In Flight

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 23 - Game you think had the best graphics or art style

Sorry about the break ladies and gents, I lost motivation after I left to Belize. Without further ado, I’ll present the rest of my articles over the next few days.

Given that a majority of people that play video games now-a-days tend to care only about the visuals and have forgotten about the past games with great story but old-school looks, I’m going to choose a game that has the best art style. Now there were only a few games that really came to mind when I thought about art being incorporated into games because, let’s face it, the games being released are set on a mission produce the most visually stimulating game they can, graphics wise, while giving no thought to make the game stand out, let alone make the game any different from the current games being released. Sure the graphics can look out of this world and people can argue that making waves in crystal clear water can be art, but the way I perceive it is that the games are all the same.

Now the only games that really came to mind that made me really become visually inspired had to be Flower, Shadow of the Colossus, Flow, and Okami. Out of those three games I obviously chose Flower, mainly out of the fact that Okami has been chosen as the most artsy game ever made by a billion other people.

Now Flower is one of the very few games I’ve bought on its release date, being that it’s a PS3 arcade game, it was relatively inexpensive and was well worth the small amount of time invested in the game that was required to beat it. Given that, if you’ve never heard of or never seen a clip of the gameplay then it’s about time you go look it up. The way I percieve and want to describe the game is like an orgasm for your brain, the music, the landscape, and the environment set up in the game kind of pulls you in and enthralls you so that you have an overload of the visual and audial senses. It might sound crazy, and I’m sure other people don’t see this game the same way I do, but it truly is a small time masterpiece that needs more recognition from people who truly enjoy the finer things in life, obviously modern art based video games are one of them.

Fun Fact: The same company that released Flower also released Flow and a game called Cloud (PC only), all of which are almost around the same premise. They all screw your mind while your visually stimulated.

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 22 - A Game Sequel Which Disappointed You

One of the only games that I can think truly disappointed me in terms of originality, creativity, solid gameplay, and a fresh twist to the game was of course found in one of the best video game franchises. If you don’t know by now I’m talking about Metal Gear, and of course the game being Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. This game had huge shoes to fill because of the success and just amazing story produced in both of the predecessors, MGS1 and MGS2 respectively.

Now if you’ve ever played through the game, you’re probably thinking “hey wait a second, it’s a prequel to the entire series.”, although that’s true it was still released after MGS2 and played a role to just fill the gap between the release of MGS4 as well as fill in the story. The reason I chose this game as the game that just disappointed me is because this is the only game in the series that I never got into, let alone finished because I just lost interest after investing a few hours into the game. The story really didn’t take off, let alone throw me into something that could be an awesome adventure in the vietnamese jungle. Instead you’re given the run down of how to use camo, be stealthy, and hang out in the jungle while eating various living organisms, cough snakes cough, plants, and even a college students favorite meal, ramen noodles, to survive. With the battles being reminiscent of the first 2 MGSs, they are fought against super athletic-double jointed freaks, ailing psychics, old snipers, a crazy dude with a gun (in this case a flamethrower), and the guy who can control animals, there just wasn’t any new villains that impressed me.

The added features and the changes they made in the gameplay just didn’t seem all that cool and it felt to me more like fluff in order to fill the game and make it somewhat appealing/fresh. With that being said, I might be a little biased because I like the first 2 MGSs way more than most games,  but it’s worth buying/playing then shortly returning it for a refund/store credit.

Fun Fact: Snake? Snake? Snnnnaaaaaaakkkkkkkkkkeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 21 - Game With The Best Story

There are plenty of games that I hold near and dear to my heart, the ones that I grew up with as a wee lad, and the few that had remarkable stories and just impressed me to no ends. Those sound few games are all older games, the new consoles and the new generations of games being released are elaborate attempts at trying to solidify a franchise to milk and get the moneys. I had to debate with myself on what game really truly brought about an epic and enticing enough story that really snagged and drug me into the game, between Kingdom Hearts, a Final Fantasy game, or Knights of the old Republic, it wasn’t easy to choose. Of course I started to remember one game, this one game that happens to be one of my all time, if not my number one, favorite games that think has the best story is Final Fantasy IX.

If you have never played a final fantasy, or have played FFVII and FFVIII, let me tell you how great of a starting point FFIX is and what a change of pace it is compared the the earlier PlayStation FF releases. This game has everything, it is reminiscent of a lot of the older FF games, ie. FFVI and FFIII with job classes, the visual representation of the game, and as well as having items that give the characters abilities. But where this game really takes the cake is in the story department, I remember playing through it while still being in middle school and this game just dominated in mystery, drama, adventure, and of course action.

The basic rundown of the story is that you’re a fairly well known thief on a theatre ship with your crew trying to kidnap a princess, as it turns out the princess actually wanted to leave the castle anyways, but her greedy mother wouldn’t allow that, so you end up getting away with the princess. As you explore the world you find out the queen is actually starting wars with other nations, soon afterwards you meet her arms dealer, the main villain, Kuja and things take off from there.

