and a current game going at the same time, its time I played Ron Gilbert's The Cave because it's a crime that I haven't already. 
I also want to take a very small couple of sentences to thank every single one of you for reading this. I started this blog two years ago just to get a job, and somehow it has grown into something that not only pays me a little money here and there, but also gives me an outlet to discuss anything I want. Sitting down and typing in the morning with my coffee as my son tears the house apart is a very tranquil habit that I've developed with you guys. So, thanks for making this bigger than I ever knew I wanted it to be. Have a great weekend.

Today's Cereal Prize

I've been stomping around the house complaining about cereal box prizes ever since my son Oliver has been interested in them. Sounding like a 65 year old curmudgeon aside, prizes in modern cereal boxes suck a lot of ass and are contributing to the lack of childhood magic that my son's generation is about to experience. To my surprise, this morning, we opened Oliver's Reese's Puffs cereal to find a free Justice League comic! That's a cool prize for once!

Remember Flinstones rubber color change dinosaurs?

Or the Batman Bank that came in that old disgusting Batman cereal? Cereal box toys from my youth were superior to those you find nowadays, but today was different, today Oliver got a prize that he was actually excited about. Today Oliver asked me what powers Aquaman had, and after telling him, he got a really disappointed look on his face. Pretty great Wednesday I think.

I Love Rat Queens

My comic booking has been a little stagnant lately. Keeping up with The Walking Dead and trying to find new issues of Locke and Key have been all I've really had time for lately, and I decided that it's time for that to change. I threw myself blindly into two new series, Brian K. Vaughn's Saga, and Rat Queens, an Image comic that IGN has been raving about lately. Also, the gentleman who writes Rat Queens is Kurtis Wiebe, who's work I've never read, but a name I vaguely remember an excited fanboy screaming into my face at a D&D get together some time ago. Result? I read the first trade of Rat Queens in just 20 minutes, then re-read it, punched through Saga, then re-read Rat Queens again.

My initial description of Rat Queens to my friends was "Sex in the City in a Dungeons and Dragons universe", but my hindsight knows that isn't the best analogy. Rat Queens is an all-girl merc group with a familiar adventuring build, dwarf/halfling/white mage/black mage that celebrates success with drugs, booze and sex. I like to think that Rat Queens is the shape that true feminism would take if the medieval fantasy world ever really existed. It isn't all mushrooms and vag jokes though, Rat Queens is solidly written, with big creative battles that show just how good the group is at killing things.

I have absolutely fallen in love with these girls, and I've only read a single trade. All four personalities are established quickly and you avoid the rush of name/location memorization that you usually get with a new book series, everything and everyone in Rat Queens are easy to keep track of. The jokes are actually funny, and the inside parody will raise the happy eyebrows of any veteran tabletop RPGer or Skyrim player. I love Rat Queens and I can't wait for some of you reading this to try it out too. I've already ordered Green Wake, Wiebe's most successful project and I patiently await book #2 of this grown-up chick-powered ogre-stabbing fun-orgy. Betty is my favorite.

Oliver Is A Bronie

  

The three of us took a big Babies-R-Us trip this morning to pick up some of the big ticket items that our nursery was still missing. Oliver was given his choice of toy as long as he behaved, and not surprisingly, he chose ponies. Like always. I always knew that he would grow to have at least one controversial interest, but I certainly didn't think that it would be so soon.

There are My Little Pony coloring books in the house too.

He absolutely loves everything My Little Pony, and I love that he gets to have what makes him happy, regardless of what the other parents in the store were thinking when they shot those disapproving looks at us. My son being a bronie kinda feels like one giant parenting metaphor sometimes.

This was the toy I suggested he get, a toy that I was super excited about, but he didn't show any interest.

The 5 Most Difficult RPGs I've Ever Played

5 Chrono Cross

Although I consider Chrono Cross to be one of the greatest video games ever made (certainly better than Trigger), it's really fucking hard. Save points far away from deep dungeon bosses, a consumable magic system, and the Dario/Miguel fights make Chrono Cross the type of game that hands you unexpected game overs. You can breeze through the area monsters easily only to get your ass blown apart by a startlingly tough boss fight with a team of dwarves. Also, Chrono Cross's final boss is only defeated when you do a 12 step magic spell cast that must be done in order, very irritating.

