miffy495

I got to spend six hours in the hospital yesterday with my girlfriend and her family. Her grandmother's liver is completely shot and they gave her 48 hours. I was out with her when she got the news, so we went straight over together. I've had to be super-strong support guy since, and can only offer sympathy and stories from my own past. First time I've met all but one of her uncles and aunts too, which is always what seems to happen in situations like this. The ol' hospital family reunion. The girl's doing ok, although I've had to remind her to actually feed herself a few times. Her birthday is next week too. Rough day all around.

I enjoyed it, though I never bothered to finish it. What I played was enjoyable enough, and I've restarted it with the intent of a full playthrough a couple of times. It's a fun though not particularly standout shooter. I give it about three :tup:s out of a possible four.

About one and a half more than mine, what of it? Happy birthday, Yufster! May your job troubles be solved shortly.

The best part of that was that neither was intentional. Just awesome.

definitely. AAAAAAHHH!:frusty::frusty: I'll stop this now...

...You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?

The one prerequisite I'm lacking in is money. That, and I already own the GBA version, so I've been replaying that to try and keep myself on a budget. I will agree though, that if it's anywhere near as awesome as the GBA one, I'll need to buy it sooner or later.

Ah! June 23 North American release! So you guys just get it a bit early then. Excellent. I'll be checking for that one to show up on the computer at work. Hot damn, thank you sir.

Ah yes. Control is an awesome movie, with a great soundtrack too. I got pretty into Joy Division back in high school, so when the movie came out I went to the opening night screening. Had a show beforehand (as the cool little art theaters do stuff like this) with a ton of local bands covering their songs. Damn good night. I should find my copy of Unknown Pleasures and give it a couple of listens. Lately, I've been listening to a rather eclectic mix. For the hip-hop inclined, N.A.S.A.'s Spirit of Apollo is bloody fantastic. The Thermals, as previously mentioned, are on heavy rotation as well. I also finally got around to buying the new-ish EP set from Beirut called March of the Zapotec. The first disc is a continuation of what they've been doing for a while, and is really good. The second disc is a side project that's a weird mix of the standard Beirut vocals and lyrics, but to a synth-pop sound. Kicks a bunch of ass. Finally, I just got myself a brand new and really rad turntable, so I've been re-listening to my vinyl collection. A brief cross-section: Raw Power (the Stooges), Loaded (the Velvet Underground), Workingman's Dead (the Grateful Dead), Orgasm Addict Live (the Buzzcocks), Ascension (John Coltrane). Hells yes. Sounds great on the new system too. I recently heard that PJ Harvey's Rid of Me was re-released on vinyl in the UK, but there seems to be no way for me to get a copy in Canada, so boo. You lucky brits, get out and grab a copy while you can. I'll just have to wear through my copy of White Chalk while waiting to hear about a North American release.

Damn. Shades of Electroplankton there. I kinda want to dig out my old copy now...

Actually, I looked up peruse when I was about 11 and have attempted to use it correctly since. I'm just sort of a dick when it comes to language I guess. I try not to be one that much in real life and usually just end up biting my tongue a lot, but yeah. I'm that guy. I'll accept that there are probably some phrases I use incorrectly, but I'm always on the lookout to stamp those out. I can see the point of the "if it makes sense to the listener, who cares?" side, but changing language is a slow process. There is going to be a long period of flux in which the meaning of the word or phrase is uncertain depending upon who you talk to. Look at the word "sick" for an example of this right now. This is one that I've gotten completely used to using as positive and negative at different times in the same day. Up until that period of transition hits, the rest of the world would either be using the word in its proper way or not at all, so to insist that your incorrect usage is fine because your point gets across just seems lazy to me. Of course, this is for non-technical terms. Technical ones should probably just remain constant all-told, as otherwise trying to read old documents from a discipline would gradually become more and more difficult. So, how about that Borderlands?

Well, maybe some of you...

...I actually try to do that.

Problem is, just because it's not a technical term for you doesn't mean it isn't one at all. I'm finishing my philosophy degree. "Begging the question" is part of the jargon of my discipline. As a result, hearing people misuse it irks me to no end.

... ... ... ... ...awe-inspiring.

AHAHAHAHA!

Actually, I've had nothing but good experiences with MS' customer service. Always competent and helpful, and when my 360 RROD'd on me, they had it there and back in less than two weeks. for Microsoft's (Canadian) customer service.

