El Pato’s Blog

No Wrath this week, too much going on.

I just started Metal Gear Solid 4. Thanks to the internet and youtube, I have a good idea of a few things that I will find out, but I thankfully have most of the story unknown at this point. This is easily the best Metal Gear of the Solid Series, and fixes all the nagging problems of 2 and 3. As much praise as they get, after playing through 2 and 3 in preparation for 4, I know that they really arn’t that great of games. Are they bad? Absolutely not. MGS2 isn’t near as bad as everyone says it is (gameplay wise, the story is terrible), and 3, while an AWESOME storyline, has a system that is just flat clunky in execution. They really needed a radar in part 3, the environments were just too expansive and it was too difficult to navigate through the game. Sure it’s realistic, but it’s a bitch.

MGS 4 fixes all those problems and is just fun to play. It’s got a good balence of story and gameplay to really show us what a post-modern game really is. I remember playing the first MGS and how easy it was to pick up and play it. MGS 4 takes a half hour to get used to, but that is partly because I’m used to the old control scheme. After that, the game is as easy to play as the original, and sneaking was never more fun. In 2 and 3 I was so frustrated with being spotted out of nowhere that I said “fuck it” and just went from point to point until the end. 4 has a good environment to make me want to stay out of site.

After this I may play some Splinter Cell.

I picked up a Nintendo Wii during x-mas. Now I can play Mario Galaxy!!!

I love video games!

Interesting to see what the New England Patriots do with Tom Brady after this season. Sorry, he isn’t as good as everyone claims. Everyone wants the late 80’s and mid 90’s era of football, with Rice, Jackson, Young, Aikman, etc. The problem is, much like basketball, they have SHIT. Favre is the only thing fun to watch and even he is overated. I like Favre as a person, but I think that ESPN has overdone it calling him the greatest. He’s good, and probably the best in the league, but greatest? No, see without Marino or the like, it’s just him. It’s like if we had Micheal Jordan and nothing else in the NBA during his prime.

But back to Brady, he’s good but he isn’t great. Someone needs to get good at football and save the league from turning into the NBA.  And don’t even get me started on that overated piece of shit Tony Romo.

http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1437

Wrote that after the happy email sent to me.

I’m stuck in Seattle…literally. I was one of the few thousand people who’s flights out of the city were cancelled Tuesday. Here, let me run down my events for you as to why this sucks donkey cocks.

I was denied time off at my current job (the one that pays money), their excuse was too many employees quitting-which was true. The new management was terrible and tips were down (and I won’t respond to any letters asking what I do). So I gave a notice, 11 days before my last day. They threw a fit, but my family was more important.

My last day was Saturday, and I drove there admist the snow storm because I’m a big fat pussy who doesn’t like to leave work places stranded. My car is still there, it was BURIED in the snow afterwards. I’d like to point out I’m from Boise Idaho, I’m used to this sort of thing. So if I can’t drive my car in this blizzard that has to say somthing. I hitched a ride home with a guy and packed my bags leaving my house Sunday morning at 4:00 AM.

I THEN had to walk about 8 miles east to the hotel where the aiport shuttle was picking me up. Originally, I was told I could make a reservation Saturday before 10:00 PM, well at 8 they were denieing me a reservation, so I screamed and hollared at them for the inconsistency and they turned around and gave me a reservation. Since there were no cabs, I walked with a 30-50 lb suitcase and a 20 lb backpack in the snow to the hotel.

I got to the hotel, drank coffee and talked WOW with the guy at the desk. I was picked up and went to the airport. I couldn’t even fucking see the roads on the interstate.

At the airport I got into line and waited over an hour outside to check my bags, once at the front I was told “Your flight’s been cancelled.”

“Ok, so now what do I do?” I asked.

The bag-guy directed me to  a line that I spent 15 minutes searching for that was, and I am not over exagerating this, over 5 hours long. I got on my cell phone and called my Dad to tell him to find me a plane on another airline. Check trains, check everything. NOTHING.Finally my father said “Fuck it” and booked me on another flight with a different airline for Tuesday. I got out of the line after we were continally told to go home because 5 hours meant shit. I got on another shuttle back to Seattle, which cost me 40 bucks total to and from and hiked home.

