The new Doom looks amazing.

The new Doom looks amazing.

bamccaig

Member #7,536

July 2006

System Shock 2 is sort of like my Ghost Busters. Everybody says it's amazing, but when I first tried to play it in 2007 I couldn't really get into it. I didn't get it. I tried briefly a couple of other times, but I couldn't really enjoy it. Similarly, I played Deus Ex around the same time, and also didn't get it. In fact, I don't even think I knew what the hell was going on in the story. I was just running around doing my best to survive and progress, but had no idea what I was ever doing or even where I was going.

Games, like movies, often do not age well. That doesn't mean that they weren't brilliant. It means you had to have been there to get the joke. Some of the best things are like that. There's very little, if anything, in this world that is timeless. If you were to ask me I'd argue that FFVII is timeless, but to the next guy it's just another game that they never "got".

FFVII was my first FF game so to me that is always my measuring stick. Since I've played FFIX, FFXII, FXIII, and eventually a mobile port of FF.

IX was enjoyable, though I found the battle system inferior to VII. Whereas in VII I had to grind in random battles to get strong enough for the next area's monsters and bosses, in IX I found that I never had to. I never struggled with a fight. Until I got to the 3rd disc or something. Which was some kind of weird alien world. And I "saved often" overwriting my disc 2 saves before I encountered enemies that were too strong to defeat. And at that point I was just stuck on a disc that was too demanding for my party, with no way to return to the previous disc to grind. I would have had to start over again so instead I abandoned the game. I'd still love to try again someday, but what 30 year old has time for that?

XII was looking really neat. I was really enjoying the story and characters insofar as I had gone, but I wasn't going to be fooled again. Once I got out onto what seemed like the world map for the first time I stopped to grind as I would have in VII. And I didn't know when to stop so I did that for a couple of weeks hoping to get well ahead of things. That's when I purchased a PS3 and so XII was abandoned while I explored my new game options. Alas, PS2 BC was not a feature.

XIII never really looked good. I enjoyed the FMV sequences, but insofar as I played it that's all I enjoyed about it. I hated the battle system and the environments seemed very linear and boring. Perhaps they got better eventually, but I gave up on the game before I got that far.

It's entirely possible that I'm just set in my ways, as most of us are, but it has not been my experience that FF has been improving every iteration. In many ways, I think they regress. I think a lot of people still feel like VII was a rare gem. A happy accident that they cannot reproduce.

It's all subjective. There's no objective measure for what makes a great game. You might argue popularity or sales, but even those don't work because society is full of sheeple that need to buy what their friends have. A pretty good measure might be playtime (i.e., hours played), but there's not really a good way to measure that and some games get players addicted so they're fulfilling a need more than enjoying themselves. Steam tries to track play time, but I don't think Steam games currently have an API to tell Steam "we're playing" versus "we've been sitting at a title screen for 4 days".

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I mean the best with what I say. It doesn't always sound that way.

Edgar Reynaldo

Major Reynaldo

May 2007

I played the original Final Fantasy all the way through like 4 or 5 times in total. One of the most memorable Nintendo games I've ever played, besides Low-G-Man. There was only one monster who was really unbeatable, and that was the WarMech. It's native attack was Nuke. Hardy har har , and it just nuked you over and over again until you were toast. The gas dragons were pretty bad in the final castle, their gas attacks do a lot of damage. The basic strategy was have the fighter and the martial artist kill em off one by one while having the other member's use healing items to heal the group. There was a lot of grinding in that game, like in the giant's causeway, but it was still fun because there was a lot of exploring too. Wasn't just a free for all world, but there were dungeons and levels to conquer, and you had to be strong enough to make it all the way to the bottom and defeat the boss in one run.

FFII and III were pretty cool too. They had different story lines and characters to make it worthwhile and interesting. 4,5, and 6 were all released overseas IIRC, and I never played those. Played about half or a third of FFVII until the Windows bug hit. Never played 8 or I can't remember if I did, but I definitely remember FFIX. Really enjoyed the characters and got into the story too. The materia system was kind of immature at that point, and you had to 'draw' magic out of monsters, which was like grinding, but even more boring.

Then there was FFXII, which was a great development in the 3D explore your world style Final Fantasy. It had bounties, and quests, and lots of really cool monster models.

FFXIII-2 was like an expansion pack to FFXII, and you got to see the story from 12 unfold in 13-2. I never finished it though, some monsters were just too hard and I couldn't find my way to the next level at some point. Too bad, because I really wanted to see what happened to Lightning. DON"T SPOIL IT IF YOU KNOW~~~!!!!! !@#%

But I also like strategy games, and Fire Emblem was really good in the turn based strategy role playing game genre. Much better than Final Fantasy Tactics. But in that same category is Disgaeia, and that game handed my a$$ to me. I quit about halfway through it was so hard.

Eagle and Allegro 5 binaries | Older Allegro 4 and 5 binaries | Allegro 5 compile guide
King Piccolo will make it so Then I could just flip it with some sweet, sweet matrix math. In either case, I’ll ride this wagon until the wheels fall off. Thanks to those that keep it running

MiquelFire

Member #3,110

January 2003

Edgar seems to not know how things were numbered with FF games.

NES Games:
FF
FF2 - Japan only
FF3 - Japan only

SNES Games:
FF4 - US 2
FF5 - Japan only
FF6 - US 3

PS Games:
FF7 - Square just gave up having the US have a different number system

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Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.
MiquelFire.red
If anyone is of the opinion that there is no systemic racism in America, they're either blind, stupid, or racist too. ~Edgar Reynaldo

Edgar Reynaldo

Major Reynaldo

May 2007

I got some of the early numbers mixed up. I probably played 4,6 and not 2,3. I remember one with Kafka, one with a fat clumsy knight and the black mage, and maybe another one.

EDIT
MiguelFire seems to speak in 2nd person...