Phantasy Star Game Blog Part V: One Small Step For Man, One Giant Pain In The Ass For Anthony

noahAfter that horrific dream interlude, we head off to some cave where Noah is allegedly training and not building an ark of any kind. By the way: Worst. Random. Encounter. Rate. Ever. For reals, a battle ends, I scratch my nose and I get attacked again. You won’t believe what happened when I had to go pee. I have the console off right now and I think I can hear the battle music starting up!

So after navigating another cave where every single wall looks exactly the same (intelligent design?) I stumble upon, Noah, the blue-haired delight who tells me that he is just too busy training to help me save the universe! Training for what? What the hell could possibly be more important than this? Is there a 5K coming up? Are there intergalatic olympic games? Is Michael Phelps still around and if so, does he smoke Laconion Pot?

But what’s this? I have a letter from the Governor of Motavia? (He is a Motavian, BTW) and that’s all Noah needs to pull a Luke Skywalker circa Empire Strikes Back and quit his training and help us out. I guess if I had let Noah finish his training he would have started at a higher level than level 1, but somehow, I doubt it. Noah suggests we go to Gothic Forest and find Dr. Luveno. He fails to mention why we should find this guy or what the dress code is at Gothic Forest. I’m guessing black is encouraged.

We get to the forest and find the town of Gothic. The people here are surprisngly upbeat! I am warned to stay away from the tower nearby due to the magical beast that lives there. Little do these people know that telling me such a thing only ensures I will pay it a visit. Turns out that Dr. Luveno had a lab here and then he went bonkers and is now locked up in Triada Prison to the south. Prison Break!

A short walk later and we enter the prison and I release all the prisoners I can find. Some are pretty helpful, including one who informs me that the aforementioned tower is the lair of Medusa! Odin wets himself upon hearing this. There is even a giant tarantula who tells me of a substance called POLYMETERAL that dissolves anything except for Laconia. Interesting. Another guys tells me of a robot named Hapsby who was built to pilot a spaceship, but was abandoned in the town of Bortevo somewhere. Hapsby is also made out of Laconia. I’m sure this will come in handy later.

drluvenoDr. Wily! I mean, Dr. Luveno! Guess what! He refuses to help! Guess we should all go home. But I have come so far! So I ask again. No sale. One more time and as always in video games, the third time usually does it. Dr. Luveno agrees and asks for me to meet in him back in Gothic where he will help me, but only if I help him first. Typical. No word still on the Gothic dress code, but he is wearing white, so I think we are in the clear.

Find out later this week what sordid task Dr. Luveno has planned for me and what the hell else I have to do to get the freaking spaceship built in Part VI: The Strange Appetite of Dr. Mad

GamerSushi Asks: Day One Purchasing?

uncharted2One of the more interesting parts of each fall and winter is the decision about which games are worthy of purchase, and which are more up the rental alley. And let’s be honest, there’s nothing quite like the anticipation that leads up to a release of a game that you’ve been dying for. Whether I’m attending a midnight release (which doesn’t happen so often these days), picking up a game during lunch or after work, I love the build up before a new video game.
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Phantasy Star Game Blog Part IV: To Rescue A Stoner

phantasy_starI take Myau out for a few battles, test his mettle and such. He promptly dies. Thank heaven for nine lives, right? Back to town, revive him and try again. FASTER, PUSSYCAT KILL, KILL! Thankfully, Myau manages to stay alive long enough to gain a few levels, enough that I am reasonably confident that he will also stay alive long enough to rescue Odin from Medusa’s Cave. So we head back to Palma and enter Medusa’s Cave, my first full-fledged dungeon!
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Cutting Through the Shooter Fat

hot-dogThose of you that frequent this site know something of my sordid disdain for the FPS overflow of the current generation. It seems that nearly every blockbuster title for the last couple of years has been some kind of shooter, be it Resistance, Call of Duty, Gears of War, Halo, Left 4 Dead or Killzone. Shooters are bombarding us from every corner, and after some time, I grew rather sick of them.

