And so I return from my massive hiatus, I got caught up with doing stuff and never did my FFX review so what better time than after I’ve gotten a tooth pulled and I need something to keep my mind off it.

Presentation

Where better to start than the first thing you see, those crazy graphics. Now the graphics in this game can be hit and miss for a multitude of reasons. Let’s start with the opening FMV, holy Christ is it good. I mean they are literally throwing production values in your face with this one. The scene is in an urban metropolis, the graphics are damn nigh photo realistic, animation is sleek and there are surreal elements such as the massive water sphere. Overall amazing stuff.

When we start the game play however there is an immediate annoyance. The art direction of the FMVs and in game is ridiculously different. It’s damn right annoying at times to see this western looking group throughout all the in game cut scenes only to be slammed with Asian looking characters in FMVs, a little annoyance but it can get on my nerves a lot.

Now in game graphics. The facial animations are superb and gives meaning to the Playstation’s ‘Emotion Engine’. These great facial animations are held back however by the amount of times a close up is done on a character when the programmers just used a low texture face. Complete immersion breaker.

Animations are a mixed bag as well. The animations in combat are brilliant. The fluidity is jaw dropping with one character ripping their weapon from a characters corpse while another character runs up to drive their sword into another fiend. Outside combat the animations aren’t as good, the amount of times I’ve seen Tidus twirl his right hand while making a point is uncountable.

Overall the presentation for the time is top notch. Today’s games have spiled me in this sector and that is why I moaned so much about slight grievances.

Gameplay

Now this is where FFX really shines, the combat in this game is unrivaled by any other rpg. The game works around a turn based system but unlike other turn based games your turn is dictated by your speed, this means you can get in up to 10 attacks before an enemy has a chance to move. I love this system, I’m a big fan of speed over power in games and can only hope for the day Pokemon brings a system like this into play.

Besides this turn based system it’s pretty much just like any other final fantasy, with magic, abilities and all that good stuff. There is however one great improvement this game has and that is the levelling system. Unlike other games where you level up and there’s nothing you can do about it in this game you chose how you level up on a sphere grid. The sphere grid is like a board of connected circles each containing things such as more speed, defense, strength etc. The system is perfect for end game as you get plenty of chances to make yourself stronger than someone that just wants to beat the game. It amazes me that a system like this has not yet been implemented into an MMO.

As small as this edition is I’ll leave it there for now. Next time I’ll cover Characters, Story and End Game content.

So I took it upon myself to re watch ‘The Brave Little Toaster’. It was about 12 years since I’d seen it last.

Re watching it thought me just how powerful nostalgia is. Now when I started watching this movie I knew it wasn’t going to be as good as I remembered.

I’m not going to do a long post about it because it doesn’t even deserve one. The music in the film was mediocre, the tunes were only catchy during at the chorus and the lyrics made no sense what-so-ever. They didn’t progress the story and if anything held it back.

Now the characters in this film are terrible, terrible. The lamp and radio are the only redeeming ones. Every side character seems to have been created with the sole purpose in my of “how much can we scare the fuck out of these kids”. Characters such as the mechanic’s light, the AC and the magnet seem to serve no purpose beyond “you gonna have nightmares tonight”.

The story itself can’t be complained about the objects want to get back home to their master which for some reason they look upon as the kid. I just dislike things that happen within the story. The hoover moves around the house with need of an elctric supply until they leave the house. Then the hoover needs an electric supply. On multiple occasions however such as the waterfall the hoover can move freely without an electric supply. On another occasion the hoover’s lead stretches about 2 metres then later on it can stretch about 20 metres, there’s just no consistency.

One point of the story really bugs me. They group arrives at this watering hole or something and they run into a load of annoying animals. Now at one point a group of mice are pulling the blanket character into a hole and I coulda swore blanket was saying “they’re going to kill me”. Now toaster rushes to pull him out of the hole and at this point I was expecting the group to rush off in fear but no, the next scene shows them all happy and waving goodbye, really?

Now I’m probably being too harsh on the film, sure the inconisistencies are everywhere and the animation is mediocre at best but there are a few good parts such as the locations and well….the radio. He was hilarious for a lot of the film and in honesty the film should have just been about him, finding his way back to JFK, on the moon.