I got home and I was already re-booked by Alaska Airlines (gee, thanks for telling me) on a flight that I think got cancelled a few minutes later as well. My last chance of getting out of this mess is Tuesday. If not, I’m stranded, and quitting my job was flat stupid now.

It’s amazing how this city is so paralysed after one fucking snow storm. It’s ridiculous. I think people are saying they haven’t seen this in over half a century. Wow.

http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=1436

The Spike TV Awards STILL suck. Probably one of the funniest things I’ve written in awhile (sans the Chrono Trigger article I wrote for Gamespy).

Obama is prez? YAY! I like McCain, I hate Joe Biden, but Sarah Palin is NOT ready to be president. McCain is so old that we can’t look past the possibility of her being our country’s leader. With that said, if she had some time to be seasoned for 8 years, she would be AWESOME, but if she took over in two, it’s George W all over again. Give her some time as a member of congress or as a senator, then give her a campaign. She was a helluva lot better than Hillary.

I just got a flu shot and my muscle still hurts. I hate it when they stick needles in your muscles.

I just bought a PS3 used off Ebay. The urge to play Metal Gear Solid 4 just went too far. Of course I am still on 3, and I can’t play 4 until I finish. (Doh!).  I wanted to replay through all games in the Solid series just to refresh my memory on everything. From what I’ve been told, every character from Metal Gear shows up in some way shape or form in 4, so I’m giddy with excitement.

Expect me to write a Wrath on World of Warcraft soon. I’m gonna get to level 80, I’ve had the game since the day it came out and I am still at level 55. I plan on documenting a non-wow players rise to the top of WOW. I’m on Gorganash so if anyone wants to take my Pally for a few runs let me know.

The Spike awards really suck.

It’s about F**king time! I just read that Ys 1 and 2 are coming to america for the DS. I never played the remakes, but if the Turbo-Duo installments are any indication, I would be pre-ordering these awesome games right now. These are probably the only set of RPG’s that were on the calibur of Square and Phantasy Star, that wern’t on their respected systems.

Giddy like a school girl!!!!

Ok, so maybe my three time a week post idea is harder than imagined. Oh well, not much to say to that.

After reading through the last of the E3 news and announcements, I came across somthing about some game for the 360 called Lips. It is already being dubbed Microsoft’s answer to Singstar.

It’s official: Microsoft is in a huge pissing contest with Sony, and now it’s about games no one really cares about. All matters aside, the sales for Singstar continue to impress in Europe, which is where Microsoft is planning of shoving the game down people’s throats. As a collective franchise though, it’s rather odd that they decided to bring this along. It’s only a matter of time before Microsoft realises that the Playstation 3 has a lot of S***ty games for it and joins suit by ruining anything and everything so they can just “Do it better”. I expect with Sony to make a pile of slime, Microsoft will take a dump in a bag, light it, then drop it on a gamer’s doorstep just to show Sony their games are better.

I watched previews for The Godfather 2, and have to say they seem somewhat interesting. Can it top GTA IV? Well having not played GTA IV yet, I can still say, prolly not. I would like to look at the Godfather games as the “Rainbow Six” of the genre, as they seem to get more tactical and strategy like than the way GTA does things. It’s a good thing because they are trying to keep us from thinking of this all from being a GTA rip-off, which as of now it probably already is being called.

I will be at PAX this year. Though bustling around as I don’t know who all will be there. Look for the guy with the spikey hair and the mouthfull of f**k-you can’t miss him. If you are still deciding on going, I reccomend it. If you can afford a plane ticket or gas and make it, it is almost like E3 is…almost.

Wow! It’s been awhile since I’ve been here. I plan on doing one of these every Monday, Wednesday and Friday/Saturday (depends on how busy on those two days I am).

I read about EA that they passed on a Dark Knight (the new Batman movie) license. Allegedly, the game was already in development. There’s a good reason for it that no one realises- EA knew the game would suck.