So for the last few months, I’ve been on something of an FPS diet. I’ve been on a real diet, too, coincidentally enough. The funny thing about losing weight is that people always want to know what your secret is. You say that you’ve lost x amount of pounds, and people always ask, “How have you been doing it?” When the answer is “getting off my ass to exercise and not eating like a wildebeest”, they tend to get a tad upset. As if I’m holding out on them. Oh right, there was also a secret pill that made it really easy. Forgot to mention that part.
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Phantasy Star Game Blog Part III: A Whole New World

wtfA new fantastic point of view…no one to tell us no! Or where to go! Or say we’re only dreaming…sorry. Aladdin was a big hit when I was a kid. So I arrive on Motavia. One small step for man, one giant leap for Alis who is clearly desperate to escape the humdrum tropical world of Palma. Motavia is a desert planet, but you wouldn’t know it from the spaceport. Looks like every other area I have visited so far. The townsfolk are friendly and the Clone Troopers stay out of my way thanks to PASSPORT and PASS. I sip my newly poured cold Pepsi (sponsor?) with satisfaction at my newfound bad-assery.
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Phantasy Star Game Blog Part II: Owl Bears Make Me Cry

ss-Phantasy_Star-04-640Grinding. Grinding never changes.

Ok, well I have finally had a taste of what combat is like in Phantasy Star and it’s kind of like going to Epcot Center and trying all the different sodas from around the world. China has their head on straight, but the Italians clearly have dead taste buds. And don’t even get me started on Israel. The battles in Phantasy Star take place from a first person POV and consists of ATTACK, MAGIC and ITEM. Oh, and RUN. RUN rocks. Love RUN. You don’t get to select which enemy to target, which can get really amusing sometimes. By amusing, of course I mean frustrating and by sometimes, of course I mean all the time.
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Phantasy Star Game Blog Part I: A Tentative First Step

dd432dc903be08ecd861213ec510493f-Phantasy_StarCaptain’s Log Stardate 456335.45

The ruthless bastards loyal readers of GamerSushi have made their voices heard and chosen a game for me to blog about. Sadly, their voices are that of demons from the 6th Circle of Hell, for they have chosen Phantasy Star. In order to properly blog about this game, I have traveled back in time to 1988.
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Has Slayer Marred Shooters?

ctfI have been an FPS guy for years. Years upon years, even. I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D, Quake and Doom on my slow-as-balls PC, gunning away to my heart’s content. Eventually, as the Internet actually became a living, breathing entity that took hold of our collective psyche, I started jumping into multiplayer matches like they could sustain my very being.

I loved playing CTF gametypes in shooters, or planting bombs in Counter-Strike: Source. These were fun and interesting ways to play games that were essentially the same, and they added lots of depth to keep you playing for endless hours. But sometimes, things change.
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GamerSushi Game Blog! You Pick The Game!

100042You guys know about my horribly long gaming backlog. I have made progress and setbacks, as I have beaten several games, but bought two, as well. Soul Caliber IV was ten bucks, what was I supposed to do?? So I thought I would blog about whatever game I play next from my collection, not what I get from Gamefly or anything.

So I came up with a list of 5 games. You guys get to pick. What follows is a brief description of each game. It is RPG heavy because my sarcastic manner is better suited to writing about these types of games. I mean, how can I make Devil May Cry half as interesting as Final Fantasy? Even I am not that talented. And if you disagree and think I am, tough. I still ain’t playing Devil May Cry again.

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (New) – This RPG is unique in that you start off as a boy with his dad on an adventure and eventually you grow into a man, choose 1 of 3 women to marry (sorry, Big Love fans) and have kids of your own and go on adventures with them, as well. So it follows 1 man’s life through 3 generations, which is really cool. Plus, you can recruit up to 70 monsters into your party and use them in battle.

Phantasy Star (New) – Originally released on the Sega Master system way back in the day, it’s a tough, old-school, kick-your-ass-and-make-you-like-it RPG. If you want me to go totally batshit during this blog, pick this game. Seriously, I am scared of this game and what it may do to me.