Morale of the story, don’t revisit childhood films unless they’re made by pixar or are the Lion King.

Okay last night my play through of Final Fantasy X lasted from the intro to the first scene aboard the Al Bhed ship.

Now I remember getting a demo for Final Fantasy X back with my PlayStation 2. At the time Final Fantasy to me was FFVII. This was before FFVIII became my favourite and FFIX was just ignored. So I went into the demo expecting FFVII. The first part of the demo gave me exactly what I wanted. Zanarkand was like a more midgar minus the upper plate and the pollution. The second part of the demo however felt nothing like Final Fantasy VII, it was set on a beach at day time. I thought to myself ‘meh’ and wouldn’t pick up FFX until it was released platinum which was 2003 I believe.

I would go on to find the game intoxicating but this isn’t my old review of the game, this is me replaying the game and seeing just how good it still is.

The game opens with a view of a fire at a camp in some sort of waseland. Immediately you start wondering who are the oddly dressed characters why are they all so depressed. Tidus eventually tells us to listen to “his story” and we realize this is going to be an in medias res narrative. This was a smart move in my belief as it allows the main character to give us insights into his thought patters during the game and leads to some pretty evocative moments.

Now I want to sidestep from FFX for a moment to highlight the fact that this is Tidus’ story. This is where FFXII went wrong, there was no definitive main character. Vaan wasn’t the main character, sure he was the guy you controlled he was always on screen but he was only written in during the final draft of the story, he’s merely there to appeal to young teenagers because god knows main characters can’t exist over the age of 20 in Japan (Cloud being the one exception I suppose).

Now after the campfire scene we’re introduced to Zanarkand and hot damn what a city it is, massive buildings, blanketed in nighttime but still light by streetlights. The city is fantastic. It’s a shame it got so little screen time.

Now tidus’ makes his way to the blitzball arena with an oddly personal narration from a never again heard from character going on in the background. As random as the narration is I always liked it because of just how personal it was.

Once you get to the arena the game shoves its production values down your throat in what is one of the nicest FMV sequences i have ever seen. I could only imagine how good this looked back in 2000. The stellar opening eventually ends and with it we begin to see how vastly different this world is from our own and the flashing confusing images which summarize the intros to any Final Fantasy. The game now begins its “confuse the player about everything so they want answers”. It works a charm though as we have no clue what the hell this thing attacking the city is or who that Auron guy is.

The battle system kicks in here and oh boy what a perfect battle system it is. There wasn’t many battles so far to where I played so i won’t discuss it in depth yet but believe me this battle system is quite possibly the best ever implemented in an RPG and if any game ever replicates it I will purchase it day one.

After a few impossible to lose battles we come to the end of Zanarkand. Here Tidus gets sucked into the attacking creature and next we see him placed in Baaj temple. I always hated this part of the game because of how lonely it feels but hey that was the exact point of the area so kudos to square on it.

After a lot of running a scripted fight and a short fetch quest we are introduced to an Al Bhe- DAT ASS… ahem. An easy battle with her showing off a few battle techniques and then we see these Al Bhed people don’t speak english.

Tidus gets knocked out we see him aboard a ship where we find out one of the Al Bhed does in fact speak English. She explains the Sphere Grid, (quite possibly the greatest levelling system ever implemented into a game and why it does not get used in MMO’s is beyond me). This is where I played up to last night.

The opening is the best seen in a Final Fantasy in my opinion. Unlike FFVII the main character doesn’t have a clue what is going on in the fight sequences either so he is easy to relate to. It also keeps the high levels of action going ulike FFVIII which puts you in a bed after the awesome intro FMV.

The two areas after Zanarkand area bit of a let down but I know that once I finish the following area the game really kicks into gear so I can’t complain about that.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

So far the game has been hectic action followed by a depressing second section with confusion being the main ingredient.

I feel like I should hold off on commenting on some aspects of the game as they haven’t been properly introduced yet, nor should i comment on overarching aspects as I haven’t played enough yet but one thing goes without saying, this game is on par with FFVIII for best soundtrack of the series.