I'm taking a much needed week off from life now that school has ended. It's great. I've been catching up on games, watching a bunch of Planet Earth blu rays, and generally being a lazy, unproductive piece of crap. Back to work on Friday, but man, this week has been sweet.

Yeah, I've pretty much given up on PC as well. Most of my gaming is done on 360, with the Wii and PS3 providing backup whenever a good exclusive comes out. I still play PC games now and then, but it's mostly replaying games I bought years ago (Hello again, Warcraft III. How've you been?) or modern shooters that are cheaper on PC. If I want to play something that's not an RTS or an FPS (and both are far from my favorite genre) I'm going to most likely be doing so on 360. Hell, even then, the shooters I'm most often interested in are sometimes console exclusive (Resistance series) so even then PC isn't really the lead platform. Last games I played on PC were Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (on the last 3 missions of my semi-regular replay of the trilogy) and Warcraft III. The most recent of these two was released while I was still in high school. I think I was in jr high for Warcraft. Not exactly what you would call an avid PC gamer anymore, sadly.

Agreed. As I said, I played through the two that I did despite the combat irritating me because the stories were good. I tried X for a few hours and just felt completely let down. I've heard good things about other games in the series though (one of the reasons I'm thinking about picking up the remake of IV). Honestly, I just don't know. I've heard that they become pretty same-y, but that's all second-hand. If the characterization is good though, it would be enough for me as well. There are only so many archetypes for a story anyway, so why shouldn't the plot follow similar progression across games? If that's all it truly is, then I wouldn't have a problem with the series either. Still though, the whole reason I got into this was to defend Zelda. I don't really feel qualified to speak on FF, having played only two games (plus a few hours) of however many they're at now. I haven't cared enough to check out the XIII trailer yet myself, so I just assumed that Rodi's problem with it was the cliched, cookie-cutter, etc characterizations. If it's new and interesting characters in a similar situation, that's cool by me. If it is the characters that are the problem, I'm even less interested than I was before. Still, I won't tell you that you can't enjoy it. ...peace?

Yeah, that's pretty sweet. Although having Kanye's latest album on at work constantly means that I cringe whenever I hear autotune now.

Seems a bit harsh there. I was only trying to explain what I took Rodi's point to be. This also happens to be one of the reasons for my non-interest in the series, so I had a bit to say about it. I hardly think that this is a windmill. The problem of Final Fantasy's main strength being completely removed from its main selling point (and its selling point being weaker than it should be) is very real. Doesn't make its strength any less valid of course, which I hope came across, but it seems to me a completely legitimate problem to have with the franchise. Maybe the marketers'/press' fault, not the game's, but a problem nonetheless.

Pretty much. As I understood it though, Rodi's complaint wasn't so much that the stories were similar but that they just weren't very good. As a game that bills its story as one of its greatest features, this is a disappointment. A game like Zelda or Mario, though also with generally weak stories (I happen to like the Zelda mythology, but it's presentation from game to game is admittedly not that strong) they don't generally sell themselves on them. Finding a Zelda game with a great story (Majora's Mask) is more of a pleasant surprise than an expected event. Epic stories are how Final Fantasy sells itself to those who don't care too much about the depth of their combat systems. In fact, as impressive as their combat systems may be, they're very rarely mentioned by Squeenix themselves in the lead-up to a game, with the press having to decipher things from the trailers and (eventually) demo. Personally, I barely noticed the combat system in the FF RPGs that I played, which again are VI and VII. VI's never got in the way, but I played it for the story. VII irritated me somewhat with the seemingly random nature of Limit Break attacks, but I pushed on anyway. I find the active time system leads less to interesting battles and more to making forced quick decisions so that the enemy gets as few hits in as possible. Don't like it much, honestly. Much prefer the slower, more strategic pace of a Dragon Quest-ish traditional JRPG system. Still, though the system annoyed me, I played through both to see the plot. If the recent entries have had inferior or just plain boring plots, I can empathize with the frustration. If they've overhauled the system since the last I played or not, it doesn't really matter to me if the story is no good. As I said earlier, from what I've heard of XII I may need to give it a shot, but if and when I play my next FF game, it sure as hell won't be for the battle system.

Fair enough. I don't see elements staying the same between games to be a fair criticism against either series, honestly. Surely that's a big part of what makes them a series in the first place? Particularly in the case of Final Fantasy, where as I understand it there is little to no continuity. Without those plot elements we'd just have a bunch of completely unrelated games under a common banner.