Konami Demo

Wow, it has been a seriously long time since I have had the time to make a posting. With the wedding up and coming in almost exactly a month, it is "go" time. In other words, me and Dianne are furiously trying to finish up every last thing that needs to be completed. We are making good progress, but there is still plenty to do. That combined with our new job that basically entails grocery shopping for 10 hours on end (it's much worse that it sounds) and my "free" time (Ha!), has been non-existant. And the time that I get is spent sleeping so I don't simply collapse. Yeah, I am very stressed out...

In any case, I had a brief hour period over the weekend to sit down and actually play some console games. What did I decide to spend this brief nugget of time doing? Well, I finally got to sit down and spend some time with the Konami demo that I picked up from EB the other day.

While I originally picked up the demo in order to play some Suikoden IV, I find it interesting that one of the other games on the disc has completely captivated me instead. It's a little game called Ys...

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim

Containing quite possibly the hardest name to pronounce ever (I can't wait to try and pre-order it from EB...), this game was completely under my radar until this weekend. I have never played any of the previous titles, writing them off completely as side-scrolling wastes of my time. Well I am certainly regretting that decision now as this game looks to completely rock my world!

Just from the demo, I can already tell that Ys is specifically geared towards the hardcore. I cannot fathom a casual gamer picking this up and performing well on it. I made my way through the cool Zelda-esque level until I found myself at a huge, monstrous boss. Now, being something of an RPG veteran, I wasn't expecting to have much trouble with the big guy. I got owned! Badly! This thing beat me down nine times from Tuesday.

Now, seeing as I was out of time (I wasted it all on Suikoden IV's boring fetch quests, but more on that later), I didn't have a chance to try again. I will note however, that every moment I sat there playing this surprisingly cool game, I was oozing joy. This game has sky-rocketed to the top of my must-have list and I highly recommend that you check out the demo disc at least for this demo. It would be a shame if more like me were to miss out on what obviously will be a gem.

Here are a few screens to tide you over until its release...

Screens (Courtesy of RPGFan)

Suikoden IV

The Suikoden series is gradually removing itself from my gaming heart. The first one pleasantly surprised me (with it's crappy box art) and proved to be an excellent excursion into the RPG realm on the, then devoid of RPGs, PSX market. The second one improved on the first in almost every conceivable way and is still one of the greatest RPGs to bless the PSX. I, to this day, love the sprite work (although the game script could use a little help...).

The third Suikoden however, grated on me a bit. The graphics were quite poor for the PS2 and the sound wasn't up to the series' standard. There were other problems with the system as well, including but not limited to, the new fighting system (what was wrong with the previous one?), and the incredibly painful way that you were forced to continually pass through the same boring environments time and time again. However, the interesting story and overall "feel" I got from the game saved the day and I ended up enjoying Suikoden 3 despite its faults.

So what is new (seemingly) in the fourth installment? Well, first off the graphics are looking much nicer. The backgrounds especially in the demo were pretty sweet. The character models, however, still are not up to par with current generation RPGs that it will be competing with.

The battle engine seems largely unchanged. You still cast spells from runes. You still assign everyone to a target and they sometimes all attack at once. It is VERY turn-based which is not normally a bad thing, but with random encounters I am having a harder and harder time swallowing it (especially with gems such as SO3 impressing me so much).

So what is my overall impression on Suikoden IV? Rather ho-hum so far. I know this is just a demo, but "collect the coconut" type plots drive me insane. The entire thing is basically just one big fetch quest. The music, graphics, and even voice however are looking promising but I am still not convinced. I truly hope that the final build throws in something amazing to completely hook me because as it stands, I may not be picking up this title, especially with my VERY limited cash flow these days. In any case, here are a few screens...

Screens (Courtesy of RPGFan)

A Final Word

Anyway, I hope everyone's holidays are going as well as is humanly possible. I wish you all the greatest time during the season and hopefully I will update more often! Hope to talk to you all soon!

Comments (0) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 12.20.2004

Stag Party

So it was that I had my stag party this last Saturday. Every day since then has been the most hectic day that you could possibly imagine. The day after the stag (despite a MONSTROUS hangover), me and Dianne delivered groceries for 8 hours straight as per our new job requirement. The day after that we went on a mini-freezer buying catastrophe that I will not talk about here lest I go crazy just remembering the experience. And the day after that we had so many errands to run that by the time I got home I simply fell down on the bed and lost consciousness.

