Friday, January 23, 2009

Where The Dislike Is

I hate Playstation Home. There's nothing to do there except wander around looking at the pretty graphics, play that UFO game in the central plaza, agonize over the face editor while looking at photo references of my own face, and spend money on clothing and a mountain apartment.

So why do I do all these things? Why have I bought a shirt, a pair of pants, two pairs of glasses, and a mountain retreat apartment? Why do I log in and wander around and not chat with anyone, and fail to decide whether I want to go with the more accurate brown hair or the better looking blue?

Well, okay, I know why I bought the mountain apartment. I was curious what it looked like, and it was five bucks. And I know why I bought the glasses -- they were a buck each, and the two pairs of default glasses look nothing like the ones I wear. (As it turns out, the bought ones don't, either; damnit.)

And I kinda know why I wander around. It's a confluence of factors. First, there's the novelty of actually existing in a virtual environment that's somewhat akin to those I read about in science fiction for ages and ages -- a fake world to be in, and not a set of skinned goals. Second, it's not demanding. When I play other games, lately, they feel like work, even when they aren't, so Home is an opportunity to engage in an activity I like (project myself into a virtual environment) without having to deal with any stress. Third, it really is pretty, if you can get by the vacant looks on the faces of (or so it seems) every character but mine -- you'd be surprised what a bit of tweaking the advanced eye and mouth options can do to make a Home character look less like these, especially if you're willing to introduce a bit of asymmetry.

I really don't like it, though. The environments need to be bigger and more seamless and there needs to be more stuff to do.

And I'm not buying any furniture. That shit is ridiculous -- the only way to make Home less boring is to walk around its environments, so what's the use of things that you can only sit stationary on?

Monday, January 19, 2009

The reason why I don't post here more often...

...well, one of the reasons why I don't post here more often, is that usually when I get the urge to post, it's something like "Sweet Jesus, I wish I had more time to play the games I want to play, instead of the games I have to review."

Which is a stupid, unworthy complaint to make, because I'm being paid to review video games, which isn't something I should be complaining about.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Gluttony

Sorry for immediately breaking my new year's resolution to post at least three times per week; I've spent this whole week tearing apart and reorganizing my living space. It's still a mess—boxes everywhere; dust and rubbish kicked up that need vacuuming; books, knick-knacks, and disc cases of various sorts that need shelving (more, really, than I have shelving to fit). I'm sure you all know how it is during a serious reorganization of a nerd's cluttered room. Today, though, something relevant to my gaming life occurred.

The following games arrived for me in the mail.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia
Mana Khemia: Alchemist of Al-Revis
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance

Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Of them, I've played in the past only Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. I used to own them both; I lost them to separate thefts. Since then, I replaced them with Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (which I ultimately disliked, as I found the new voice acting inferior to the original) and Metal Gear Solid 2's Xbox port (which I ultimately disliked because it had sub-optimal controls due to the number of shoulder buttons on the Xbox controller, and because its framerate halved during rainy scenes). So for those two, it's just nice to have versions I like kicking around. And hey, they were cheap—they came in the Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection box.

The other games in that list go on the pile already occupied by Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts II, Odin Sphere, Eternal Poison, and Armored Core: for Answer. The pile's theme is largely niche Japanese games I've gotten into, or wanted to get into, and dropped due to distraction. I'll return to them some day, I'm sure... though the presence of the two Kingdom Hearts games on that list suggest otherwise. This didn't stop me from buying the Disgaea 3 DCL characters the other day, though. On the plus side, I finished one playthrough of Chrono Trigger DS, and I've gotten pretty far into Persona 4; the latter's not optional, though—I'll be reviewing it soon. I'll probably have to put a "I haven't actually finished this game yet" disclaimer into that review. Note to self.

Long before I've fully delved into even a fraction of the above (I don't expect to have even half of all those games finished by 2010), I plan to have picked up Mana Khemia: Student Alliance and Disgaea 2: Insert Funny New Subtitle Here for the PSP. Never mind that each is a PSP port of a PS2 game I already have. They'll have extra content!

I'm a bit of a consumer whore. (Of course that link goes where you think it does.)

I may also be a bit of a poseur.

Do I like these games, or do I just like the idea of liking them? I think it's the former, but if it were the latter, would I know? It's hard to see the back of your own eyeballs. And it's not that I'm super-concerned with peoples' motives for self-identifying as part of a given fandom—I wouldn't use the word poseur to describe someone else. But it bothers me that my buying habits might be hoarding instinct rather than a genuine desire to play these things; I thought I'd gotten over that when I stopped buying every tabletop RPG supplement that momentarily caught my eye.

About a decade ago, I was a much bigger geek and Japanophile than I am now. This was before I had the Internet (thus, I'd never met the sort of people who'd today fling—accurately, at that—the word weeabo at then-me); we were poor. I bought gaming magazines despite owning no gaming consoles of the then-current generation; the magazines were cheaper and let me experience games vicariously I would otherwise have been unable to see at all. My favorite was GameFan, and the two games that intrigued me the most—neither of which I ever got to play, until two weeks ago—were Persona 2 and Suikoden. (Two weeks ago, Suikoden went up on the Playstation Network Store. I grabbed it. Maybe I should add it to the list above.) By that time I'd already been hooked on and Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, which back then I knew as Final Fantasy 3. I wanted more games like that.

For ten years I wanted to play a Persona game, based on nothing but a quarter-page review.

As my access to game consoles and the Internet gradually expanded, I learned, in bits and pieces, more about Atlus and the Shin Megami Tensei series. I learned that Persona 2: Eternal Punishment was the second half of a duology, and that the first half, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, had never made it out of Japan (a gay romance in a video game would have been too big a deal back then). I learned that the Persona series was a spin-off of the core Shin Megami Tensei series. I learned about companies peripherally associated with Atlus in different contexts. I developed an appreciation for Disgaea's humor from descriptions on the Internet long before I'd actually played a Disgaea game.

Then last summer, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES's release date came around just as I was aware of it. I picked it up, played obsessively for a bit, realized I'd been playing suboptimally, deleted my save file in annoyance and started again. Then I did that another time, and on the third time through the game's first ten hours I got distracted by something else. I forget what.

I like these games in theory but I'm poorly adapted to the play style they encourage; I'm simultaneously too obsessive and too impatient. I can't stand playing suboptimally, but if playing optimally requires too much time and patience I get frustrated and look for something else to do. Something like Final Fantasy X-2, with its normal bad ending and its hidden good ending that requires hundreds of trivial tasks performed to perfection, would drive me nuts.

If someone would just make a game with a quick pace and simple, twitch-based gameplay at about the depth of Halo 3, married to characters and a story as complex and engaging as Persona 4, I'd be in heaven.

Am I more a fan of the idea of video games than the games themselves? It seems likely. I dislike most games I play, after all.

...

I apologize for my rambling. I'll endeavor to make the next post more pointy. I'll probably just post my thoughts on whatever game I'm currently playing for the next little while; it should help me stay focused.