4 Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

My favorite of the FF Tactics game, FFTA's message is simple: Plan every single move, purchase, and decision you make in advance, This game will punish you if you didn't grind your characters correctly early on, or made a job switch decision that you don't realize was incorrect until 15 hours later. To beat the game and truly excel at it's system means you must spend 80+ hours meticulously mapping out your massive partys' most intricate details. I love it because of this.

3 Lunar Silver Star Story

Lunar was so good at breaking your heart. The story was beautiful and very unique for it's time, which made it very upsetting when the game presented an unbeatable boss to roadblock your plot progression. Dungeon bosses were always difficult, always, and there were no quick exploit tricks to get you past them. Nope, the only way to win in Lunar is to grind. For hours. Sometimes you'll crawl through a dungeon for a couple hours, get spanked by the boss, and realize you need to grind 10-12 more levels to even have a shot at beating the guy. Brutal.

2 Persona 3

None of the Persona games are easy, but I found 3 particularly challenging. The bosses are few but crazy hard when they did arrive, and a couple cast high percentage instant death spells. Persona is also a game that ends when your lead character drops in a fight, not when the entire party falls. You could be two turns away from finishing a tough boss, your whole team healed up, and then one big hit to your main character and it's a game over screen. Type memorization and sheer luck are all that can do it sometimes.

1 Wild Arms

The fights could last hours. You only get the same three people in your party for the duration of the game, and they all had once-per-battle mega moves that missed. Often. The dungeons were never-ending and the weapons were expensive with money (gella) hard to come by. Wild Arms is a merciless dungeon crawler doesn't only beat the player with hard boss fights, but also demoralizes with monotony, and a 60 hour story. I beat this game, and I can't ever imagine doing it again.

I'm Going To Play Every Final Fantasy In A Row

It's something that I've wanted to do for a long time. Final Fantasy was the reason I started taking video games so seriously, and since I've ended my intimate relationship with Square-Enix, I think it's right that I re-experience the games that I've loved more than all others. There are a lot of games that have the words Final Fantasy in them, and not all should be on the list, so "every Final Fantasy in a row" really means every Sakaguchi era numbered installment and their direct spinoff. Here's the list in the order I'm going to play them,

Final Fantasy 1

Final Fantasy 2

Final Fantasy 3

Final Fantasy 4

Final Fantasy 4: The After Years

Final Fantasy 5

Final Fantasy 6

Final Fantasy 7

Dirge of Cerberus

Crisis Core

Final Fantasy 8

Final Fantasy 9

Final Fantasy 10

Final Fantasy 10-2

Final Fantasy 12

Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings

Final Fantasy 13

Final Fantasy 13-2

Lightning Returns

I'm adding 13 and it's spinoffs to the list because I've only played the first for a few hours and I've been told that the series gets better. I'm always playing two games at once, usually the 2nd being an old game that I'm familiar with on the back burner. My back burner is going to be filled with only Final Fantasy content for quite a while, but I'm excited about it, I really miss these games. 

I will be starting this afternoon with the original Final Fantasy. I'll use my old PSX copy of FF Origins, since it'll also be the disc I use for #2. I've never heard of anyone trying this before, so I'm off to make history. 

The Google Maps Pokemon Challenge

I'm sure that all of you are already aware of the Google Maps Pokemon challenge, an April Fools Day marketing idea that endeavors people to find 150 Pokemon hidden at various landmarks around the world. Pokemon has had some cool promotions in the past, (remember the Pokebus that came to elementary schools?) and this one is definitely one of the coolest. You pick a famous landmark, like the Great Wall of China on your Google Maps app and there will be a little picture of a Pokemon there. Click it and Google Maps stores the ones you've found, keeping track of them.

I caught an Eevee at Yankee Stadium.

A Torchic at Mt. Vesuvius.

Area 51 has a Kirlia.

On April 2nd, those who have managed to catch all 150 will get to interview for the Pokemon Master job at Google. That part of the contest is almost certainly fake, but I have managed to find 58 so far, and I think that's pretty impressive in a 12 hour window.