The Last Story & the real continuation of Final Fantasy….

Alright, so, this time I’m gonna talk about The Last Story and how much better it is than the latest FF games in the series (especially XIII and XIII-2).

As soon as Hironobu Sakaguchi left Square-Enix the FF series went downhill completely and with the latest installment, it got even worse.
Hironobu left because he had plans to start up his own game developing studio called Mistwalker. The Last Story was developed by Mistwalker along with AQ Interactive and the releasedate for Japan was 27th of January 2011 while europeans had to wait for another year.

It’s finally here, and I got my hands on it four days ago and I have barely put it down since, it’s completely awesome and it feels like the real continuation of the FF series.
It also has a great battle system that is easy to grasp and advance through, it also has a much deeper story than the last two Final Fantasy games (Yeah I’m gonna be that way about it… Those games were plain crap.).
I’m sure that the battle system isn’t completely new and refreshing but it does have a lot more to offer than to just press x over and over.
It has a simple equipment system with gear that actually changes how your character looks depending on what kind of armor or weapon you have equipped and as you upgrade it, it adds more pieces to the gear itself and as if that wasn’t enough, you can also play around with the coloring of the gear and unlock even more colors by gathering and trading some stuff in for new dyes.

It also let’s you go back and replay the dungeons you’ve been through earlier, you won’t be getting any experience for it but instead you’ll find gold chests which contains better stuff than you got there earlier.

I think I’ve said enough for now, I’m gonna have to get back into the game, it has me in it’s clutches.

P.S It has Multiplayer Modes as well, no story Co-op as of what I know though. D.S

Bioware and Star Wars go a while back.

And I don’t think it’s ever been better!

The last two weekends I’ve been sitting like glued to the screen, keyboard and mouse and I’ve been reporting several bugs and busting some ass (Yes I can talk like that because I’m joining the dark side), killing people to the left and right during the storyline and quests and generally going mental. Every other time I’ve done it, I’ve never enjoyed it this much.

The storyline is different for all classes and you get the hang of the game quite quickly, it’s just another MMO, right? No, actually it’s not just another MMO, they’ve thrown in some new elements to it which makes it less grind-based and more….. reward based. Feel like grinding? good, go kill another 30 mobs and you’ll get a bonus, don’t feel like farming? Don’t kill the extra 30 mobs but you’ll lose the bonus exp (which is even greater when you’re in a party as you get a bonus for their completion as well).

After a while you’ll get introduced to your first companion, your gatherer and crafter, you just pay a small amount of credits (In-game cash) and you’ll send them off to get the stuff you need to craft items (crafting doesn’t cost though). After a while you’ll also get a hold of your own starship and with it, comes another companion and starship battles, which works like a railshooter of sorts.

Considering this is going to be posted automatically on the release day of SWTOR I’m not sure if you’ll be able to read anything new from me in the upcoming weeks, I will try to tear myself away from the game though and post something, can’t tell for certain though.

Skyward Sword (HAH-HAH-HEIYA)!

Can’t really say much about this one yet, other than Link being a righty again (just like in twilight princess), forcing the left handed fans to become ambidextrous or simply play with reversed controls.

Haven’t put a lot of time into this one yet though, as Skyrim is still pounding in the back of my head and it’s really caught me in its clutches, along with the two last weekend beta tests for SWTOR (which has been pre-ordered btw).
I have played enough to give a statement about it though, about 20 hours through and I’m still not seeing anything near the middle of the game, or so I believe.

I do also know that since they’ve been making the world of Hyrule larger, they’ve had to decrease the amount of makeup (bye Twilight Princess bloom, here’s hoping you wont come back). It’s perfectly fine though, this time they’ve focused more on serving the player in his/her hunger for feeling, it feels more like you’re actually wielding a sword this time instead of a stubborn nunchuck (as in the weapon, not the Wii accessory) wanting to spin one way at all times.