It is really hard to just say that is what the story is all about, but playing through it there are the handful of playable characters that develop over the game where every character has their own internal struggles. Coupled with the great soundtrack, the visual style of the cities, and even the goofy card/chocobo game, this game is by far one of the strongest titles to have come out in the last decade.

Fun Fact: The guy (Hironobu Sakaguchi) who has produced, directed, and even given the original concepts for literally 10 of the games in the FF series has stated multiple times that FFIX is his favorite game out of the entire franchise.

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 20 - Favorite Genre

There are a plethora of game genres that have been released, as well as sub-genres that make an effort to change things up and make a game more interesting. However, without any doubt in my mind, the one genre that I grew up on and fell in love with happens to be  role-playing games, or RPGs for short.

I’m sure that everyone has had to have played an RPG at some point or another in their time with video games, if you haven’t then you’re truly missing out. The lowdown on the genre, just in case you wondering, normally deals with an elaborate and beautifully designed story and environment, with characters that develop perfectly to most of the time save the world from a catastrophic event that would otherwise decimate the planet. Given that, you get to play as one character throughout the game and build upon the story/freely explore the world the game designers created. Now I know other games, such as FPS or even action adventure games deal with the same concept of roaming, but I personally feel their stories are not nearly as elaborate, let alone as complicated as an RPGs. Most of the time running through an RPG can take anywhere from 15 hours on up, if they are a really good game then it will take past 30 hours. That might not be appealing to some gamers, but to me it’s where my heart is, old and new games alike have really evolved and changed the way I look at RPGs now.

Fun Fact: There are of course mass multi player online games, MMO for short, that people play, cough world of warcraft cough, but I personally feel they take up way too much time and have no sweet ending/stopping point in the story. If you really want to respect and enjoy games, the best thing to do is play through a few simple RPGs, just try em out.

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 19 - Picture of a game setting you wish you lived in.

With so many epic environments, cities, and even palaces that have been created over the years in video games it’s just close to impossible to choose one of them. I’m assuming that if you had a good child hood and grew up on the super nintendo, then the screenshot of the game above should immediately jump out and bring back memories of the fun and sometimes intense city builder SimCity. Now if you’ve played it, I’m sure you’re going to ask “well wait a second, why would you want to live in a city like that?”. The simple answer is that you have full control over planning out an entire city, manage the economy, the transportation, and take a ton of other actions that would later on enhance the city for inhabitants.

With all things from a real city taken into account, ie. apartment blocks, industrial buildings, traffic levels, crime levels, power levels, and even setting up houses away from power plants, this game has it all. It would be hilarious to live in a city that can generally be constructed in a plethora of ways that would still constitute a great living space. It would also be a hilarious adventure whenever the town was struck by a disaster, sometimes the game would throw in floods, fires, tornadoes, and even the occasional godzilla-esque creature (for the super nintendo they used bowser). Whether the game designers put in disasters as a method for population/power control I’m not too sure, but that shit was crazy (and fun).

Anyways, more or less, it would probably be a fun time living in a city that could be based off of any real world city depending on the way it is built and designed, especially when disasters are thrown in to just to keep you on your toes.

Fun Fact: This game was realeased in 1989 for the PC originally, it was then ported over to the SNES in ‘91, as well as being available for the atari, mac, and commodore 64 well before the SNES release.

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 18 - Favorite Protagonist

I think it would be rather cheesy of me to keep following the square enix fanboy theme, but I just can’t help that they make awesome main characters, ie. Cloud, Squall, Zidane, Cecil, Sora, and the list goes on. There are just way too many good characters and this is a really tough choice between a few characters, but I’m going to say Arthur from Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts takes the cake on being my favorite protagonist.

Now I’m going to just say that I have never been able to ever successfully beat this game all the way through, as a kid I gave up after failing to go any further than the fourth level and this is probably one of the hardest games ever created. Now the premise of the game is that you’re a knight Arthur that’s after the kidnapped princess so you have to valiantly face off with hordes of monsters that spawn anywhere at random (including below your feet). The cool thing about Arthur is that he is a baller and can get 2 armor upgrades and different weapons, the not so cool thing is that if he gets hit twice, his armor pops off and all of a sudden you’re taking a stroll around hell in a pair of boxers. If that isn’t comical enough, there’s a wizard that pops out at random and if you get hit by his spell you turn into a baby, so Arthur takes a lot of punishment.

This little guy is goofy and awesome, and really hard to control, but he is by far one of the funnier heroes ever created. The really great and funny thing about this game though is that once you get to the end of the game the first time, the princess sends you right back to the beginning to play through the game a complete second time, so after all of the frustration of getting through the game there’s a good chance you’re going to rip the cartridge out of the SNES.

Fun Fact: Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts and the original Ghosts ‘n Goblins have been ranked by a plethora of websites as one of the hardest games of all time.

