Final Fantasy XII - Part Four

Well, y'know, it's only been.... What? Eight/Nine months since the last entry? It's still relevant!

Since that pesky thing known as the non-Internet has finally calmed down a bit, and I've stopped being incredibly lazy, now's as good a time as any to wrap up some of the Let's Play series I abandoned all those months ago. However, this one comes with a twist! Which actually isn't all that shocking, since the image above kinda-sorta spoils it.

I've ditched the regular Final Fantasy XII that the filthy peasant class likes to parade around like so many diseases and have picked up the gloriously resplendent International Zodiac Job System edition. Which, despite the 'International' in its name, was only ever released in Japan. The IZJS comes with many new gameplay quirks and fixes a lot of the issues the original game had, but more on that later!

I'm playing a fan-translated version of the game, since while the audio is in English, the subtitles and menus were all in Japanese. The text, at least for the menus and cutscenes, is directly taken from the English version of XII, except with a different font in the cutscenes. Incredible, I know!

Anyway, with explanations out of the way, let's jump back in, shall we?

Final Fantasy X-2 - Part Fourteen

At last! The finale of X-2 has arrived!

It only took me.... seven months to wrap up, but nobody can say that I'm not incredibly lazy dedicated! Huzzah and stuff, I guess! Actually, it was going to fly by me completely, but a few friends pointed it out and went, "Hey! You should do something special for it!" and then I was all, "No." and they were all, "DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT" and then I was totally like, "OKAY FINE GEEZ". Or so the legend says.

Unfortunately, I was all very prepared to waste many an hour writing up a colossal entry (about 980+ images), until Vista decided that working properly is vastly overrated in comparison to acting like a massive asshole, and it deleted about 80% of the images. I got a fair chunk of 'em back, but most are now lost forever to the virtual ether. Bugger.

This left me with two choices:

1) Use what images I did have to piece together the final chapter of X-2.
2) Just not do the entry at all, reducing every single individual on the planet to tears at the sheer loss of it all.

After the antics in Besaid, which is all fine and dandy, I'll have to basically just describe what happens, using images every so often to paint the picture. Not ideal, but ya gotta make the best of a bad situation!

Of course I could have just restarted the game and gotten back up to Chapter 5 again, but considering the requirements for 100% Completion, I would rather go skinny dipping in a Gagazet hot spring full of razor blades and lemon juice before I went through all that stuff again.

And on that charming image, let's dive into the final entry for Final Fantasy X-2!

Final Fantasy X-2 - Part Thirteen

Well, if I want to finally complete Final Fantasy X-2, I have to do this, don't I?

I have to complete... the concert.

If you didn't hear an ominous crack of lightning, you live far away enough that you won't hear my screams either.

Let's just skip this pre-drunk babble and get it over and done with, shall we?

If the level of snide in the comments is higher than usual, which is a scary thought, now you know!

Final Fantasy X-2 - Part Twelve

Oh, it's only been a two month break this time between entries? A new personal record!

Actually, the break would've probably been longer, if not indefinitely, had a friend not given me the oh-so shiny birthday present of a new ergonomic-keyboard-thiny. Possibly because of my constant bitching about my old, lame and totally adopted keyboard cramping my hands like a mother. So now, with new keyboard in hand, let us bravely venture back into Spira: The World Where Nothing Makes Sense~

Final Fantasy X-2 - Part Eleven

Well, I think the worst is behind us now.

There's still a distressingly large amount of confusing and embarrassing sections of the game left to go, but such is life in Final Fantasy X-2. Again, this game really is a case of actually being pretty darn fun if you just plod through the 'main' story, and maybe a few sidequests here and there. But if you're going for 100%, I can only assume the game designers thought it'd be hilarious to get back at all those silly completionist jerks who dared give them money by creating some of the most downright asinine gameplay choices ever witnessed.

And this is how pirating got started.

Probably.

Final Fantasy X-2 - Part Ten

So.. yeah. Been a while since an X-2 entry popped up, huh?

Explanations are probably in order for all none of you who care. After the last X-2 entry the lovely ol' PCSX2 emulator started going all snooker-loopy again, and I was all set to fix it... until I realized what section of the game was going to rear its ugly, ugly head next. So thenhe game sat on the bench for a wonderful couple of months. I like Final Fantasy X-2, and think it definitely has its moments of being pretty darn fun, but the designer of this one particular part of the game should commit explosive seppuku for his crimes against humanity.

Probably a slight exaggeration there, but really, the next bit might be my least favorite section in any video game ever, so if I come off somehow more grouchy than usual, well, now you'll know why.

Let's... let's just get this over with, shall we?