When a movie licensed game is released, developers are given a very tight deadline. In a world where games take a couple of years to make, movie games are given a matter of months. My guess is that EA was told to have the game finished by Christmas to have it ready somewhere around the movie subsequentially saying “No thanks.” It’s a good move, because we’ve seen what happens with most licensed games (Enter the Matrix comes to mind here). I say let EA make a decent Batman game, but let them go the Goldeneye route and let them have the time they need to make a quality title. We know they can do this, we’ve seen the other licensed games they could produce if given adequate time and resources. I guarantee some developer will destroy the license now. They will have a 3 month deadline to make a functional piece of crap.

I picked up Soul Calibur IV last week and honestly, I think I am in the minority to say I am a bit disappointed. Characters move sluggishly, and the same cheap moves from the previous ‘Caliburs are still here. Is it a good game? Yes, it’s a awesome game. Do I think it’s the be-all end-all fighting game that they label every SC to be? Absolutely not. Oh and Yoda is cheap, even if it takes a god-awful amount of time to learn him, he’s cheap, plain and simple. The Apprentice is a bad-ass though.  Come find me on SCIV, my gamertag is Elpato54, I am not near as good at this game as I am at Virtua Fighter, or Tekken for that matter, so if you kick my ass, it’s probably not anything to brag about.

I also picked up Final Fantasy IV. *Sigh* ok, if Square/Enix is going to give us remakes and sequels, well make them more like this. Don’t misunderstand, FFIV reeks of bad beta testing, but it’s a good game overall. Readers of the Wrath from VGM will remember me saying that FFIV was the first RPG I ever played (back when it was FFII). It took me years to finish it, because I didn’t know that running away from every…single…battle was bad. When I was in the giant I think I was at like, level 25 (you better hope to be level 40 at least to have a chance). I also remember FFIV being difficult, even the easy-type version, but not near as difficult as this. Jesus! They made the easiest bosses of the game, turn around by the power of computer science to become the hardest. I don’t mind surprises here and there, but it seems like some battles were made difficult just for the hell of it, with little thought involved on what they were putting us through. This game on some levels can be harder than the original Final Fantasy, but on most levels, Final Fantasy I’s annoying difficulty can’t be matched. Don’t misunderstand, it’s worth every penny, if you’ve ever played an RPG, you owe yourself a favor to get through this. Even if I may bitch about the difficulty, this game at least makes you think and improvise in battle, unlike Lost Odyssey’s clunky disaster of a battle system. In this game you have some battles where you will sit and go “OH THAT’S IT!” Lost Odyssey doesn’t do that, LO just throws you into a battle and you hope to get lucky that an enemy doesn’t cast a particular spell so you survive. In any case, great remake, and I can’t wait to see what they do with FFVI, if they do anything with it. Since SE can’t do anything original, I bet FFVI is next on the remake list.

So I’ve been trudging at Lost Odyssey for the last two months because the story keeps me interested, but they do so many stupid mistakes with combat that I can’t play it for more than an hour at a time.

Today we are going to talk about good game design and BAD game design.

Good: Final Fantasy VI: Remembert the Fantatics Tower? In it, you chose a group that would head up it COMPLTELY without the aid of any commands besides magic. This was a major setback because at this point well hadn’t uncovered any spells that could ave the whole party, let alone get us through a dungeoun. So obviously you get your best magic users and head up there. This tower was completly optional, so you didn’t really have to go there to complete the game. Though the gem-box relic(which let you cast two spells in one turn) made us mosey up there. You also had to have such spells as Ultima, because about every enemy had reflect cast on it. This was called preparation, challenge, and overall bragging rights if you got through the tower without cheating.

Ok, lets go to bad game design: In Lost Odyssey after your group is separated in a dramatic way (Which actually makes me want to keep playing). You have all four of your mages up against a boss. Ok this is unbalanced already since you need physical defenses to have the guard meter charged..err…nevermind. What sucks is I have an enemy, with a high HP count, that can WIPE OUT everyone in one turn, with a spell that takes me TWO turns to cast (enemies even take multiple turns for spells at least till now). And can just open up a plain old can on me.

 At this point, this is part of the game, I HAVE to fight this thing. Right now it’s just super challenging to the point i want to rip my hair out. But here’s the kicker-get it to less than 1000 hp and it casts REFLECT.

