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!