Final Fantasy 3 Gameplay

Is it just the nostalgia talking or is that the best battle music I have heard in a long, long time. Simply awesome, this game cannot come soon enough...

Comments (0) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 7.13.2006

From the New World

So, my list of games that I have started but have yet to finish is starting to pile up. I am not sure if this relates to my inability to find any sort of free time lately, but it seems that in order for me to finish a game, it just has to click. It has to have such a powerful draw to me that I get up earlier in the morning to play it or stay up all night only to wake up tired the next day.

The list of games I have recently ditched keeps getting longer. The first victim was Mega Man Comman Mission. I am not sure what stopped me from playing that one, I was nearly finished it. I think the dungeons were beginning to bug me and there were far too many random encounters. Next up was ICO. I was quite enjoying that one, amazing atmosphere and graphics, cool gameplay. I think I just got puzzled out. After that was Front Mission 4. Despite a really cool story and my love for micro-managing mechs, the steep difficulty and REALLY SLOW pacing cooled my urges to play.

I then moved on to Wild ARMS Alter Code Echo. The original Wild ARMS stands as one of my favorite games of all time so how could a remake possibly turn me off? Believe it or not, I put this one down mainly due to the terrible graphics (insane for me, I am hardly a graphics whore). Well, that and I don't enjoy the Wild ARMS 3'esque gameplay as much as the original. Next up was Tales of Legendia. I actually finished the main story on that one, but there is like 30+ hours of gameplay after you finish the main game. I think I finished about 10 or so hours of that before moving on.

Last on my list of unfinished games is Digital Devil Saga 2. Despite its incredibly cool graphics, interesting gameplay, damn neat storyline and overall high level of polish, I just couldn't see myself getting into it. Strange that.

So, what kinds of games have been keeping my interest lately? Well, besides all of the portable games I have been playing lately, it seems only the games I can play in brief jaunts, have easily accessible save points or are just so damn amazing have been keeping my interest. The longest game I have completed in recent memory is Dragon Quest 8. This one stands as a game that I finished simply because it absolutely rules. Probably the best game I have played in recent memory, Dragon Quest 8 kept me going (through almost 90 hours!) simply because it is absolutely awesome.

The next game that kept me interested was Kingdom Hearts 2. I think that one sort of speaks for itself. The incredible story, graphics, gameplay and exceptionally high level of polish means that this one will keep anyone going, it is that good. Despite an incredibly frustrating battle with Sephiroth (finally beat him after probably 35 attempts largely due to my not having any of the forms' skills) this game was incredibly fun.

Now, strangely enough, the game keeping my attention is Shadow Hearts - From the New World. What is so great about this game? The story is somewhat interesting with its modern day vibe and distributed insanity. The gameplay is pretty standard, but the wheel based battles are kind of fun. The graphics and music are merely average. But all in all I am enjoying it.

What I am getting at here is why are certain games holding my attention and others are not? Am I starting to get so old that I can only enjoy games in short spurts? Am I getting so picky that I will only play the best of the best? Am I running so out of time that I only have time for games that consume very little time per play session? Perhaps I am just reaching that age/life style where gaming changes for me? I just turned 27, own and part-own several companies, have a wife and a child on the way; perhaps my lack of free time is contributing to this. Strange though it is, I suppose it makes sense that even my gaming habits should evolve over time just as my life does.

PS - As a side note, out of my list of games I have not finished, would anyone recommend continuing on any of them and, if so, which ones and why? Thanks!

Comments (3) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 7.11.2006

Animal Crossing Wild World Addiction Journal 1

Hello and welcome to week 1 of my Animal Crossing Wild World addiction journal. Each week I will go over what I am currently doing in the Wild World of Animal Crossing and document the weird happenings. I should note that though I have owned this game from the day of its release, it failed to captivate me to the level that the original Gamecube version did. Until now. Why? I think it had to do with how I was playing. I was playing it as though it were a chore. Every day I forced myself to devote a certain amount of time to fishing to raise enough money to buy every item in Nook's shop that I didn't have in my catalogue. In other words, it became a job to go out and play. Now, I am playing for different reasons. Every day I start up and do whatever I feel like doing at the time. This is making for a highly addictive experience that I would like to share. Without further ado...

Let's begin this intro by getting the name of my character and town out of the way. The character Lee (creative, I know) resides in the lovely little burg of Solaris (from Xenogears, not the crappy movie). It is a quaint little town with some very unusual residents. Such it is that I return to visit every day.

It is July now and I am very happy to see all sorts of new bugs. In the winter time I really had come to miss all of the little critters zooming around. I love catching bugs, think it stems back to my childhood. In any case, I have been highly enjoying catching all of the bugs I can. I haven't had time to play at night lately, so I have mostly caught the day time critters. I keep snatching all sorts of Brown and Robust Cicadas, Butterflies of all kinds and Jewel Beatles.

In order to boost my chances of finding some of the more rare beetles, I have implemented "project coconut" that has me basically heavily foresting the area by my sea shore with Coconut trees. Thankfully, out of about 11 or so Coconuts planted, 10 of them grew. Now I have a full range to catch all of the larger (and pricier!) beetles. I have caught 2 or 3 Hercules Beetles (seen at least 10, I know, I suck) and 1 Giant Beetle. I hope to harvest many more but they only seem to be appearing to me in the evenings, hmmmm.

I have also just discovered that you can send letters to your neighbors to receive non-native fruit. Since I am tiring slightly of fishing, I plan to create an orchard of non-native food to harvest and sell to pay off my mortgage (298,000 bells, yuck). Sending mail to my neighbors is part of my plan. The first round garnered a couple of ugly shirts, one piece of furniture and *gasp* a non-native fruit (a cherry)! I quickly planted it, hoping it would take root. Today I returned to find it successfully growing, huzzah!! I have sent out another round of mail, so hope to see some new forms of fruit later today.

Fishing has been sort of on and off for me. This morning, for instance, I only had about 5 minutes to play and so casted only once. What came out? A Coelacanth, the fossilized fish itself! Very lucky indeed. I also caught a Marlin the other day and 2 Sun Fish. On the other hand, I have seen far too many Sea Bass and have yet to even see any sort of Shark at all. Where oh where could those Sharks be? Also, maybe it is just me, but I seem to find a lot of Red Snappers lately, which is great considering how much they sell for. I plan on heading upstream later on today and doing a little river fishing. I have heard rumoring of some new river fish in July...

Well, this concludes this entry in my Animal Crossing journal. There is so much to do in Animal Crossing that I doubt I will ever get bored. Until next time!

PS - I would love to get together on Wi-Fi with anyone. The problem I am having is that my crappy D-Link router, though it has no problem connecting on Mario Kart DS, will not connect for Animal Crossing. Can anyone suggest a decently affordable wireless router that will work with Animal Crossing? Thanks!

Comments (2) | Permalink | Lee Babin | 7.7.2006

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