Yeah, reflect, right in the F**KING MIDDLE of my turn when everyone’s spells get sent back to them, then what? oh a SECOND turn to use his mass kill on me. YEAH THAT’S FAIR!!! So if my spells didn’t finish me off, well his massive one will, sending me back to a save point. It’s one thing if he casts it midway through the fight, then you know he has that, but RIGHT WHEN he’s about to get killed and WHEN I have only a party consisting of mages? HOW THE F**K do I do damage when he has that stupid thing on? This isn’t optional, I haven’t had time to go and get Ultima yet? This is what we call BAD game design. it’s ridiculous, because this is what LO does. It’s dumb turn based combat completely destroys the awesome story that exists beneath.

Ok, I’m done with my rant, I’m gonna go kill this bitch now.

People HATE it when I am right. Two years ago I said FFXIII would sooner or later be ported to the 360. Well look what happened? It just got announced for a 360 release. Am I surprised? No. Sony has done a dismal job with the PS3 and the only thing that saved it from drowning this Christmas was Metal Gear Solid 4 (it’s the only reason I am buying one, there absolutly isn’t any other reason to).  With the way cross platform works now it gets more and more clear that the industry can’t support three systems. Remember during the 8-bit and 16-bit days when there was like FIVE consoles to choose from? Granted it was either Nintendo or Sega, but because chipsets were so different, porting games was a bitch. So if you wanted to say, play Bonk’s Adventure, you needed to buy a Turbo Grafix. With no 1st party games anymore (except Nintendo) Owning either the 360 or the PS3 means you pretty much own both (aside from MGS4). At least the Wii was unique enough that we can buy it on novelty. This is a punch Sony may not recover from. MGS4’s figures were good, but they are the equivelant to Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64, the game sold like mad, look what happened to poor N64?

Good luck with your next console Sony, maybe if you just make a games console rather than a box full of extra crap that drives the price up you can keep your fanbase.

I read today that Jack Thompson, the most hated man in the video game industry, may not be practicing law in the state of Florida. If that happens, expect it to be VERY hard for him to get an out of state license for anything.

I hate the guy, don’t get me wrong, I’ve torn into him time and time again, but if he goes down, we’re screwed. WHY? Because an idiot is representing violent video game plantiffs. Once he goes, someone else will step up, and then they may actually know what they are doing. Right now I would be getting kind of worried, the guy is annoying, a beast, I hate him, blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, I would much rather have this incompetant prick as my enemy than someone, say Johnny Cochran (he’s dead, but you get the idea).

Alas, so long Jack, please hand pick another f**k-up to annoy us further in your schemes.

Wow, Square Enix is remaking Chrono Trigger, what a shocker. Why am I not surprised you ask? Because SE only makes money off sequels, it’s like Capcom in the mid 90’s when you think about it. Their developers can’t create a new video game franchise even if they had the best tools at their disposal. They basically have to go off everything created by Sakaguchi and co. to survive.

It’s no secret that Chrono Trigger stands as my favorite game of all time, and I am anxious to see what this remake has to offer, if it proceeds to ram the franchise into the ground the way the remakes of Final Fantasy are doing then you can just flat F***ing forget it. Give us new 2D models and be done with the whole thing. Chrono doesn’t need anything fixed. Now just because we get a remake and I am an old fart for remembering the damn thing over a decade ago, I am doing a retro review of Chrono just for your delight! Expect one on Final Fantasy VII as well, since it goes with my Crisis Core review from awhile back.

As far as the Wrath is concerned: It is retired, officially, done, buried, dead. I’ve resurrected it once, and can never do a weekly since doing it. After bringing it out of retirement a second time while working for OCmodshop, I got this thing, and figured it was time to can it for good. However, I am not done with editorials, I plan on just posting here in Wrath format, just no topics of the week, and defiantly no “News of the week.” Stuff is just so sporadic as far as kernels of info are concerned that my column is so ancient anyways. See what I did with the CT remake? Well that is what is going to happen here. My other blog on live journal is considered defunct now, so this will mostly be a video game blog. For those of you that care, well now you know. 

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