Final-Fantasy-Ix

Sunny Isles Beach, FL. Summer’s gone and the regular baseball season ends this week, but that doesn’t mean the fun is over. Movies Almost, but no. TV Sherlock - The Hounds episode was terrible. I like Sherlock when his mysteries are solved with thorough detective work and deduction, not the kind of gobbledegook that we had with the hallucinogens and the weird hound. Very disappointing episode, way more so than the Chinese smuggler episode from the first series. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. With every Final Fantasy game there exists great (and not so great) teams of heroes bent on saving the world from some sort of evil force. While we could take a look at those heroes, let’s instead take a look at the evils that motivate these heroes to do what they do. ...

Ok, so I know I’ve been in and out so often these past three weeks, but what am I supposed to do? I’ve been travelling around the country and sick to boot, so unable to get ahead on my posts. So you won’t worry too much and so you’ll stick around, how about a little taste of some stories that will be coming up soon? Continuing next Friday will be the regular Villains of FF that you’ve no doubt been waiting so long to see concluded. FF IX doesn’t have the most riveting final boss, but it’s kind of a nice blast from the past. ...

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen. Due to some poor life decisions, I find myself stranded for five weeks without any video games. What’s a guy to do, right? Well, rather than just giving you some of the headlines from the week’s video game news in lieu of what I was planning to be gameplay impressions, reviews, and the like, I’ve instead started a five week “All-Stars” feature. Each week we’re going to look at a video game era and spotlight my top three games from that era. Each of these games will also receive a place setting at the prestigious “Table of Honor” feature that I’m working on. Here’s the weekly plan: ...

You’re playing through an RPG. You’ve gained five levels, found some sweet equipment drops, minimized the use of your precious items, and then it happens. You come up against a behemoth of a monster. Your party is decimated, your progress lost, your controller tossed through the screen. Does this even begin to sound familiar to anyone? It’s like modern gaming, in an effort to bring in an even broader audience, has started to dumb down our video game experience. Think back to the last four, at the very least, Final Fantasy games (not counting XI). Aside from side quest bosses who are geared to be a challenge, how often did you even find yourself remotely challenged in these games? I honestly don’t think I worried much about save points in any of these games (aside from when I was hunting the harder mobs in XII) at all. There was none of that between-save-point stress and worry that a game with any difficulty might throw at me. I just go on through the game, breezing through the fights and find myself at the final boss, sometimes taking more than one try to kill him, but, more often than not, just breezing through him too. ...