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 17 - Favorite Antagonist

Now given that there are only a handful of true serious bad guys that I would ever choose from because lets face it, most of the bad guys in normal video games just aren’t that cool, (except of course in rpgs). Given that, I’m a huge fan of the final fantasy series and I wish I had played through FFVI so I could brag about how awesome Kefka is, but instead I’m stuck with saying Sin from FFX is my favorite antagonist.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because I personally feel there is a lot of symbolism that follows by saying that Sin is one of the craziest evil creatures to roam in a video game. While playing through FFX, you get a vibe from the people of Spira that the creature came into being as punishment for their ancestors relying to heavily on machines and technology, essentially becoming a society bent on material goods. Although that was just a common belief among the people, the creature was actually created by a powerful summoner, the dude went crazy because he couldn’t control the beast and now Sin just rampages all over Spira destroying any city too large or anybody that relied to heavily on technology.        

The reason I really like Sin is that it’s fairly reminiscent of what is happening in our society with everyone losing their minds over cell phones, computers, brand new shoes, etc. We have just lost whats truly important in life, although I’m sure people will argue that material goods make them happy, at the end of the day that stuff doesn’t matter. But I really do just enjoy the fact that he’s not just a single person, but instead a huge monster that goes around and just jacks shit up godzilla style, and the plus side is he can’t really be killed.

Fun Fact: Sin is composed of a single person that has to take the role of Sin as the world has no way to truly destroy sin, until of course you beat FFX. The cool thing is that the person who took over sin before you play the game was Jecht, the main characters father, that guy is also one of the coolest villains of all time (obviously not a villain by choice).

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 16 - Game With The Best Cutscenes

Without a doubt this was the easiest topic I could write on seeing as how only one game comes to mind. When cutscenes come to mind, I’m assuming that everyone thinks about graphics, music, the emotion in the importance on the cutscenes, etc. Well I do anyways…but regardless the one game I think has the best cutscenes is Metal Gear Solid 4: The Guns of the Patriots.

Now I know a lot of people were super skeptical about MGS4 at first because they didn’t play it and they don’t understand how great the game is. All they heard about were the super lengthy cutscenes and just ignored the gameplay, the flashbacks of the old MGS games, and the great close to a series. What I really loved about this game were in fact the cut scenes, it was literally like playing through a movie with a total of five hours of cutscenes (if you don’t skip any), you could just let the scenes run during acts to go take care of other things, or just relax and enjoy the beauty of everyone of them. Regardless, MGS4 is one of the greatest games made of all time and it deserves a solid playthrough even if you’re not a metal gear fan.

Fun Fact: MGS4 is one of only 5 games to get a perfect 5/5 score on BOTH ign and gamespot. It has been praised to be one of the greatest and most well planned and executed games of all time, props to Konami for creating this masterpiece.

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 15 - Post a Screenshot From the Game You’re Playing Right Now.

Well the most obvious thing that might give this game away if you’ve never played it would be the gun arm and the hud. But if you’re still clueless I’ll give you a hint, the games main character name starts with an S and ends with amus. So being that I just recently beat Metroid Prime I thought it only fitting that I would post about Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, a game I went out and bought shortly after beating the first.

The first Metroid Prime was pretty fun on alot of levels, its a great take on the Metroid series and altogether one of the best action adventure games I’ve played. Although both games hold the same premise with you losing all of your powers immediatley in the beginning of the game, the stories are actually pretty interesting and detailed enough to mash up between the original Metroid for the NES and Metroid II for the classic game boy. If you’ve never played Metroid prime, I’d strongly suggest playing it out of any other game in the series to start you out on an enjoying and awesome experience.

Fun Fact: The graphics are actually really great for a gamecube game, and the lame thing is since the Prime series is a trilogy, you have to buy a wii for the third game.

30 Days of Gaming Challenge:

Day 14 - Current (or most recent) gaming wallpaper.

Now as far back as I can remember, I normally don’t put video games as my wallpapers on my computer as I just don’t think they really take the cake on awesomeness. Given that there is so much digital art and crazy abstract computer designed landscapes that can be used instead of sticking with these cheesy game wallpapers that the companies come out with. But in recent times, the most recent wallpaper that I personally used on a computer had to deal with Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Now I’m not going to lie and say I’m still excited about this game coming out because I’m really not, instead I’m going to just say that after playing extensively through the knights of the old republic 1 and 2, this wallpaper was one of the more appealing video game wallpapers I’ve seen. The only reason I’m not thoroughly excited about stars wars in the form of an MMORPG is simply that, it is an MMORPG. Having had experience with World of Warcraft, I just feel that there is soooo many more things to do with your time in terms of being productive and even finding fun new games to play instead of WoW and even ToR. Although the game does look promising I plan on just looking at it through my friends playing it type of perspective, with that being said someone should hook me up with a beta invite…..

Fun Fact: Star wars is obviously awesome.