Thus do we come to today. I actually have some time this morning to sit down and relate to you my rather scattered thoughts regarding the stag. Bottom line, it was probably one of the most fun parties I have ever had the good fortune to attend, but I will be paying for it for days still to come.

Prior to the stag/stagette (for Dianne), we were quite worried that we were not going to have enough funds to cover even half of the day. My day consisted of paint balling which, as you might expect, costs money and then carried forward to not one, but two pubs. Dianne's day was to be similar, but replace "paint balling" with "lounging at a fancy restaurant", so needless to say it doesn't take an accountant to tell me that we were likely screwed.

Thankfully many, many people made the day an absolute success. First off is my brother. Not only did he go round for round with me on every drink, he paid for EVERYTHING (definitely no small feat) and organized everything! I have no problem saying that I have the best brother a guy could ever have. Similarily, the ladies who went out with Dianne treated her just as well, buying her drinks, getting her around and planning and excecuting everything. And then when the guys and gals all met up at the final pub, every last one of our friends watched out for us, bought us more drinks and made sure our drunken asses stayed (mostly) out of trouble. Bottom line, cheers to an amazing set of family and friends!

So, I suppose I should probably recap a couple of the highlights of the day before my "damaged from said day" brain forgets them. First off, paint balling. I have never gone paint balling and so I had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be a pretty sweet, yet painful time. The pain didn't come much from the paint balls. Sure, it stung a bit when you got hit (I still have a few welts), but the pain came from the most unexpected of places; sore muscles. Today, 4 whole days later, I still cannot walk properly. I consider myself to be a pretty athletic guy, but since I cannot afford Taekwondo lately, my legs have apparently atrophied slightly. Since the whole game revolves around you crouching down and running for your life, my legs are completely and utterly trashed.

The next place we went to, called "Woody's Taphouse", provided mostly good times. Me and my brother cleaned up pretty good in pool while I got completely trounced in the Golden Tee tournaments. The only real downside to Woodys was the surprisingly bad service. The waitress actually asked us to get our own menus...

When it finally became time to move on to meet up with the ladies, I was already quite inebriated. Or at least enough so to have a fantastic time in the cab ride! The cabbie turned out to be cool as shit, which is unusual amongst most of the cab rides I am used to. This guy let us put in our own CDs and even had a wicked stereo to blast out the tunes. He rocketed down the roads, despite the heavily flowing snow and slippery roadways and brought us to our destination lickety-split. Unlike our brutal waitress, this fellow earned his tip.

The rest of the night is kind of a blur to me. Once I had made it to the final destination and met up with Dianne, I stopped turning down shots. I remember vague situations strewn throughout a drunken haze and then I woke up the next morning.

If I have learned anything from my experience, it would be this. Do not plan to work on the day after your stag or stagette, no matter how easy the job sounds. Second, do not drink Jagermeister, it is very much not for everyone! And lastly, do not punch any walls, the wall will own you. Until next time, enjoy some pics of my drunk strewn adventure!

Comments (0) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 12.9.2004

My Nightmare Before Christmas

Why does it seem as though whenever Christmas hits, every single thing that could possibly consume money occurs? This year me and Dianne decided that we were not going to do present exchange with anyone. With paying for an entire wedding, we simply do not have any extra cash and our family and friends agreed with us.

While we certainly were in no position to be cheering about our financial state, not doing the gift exchange thing certainly took a weight off of our shoulders. But then the car broke down. And the stag came up. And the dishwasher broke.

What the heck is with all of this crap happening during the season I am supposed to be jolly? It is such a bizarre combination of occurances that I cannot help but laugh. The dishwasher??? Oh man, that's rich.

And so to conclude, you might be wondering what is up with this post? Well, it is mainly just a way for me to let off some steam. Putting frustrations down on paper (or at least virtual paper) helps me relieve a bit of stress that is currently consuming me. I hope all of your holidays are going better than mine :).

Comments (0) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 12.8.2004

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