Suikoden (New) – Ah, a PS1 RPG I missed out on. I hear this one is pretty easy and short, too, about 15 or so hours to complete it. You play a soldier who recruits an army of 108 members, known as the Stars of Destiny and do battle with an evil…wait for it…EMPIRE! Sounds and looks like fun, though.

Breath of Fire II (New) – I only rented this back in the SNES days, but it is a steller RPG and it always intrigued me to because you can merge certain party members into one to create a new member. Got a wolfman and a fish? Make a wolf-fish! How cool is that? Other than that, it is a standard RPG, but a fun one from what I hear.

Final Fantasy III (New) – Remade for the DS, this game was previously unreleased in the U.S. and I know why: it’s freaking hard. No saving in caves or dungeons, only on the world map. Tough enemies, lots of grinding, but a fun job system (not as much fun as FF V’s, though) make this an old school RPG worth playing.

So there you have it. The 5 who were chosen. Now it’s up to you guys to pick which one I play. Keep in mind, I will be writing about the game for you guys, so pick something you want to read about.

UPDATE: I have edited the post per Eddy’s suggestion that I only do a new game (new to me). So since no one had voted for an old game yet, this works out. VOTE NOW!

Words of Wisdom From An Older Gamer

yodaLearn from my mistakes. I am 28 years old and I have played games all my life. I have learned some lessons about games and thought it might be beneficial to pass those on to you whippersnappers, to prevent you from making some of the mistakes I made.

1. Don’t buy a game you aren’t going to play right away. If you are buying it the day it comes out with the intention of playing it down the road, don’t. If the drive to play it isn’t there now because you have something else to play, then what makes you think it will suddenly appear later on? Answer: it won’t. And you will end up with a giant backlog of games that most likely you will never play because something new is always coming out. If you wait a week or two, I promise that insatiable need you feel to possess that game will dissipate, leaving a profound and new understanding about yourself. Also, it leaves $60 bucks or so in your wallet. Win/win?

2. Don’t be blindly loyal to a console. I was a Nintendo kid, like millions of others. But when Final Fantasy left Nintendo for Sony, I bought a Playstation and I have been with Sony ever since. Now, I still buy whatever Nintendo console is out there, but later, for a cheaper price and I use it as a second system and nothing more. If the 360 is your thing, but the games on the Wii or PS3 look good, don’t punish yourself out of some misguided loyalty to Microsoft. Trust me: they, nor Sony or Nintendo, give a crap. Play the games you want. Whatever system it may be for.

3. Games matter. Consoles don’t. Graphics? Sound? Online? These things matter not. If you want to know what console is right for you, then look at the games. Games determine what wins in the console wars, nothing else. Not fervent message board chatter, not how many people play online and not who has the better E3. It’s the games, stupid.

4. Reviews do matter. But they also don’t. See, don’t worry about the score a game gets. Read the review, in fact, read several reviews of a game you are looking at buying. You know what type of game you like, right? Scan the reviews to decipher if it is the kind of game you will like. If so, then the score doesn’t matter quite as much to you. If you love hack & slash RPGs and the reviewer gives one a 5, but for you it sounds like a 10, then get it! On the other hand, reviews don’t matter. No one really cares what game gets a 10. No one will remember that. So if a game you love gets a low score, who cares? Are you so insecure that someone else’s opinion might alter yours?

5. It’s a game. Enjoy it. We all forgot this sometimes, but don’t let the extraneous crap let you forget the fact that you are playing this game for fun. For enjoyment. To escape from the horrors of the real world for a bit. Don’t become obsessed with tiny details that ruin the fun for you. If you like single-player games and despise online games, that’s fine. There is nothing wrong with that. If you only like playing in groups, then do so. Don’t let someone else try to tell you what you should like or dislike. Have fun.

6. Don’t cosplay. Seriously. Never do this. Unless you are a really hot girl, don’t ever do this on any day that is not Halloween and even then, it might be pushing it.