I like it, not much bloom (hurts the eyes) and the aforementioned feeling is a lot better than in previous games and that’s mostly what I’m after, the feeling when you play a game is the most important, not how it looks, there are still titles for the NES that I play and still have that good old feeling of “this game is awesome, I wish it never ends”, most new games doesn’t have that. Some new games even have the potential of destroying the love for a whole franchise (FFXIII for example ruined my hopes for a good, new FF with it’s “Press X to win. Hopefully they can prove me wrong but I know it wont happen until they really put some effort into it).

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

When I finally had the game in my hands (or installed on the PC rather). I cried tears of joy… not really, no. I was pretty happy about it though considering it’s been a hell of a wait and it was finally time to see if the wait had been worth it. It was grand and as my story was about to begin I though to myself “Environments could be better” but then again, that was before I actually remembered to max everything out. The game is amazing (if you can take a few bugs) and the modding community is constantly spitting out new stuff, some stuff is great and it further enhances the game, some mods however…. not so much.

The project I’m gonna keep my eyes wide open on however is this: MERP.
I will definitely be following up on this because they’re now trying to port the work they’ve already done from the Oblivion creation kit to the Skyrim creation kit and if they succeed it will most likely be a grand adventure if you get tired of the one you’re going through in Skyrim.

Battlefield 3

Can it get more awesome? I mean, yeah, sure I love the COD: Modern Warfare games but the stories are growing thinner and you can’t really blow up vehicles or even drive them in that universe.

Dice even went here! (a small easter egg on the Karkand map in the “Back to Karkand” expansion).

Here however you can do more or less anything it seems, I’ve killed three people with one sniper bullet about 400 meters away, not too impressive and definitely not my best shot.
But of course…. you can just do like this guy! (Wait for it).

I’m not gonna waste more of your time for today, just watch the video, it speaks for the game and why it’s awesome.

RAGE, just a sad copy, really.

Yes, just as the title says, my opinion is that this one is just a sad copy.

The one and only thing I thought of while playing this game (and I knew I had to give it some time to really get the feel for it so I gave it 30+ hours) was Borderlands and all I really wanted to do is switch back to playing Brick and bust some skulls with the berserk skill.

Surely, there are some elements that are a great improvement from Borderlands (Vehicle upgrades, thank the gods) but they still don’t quite add up enough to beat it. Sure the story is different but the game play itself feels so much like Borderlands it’s scary, maybe it’s just me but I don’t really know.

Bethesda has done a good job with it though and I believe the best move they could possibly have done with it was to have the first NPC you meet, voiced by John Goodman himself! (I caught it after he said about 4-5 words).

Other than that I can’t really say much more about it, I think I just missed Borderlands too much while looking over the environment in Rage so I just might come back to it another time, wont say for certain at the moment.
If you like Borderlands, try Rage out and give me a shout if you feel like me, or not, and why!

Stay a while and lis…. bah, not worth it… But seriously, a few new posts coming over the course of a couple of days!

The binding of Isaac is another awesome little indie game from the guys who made Gish and Super Meat Boy and both it’s title and plot are references to the Biblical story that’s known by the same name.

The game itself is built up as the old (and still great) “The Legend of Zelda” well…. atleast the maps are, the way to fight monsters however has gained a little twist though, it’s a shooter (It’s a 2D action role-playing game to be exact). Enough explaining, watch the trailer… While playing this game you can certainly feel the rage, contempt, fear and agony building up as you mostly never ever get the good stuff at once and have to fight the first boss using crappy upgrades that are more or less worthless but the good side to it is that you’ll never get the same item twice in the same place, the dungeon floors are randomized and so are the rewards. In other words, one round you can get the worst upgrades ever and die in a second and in the second try you’ll get godlike upgrades and just blast the monsters away.

If you like twisted and morbid games, or enjoyed any of their previous games, you should definitely try this. I’ve re-lived a few rage attacks since starting this game and I just find myself unable to stop playing it from time to time.