There are two schools of thought over Final Fantasy XIII. One is that the game is a linear turdpile populated by unlikable characters, driven by an incomprehensible plot which plays itself for almost the entire 40-50 hour runtime. The other school of thought is that it's a glorious game with a superbly tactical battle system. The problem is that there is very little middle ground. Having been playing it pretty much all week though let me talk about my opinion a bit better equipped and informed than I was last week. I still love it. However what I think is the best FFXIII review I've read is the review from Edge (which you can read here. Now Edge praised the latter half of the game highly but punished it in the score department for it's glacial ending and the fact that you really have to put the effort and time in to get the most out of it. I agree with pretty much all of their points, but I haven't been as annoyed by certain things. As for Jim's review though, the day it went up one Mr Yahtzee Croshaw put on his Twitter that he's doing FFXIII for Zero Punctuation next week. As much as Jim may have been disappointed and dismayed to have to rip the game up I have a feeling Mr Croshaw is already deciding which knife he's going to use.
The second part of this -isms bit was going to be a heartfelt defense of Jim Sterling, a man who I refuse to stop loving a defending even while he's ripping my puppy's limbs off but it was getting too depressing. So instead I'm going to talk about Blur. Blur is absolutely glorious fun when it works. Now with this being a beta I'm not demanding 100% working code, but the ability to connect to a game and not losing all my stats any time my connection drops would be really appreciated. The balance also seems to be fucked up the ass, the opening 20 seconds of a race determine what kind of race it will be. Will it be the '1 guy escapes the opening melee to never be seen again' or the 'everyone bunches up to create a decent race'? Most of the time it's the former, meaning that if you don't win the starting grid lottery you'll be racing for 2nd at best. The idea is pretty damn good, but the game needs a massive amount of balancing work if it's going to be any good come release.
Also played Perfect Dark XBLA for a little bit earlier, strange isn't it how you don't realise how much you've come to rely on FPS signposting until it's gone.
Oh yeah, I'm supposed to do something about Cblogs...
Good morning to you, ladies and gents. First things first: many thanks to Sentry for filling in for me last Monday. I was off on a long-overdue week long vacation, during which I went totally dark as far as the internet was concerned. I still haven't caught up entirely-- particularly here at Destructoid, so my apologies if I'm not quite up on the latest memes and so forth. I DO like the look of the new redesign so far, though as I said I haven't spent a lot of time with it. By the way... who decided to start a Pokemon meme while I was away? That's just mean, guys.
Speaking of Pokemon, the recent release of Heart Gold and Soul Silver is as good an excuse as any to re-offer the special Johto starters I bred for PAX in 2008. If you'd like a set, merely send me a PM or E-mail and they're yours for the asking. I'll be happy to arrange a time to trade with you. Here's what I've created:
Each of the frankencritters I've worked up have two Egg moves they wouldn't normally start with and don't learn on their own.
Chikorita starts with Leech Seed and Leaf Storm in addition to its standard Tackle and Growl.
Cyndaquil begins with Will'o'Wisp as well as Flare Blitz plus its standard Quick attack and Leer.
Totodile comes packing Crunch and Dragon Dance combined with its standard Scratch and Leer. Teach it Waterfall and it becomes a very effective and versatile physical attacker.
I'm not especially difficult to get a hold of, just check my blog's sidebar for a variety of different methods.
Right, enough of the digital cockfighting for now. And since I want to get back to my Pokewalker (Originally I typed Pokewanker. That should get me on a few watch lists.) I'll try to keep things brief tonight. On to the recaps.
No community contests. Two weeks ago, my quote was the dialog about a moment of silence between Moe and Barney from Homer's triple Bypass, and it was identified by Stevil. Sentry added one to his recaps last week when he filled in for me, but no one seems to have noticed. Therefore, I'm gonna let it hang until someone picks up on it. (Hey, my game my rules. =p) If you're wondering what exactly I'm talking about, you might wanna read this.
Sorry this is up late. Wait till you hear this week's excuse. I was about halfway through the recaps, when my phone rings. It's one of my friends. He says "You'd better get down here, something awful has happened."
So I rush off down to town to find that nothing has happened. All my friend wants is some money and apparently I'm the only one who has that. I angrily take out my card and put it in the ATM. The machine swallows it and won't give it back. At this point I'm raging so I barge into the bank. I start yelling at the clerk, telling them that if I don't get my card back, I'll take my service to another bank. The potential loss of a customer frightens them, and I get it back. I go back outside, pausing to punch my friend in the face, head to the nearest game shop and buy Battlefield Bad Company 2. I go home.
Also, Memes.
Also, also, I got a Twitter.
Once you look past the fail today, we had some really good blogs today. Well done youse.
And so it begins. Let me start by saying that Totodile and its evolutions are by far the best Pokemon and nothing you can do will stop that. So here they are: all in chronological order.
I'm not an official editor or anything. I'm still just a guy pretending to run with the wolf pack. It's like a restaurant that advertise a "world-famous" dish when you damn well know that no one has heard of it outside of Bumfuck, Indiana.
In other news, Birthmark Destructor has been banned and we can all breathe a sigh of relief! The news of his departure has sparked a mini-meme of sorts as you will see below. Can't say anyone is gonna miss him.
But then this guy returned a few days back. We all knew it was gonna happen, but it's disheartening nonetheless.
So cheer up! Enjoy this "world-famous" assortment of video entertainment!
A- Articles
S- Series
M- Monthly Musings
P- Podcasts
CONTEStoid
C- Community Contests
W- Winners/Updates
E- Entries
COMMUNItoid
E- Events
F- Fight Nights
D- Destructoid in the Wild
S- Stories from the Community
C- Contemplations
I- Introductions
B- Birthdays
R- Rest in Peace
H- Houses, cribs, setups
Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press living the dream since March 16, 2006
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