The Sims 3 - Part Three

Out of all the Sims 3-related questions I've gotten, the following two are the only ones. Exactly how many days/weeks have passed in the game, and how much of the LP's antics are me controlling the Sims vs letting the in-game Free Will mechanic do its thang?

I'd say about... 5-6 days have passed so far. Most of it has been shown, but I've just skipped the parts where the family was at work/school or were grinding up learning new skills and/or money-making/inventing progression. That stuff aint very exciting, even when you're playing the game yourself. As for the ratio of Free Will vs Controlled, like I said in the first entry, outside of me telling the Sims to go to a specific place (which is always mentioned in the stupid captions) or accepting Opportunities/Invites, the vast majority of it is Free Will doing its thing.

It's very scary, very crazy thing.

Speaking of, there's plenty more of that this entry, so let's hop to it, daddy-o.

The Sims 3 - Part Two

After battling a multitude of glitches, one of which somehow ended up deleting my entire neighbourhood, it's time to jump back into that wacky world of The Sims. Fortunately any hair-pulling on my part was saved by me keeping a backup of the neighbourhood, so I lost no progress. Well, except potential progress from being able to do this entry about two hours earlier and not constantly cursing to myself, but who cares about that?

Back we go!

The Sims 3 - Part One

Well this is certainly not what I was expecting to next do an entry of!

Then again, with my incredible laziness I'm generally not expecting to do the next of anything, so there's that.

The Sims and I have a very strange history. It's a game that I actually have quite a bit of fun with, and usually rush out to buy the games/expansion packs the day they're released, but then I get bored within about a week or two of playing and just drop it like a bad habit made of lava until the next expansion comes out, then the whole wonderful/expensive cycle begins anew!

I haven't played The Sims 3 since just after the World Adventures expansion was released. Since then the gigantic money printing facility inside of EA known as Maxis have managed to bring out three more expansions and god knows how many DLC item packs and whatever inbetween. I've got them all now, and when I went to boot the game up, a friend asked why don't I do a stupid little Let's Play about the whole thing? Well, why not, indeed!

This will probably be a short LP, to keep it from dragging out and to stop me from getting bored and then never finishing the darn thing. I'll be lightly nudging my lovely little Sims in certain directions to progress in whatever stupid narrative I can concoct, but all the interactions within will be left up to the wonderful whims of the in-game Free Will mechanic. If I were a man to slap arbitrary numbers onto anything, I'd say the LP will be most likely 15% me nudging my Sims to do something and 80% observing what the game does with that. The last 5% will most likely be the game crashing or glitching out, as tends to happen. A lot.

Okay? Okay.

Let us begin!

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Part Three

And, lo, the tanker section of the game has some to a close.

It's a lot of fun to play through, even though 90% of the immaculate details the game (and the PS2) boasts about are in those 40-60 minutes. The rest of the game is still very spiffy, but you won't encounter an interactive or highly detailed object every single room anymore. Which... well, there are games this gen that don't feature even half of that, so I can't exactly complain about MGS2's.

Not really much else to say at this point, except that the events of this entry are extremely infamous amongst the Metal Gear Solid fanbase for shattering it in half, based on pro or con feelings. And, well, if Liquid living on as Ocelot's new arm couldn't do that, it should probably speak for itself.

Just for the record, though, I actually like the change, and I'll explain later. But, enough of this crap, let's move on!

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Part Two

I can never seem to churn out the second entry in a game without something going catastrophically wrong. D'oh well.

This time, Photoshop, being an Adobe program and therefor completely incapable of working for more than four nanoseconds at any given time, thought it was hilarious, just hilarious, to crash my computer, nearly take the hard-drive with it and then refuse to open or resize half the images. Hooray! Thankfully GIMP, and a friend, were nice enough to point out and offer a batch resizing plug-in, so all is well.

Until the next accident tomorrow, knowing my luck.

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Part One

Ah, Metal Gear Solid 2. Where do you even begin with a title like this?

Well, depending entirely on who you ask, MGS2 is generally either a post-modern, surreal masterpiece that most people are 'too ignorant' to understand, or a fun title that, sadly, has the most impenetrable storyline ever conceived in video game history. Regardless, it's pretty well documented that MGS2 is a game that starts of very much like its predecessor, and then at two points later in the game, the plot goes what can only be described as completely batshit insane.

Getting past all of this, however, is a wonderful sense of symbolism and message that Hideo Kojima wanted to express to the players of the game about letting the series go, and indeed, the very nature of sequels themselves. However, practically nobody understood any of it. Which is a shame, because most of it is actually pretty darn interesting.

As for this wacky LP, I decided to tackle Substance purely because it has a PC version available, and PCSX2 loves being unpredictable way too much for my liking. I'll have to worry about it for Metal Gear Solid 3, but that's unavoidable. Some friends have asked if I can do a round up on all the features Substance has at some point, so I might tackle that after the main story has come to a close and systematically destroyed everyone's brain.

But all of that can wait until later~

Let's get this lovable trainwreck underway!

Metal Gear Solid - Part Nine

We're finally here! And by 'finally', I mean just over a week, but shut up! The end of Metal Gear Solid is upon us, and I certainly hope you enjoy long diatribes about genetics, because a good 80% of this entry is going to consist of 'em!

It's the end of a Metal Gear game. If there wasn't an hour long cutscene bonanza which doesn't really answer anything, then something must've gone horribly wrong! Or right, depending on your feelings about the matter. But whatever, let's finish this~

Metal Gear Solid - Part Eight

There's really not really much for me to blurb about here, since the game is 1 more entry away from finished.

So, uh... how 'bout that cyborg ninja, eh? Pretty crazy~!

Metal Gear Solid - Part Seven

And so, we have reached the second disc of Metal Gear Solid. Questions will finally be answered, secrets finally revealed, the plot will soon try to devour itself under a tsunami of pressure for exposition! Crazy times ahead indeed for the next... 2-3 hours this disc takes up.

I was originally going to put this entry up alongside the short-ish one yesterday, but the ePSXE emulator decided otherwise, since it took me about 6 absolutely infuriating hours to finally find a means to swap discs on the emulator and have the codec working to actually save the game. Many, many thanks to a friend for finally solving it for me before I decided to take the path of least resistance and just shoot myself in the face.

And on that positive note, let us begin the final set-piece of Metal Gear Solid!

Metal Gear Solid - Part Six

And, thus, Disc 1 now comes to a close~!

I slightly overestimated how much time I had left until the disc ended, so this entry is a wee bit on the short side. Well, that and I decided I didn't want to be a massive buttface and mock one of my favorite vidya scenes from the PSX gaming era. So, yeah, let's get this ol' show on the road!

By which I mean I now have to run even more flights of stairs.

Ugh.

Metal Gear Solid - Part Five

If memory very vaguely serves, we're now at the half-way point for Metal Gear Solid. Hooray!

I'm honestly kind of surprised just how well the game holds up after all this time. The graphics are dated, but still some of the best the little ol' PSX managed to churn out, and the writing is... well it's not bad (actually pretty good in place), just incredibly redundant. Something that'll be obvious in the first few moments of this entry.

It's an odd way of thinking in the MGS series that if something needs to be said once, then it needs to be repeated a good three or four more times before the event's over. I have no idea why, but it does seem a touch odd. Especially when the series goes completely bonkers later on and they barely explain the most insane plot-devices even once before expecting you to commit it to memory forever.

In any case, we're still a ways off that, so let us continue!

Metal Gear Solid - Part Four

I hope you guys like references to breaking the fourth wall, because this entry's full of 'em~

Without explicitly giving it away for the both of you that have never played Metal Gear Solid before, if there's one thing that Hideo Kojima absolutely loves, besides anti-nuke diatribes and ninjas, it's definitely breaking the fourth wall. Or at the least leaning against it very heavily.

We've seen it already with the whole 'look at the back of the CD case HURR' thing, which was alright, but the best fourth-wall antics Kojima gets up to, and these are the reasons I like his games quite a bit, are when he starts playing tricks on the player's mind. Very few other games try to trick the player while they're playing the game, with the only other examples coming to my mind being Eternal Darkness and the Scarecrow sections of Batman: Arkham Asylum. I'm sure there's more, but those are the ones that stand out to me.

This is something Metal Gear Solid 2 will end up doing a lot, but for now, we'll just have to try and live with one of the more imaginative boss battles in an action/adventure game. Especially around the time this game was made.

Onwards!

Metal Gear Solid - Part Three

Merrily we continue along with ol' MGS~

It's been a very long time since I last played this game, and it holds up surprisingly well. Often to the point where I like the simplicity of the gameplay over the sequels now. It's nice not having to watch your camo index, or figure out what movement stance you're in, you learn CQC or anything. All you need are the ability to run, hit the side of a wall, and a gun for when things get hairy.

It could also be that I generally suck at stealth games. So, y'know.

Anyway, let's press onwards!

Metal Gear Solid - Part Two

Another day, another entry~

For some really weird reason my ePSXE emulator outright hates Metal Gear Solid, and it takes a lot of bribes, convincing and swearing to get it running in any particularly workable fashion. Which of course doesn't bode well when I have to offer my MGS2 and 3 discs to the giant PCSX2 emulator demon in a few weeks. Though I've been told they run pretty well with a decently powerful computer, so I should be safe!

In any case, that's in the future, and we've got this little gem of confusion and insanity to work our way through first~