More on how well Spira holds up tomorrow.

So this has laid dormant for awhile because I had an idea awhile back to review Final Fantasy VII through XIII.

I came across another man who had one upped me in the process however, he reviewed FFI through XIII including side games. At this point I was going to “live and let live” and just not review the games as his reviews were in a word ‘fantastic’. That is till I reached the midway point.

His reviews became boggled down in nostalgia, any negatives were thrown aside as being intentionally programmed into the games, it was sad to watch such an objective person turn to a biased mess.

He then reached FFVIII and began reviewing each game in a way that turned my stomach. Each game’s negatives were highlighted to such a degree that it was painful to read the reviews. Such little niggles as time compression and battle dialogue were treated with such distaste that it seemed they had murdered his family during the night.

Each game was awarded the exact same indecisive score. It became such a habit for him that he eventually abolished the score system.

His final reviews annoyed me so much in fact that I’m going to start my new project. I plan on replaying the some of these games and reviewing them as I progress through them. As my Final Fantasy VIII disk has been scratched to hell I feel I should start with X.

So let’s get on with it!

In my last post I finished with Fierce Deity so I’ll begin this post with it.

In Majora’s Mask one of the things you do is go around collecting masks (surprise, surprise). Once you’ve managed to hunt down every last mask you can take them up to the moon to trade for an almighty mask ‘The Fierce Deity’ mask. (Yes I am aware how odd that last sentence sounded).

On an unrelated note I always found what the children on the moon say to be oddly deep. They begin questioning friendships, morality and what Link’s true face even is.

Well the ‘Fierce Deity’ mask is only touched upon in passing throughout the game. It is however obvious from how everyone who mentions it that this mask is evil. Fierce Diety seems to be even more evil than Majora and is much more powerful, each one of Majora’s transformations go down with a few swings of Deity’s Double Helix Sword.

Now as a kid I always believed that Fierce Deity was just an adult version of link, I assumed it was the Hero of Time in his 50’s which explained his silver hair. I wasn’t far off in fairness because throughout development the mask was meant to be just that an adult link, this was however changed late in the development of the game. Now most people could claim that this would make the mask pointless in the grand scheme of the timeline bit I would disagree. If they went to the trouble of making the mask even more evil and powerful than that of Majora than it must have some importance.

Okay so let’s think about the Fierce Deity mask for a moment. This mask is a transformation mask, these masks usually come from the passing of a soul. Once a creature of some sort is healed through the song of healing their essence is left behind in a mask. If this logic is to be believed for the Fierce Deity mask than at some point in history when this Deity was roaming the land it was ‘healed’ and its essence turned into a mask.

There is a slight fault with this theory and it all comes down to grammar. All the other transformation masks use plain nouns in their names, Zora Mask, Goron Mask etc. The Fierce Deity mask uses a possessive noun. This pretty much comes down to meaning that the Fierce Deity owned this mask. The mask shares this possessive naming with Majora’s Mask.

This leads us to two things that we have proof of. There were two beings at some time and these two beings had the names Majora and Fierce Deity. Apparently Majora was good and Fierce Diety was evil. Everything past this is speculation. Personally I follow the Manga’s interpretation of events.

In the manga (not canon) Majora is a foul beast that eats and many that comes to claim its hide which is said to grant wishes. Each man that has tried to take Majora’s hide has been defeated by the creature at least until the manga that is. A man appears in the manga who bears a striking resemblance to the Fierce Deity. This person does not attempt to defeat the creature but instead plays a song to Majora on his bongos. The hypnotic song goes on for three days and three nights. Majora dances to the song without stop but this becomes to tiresome for the beast and eventually its heart stops from exhaustion.

Once the creature is dead the man skins it and carves its hide into a mask. Now here is where canon kicks back in. At some point the mask gets into the possession of a tribe. This tribe obtains great power through the mask. It is believed this tribe lived in the Stone Tower and raged a war with the Ikana Kingdom. This war wiped the tribe out and Majora’s Mask became lost.

The next appearance of the mask was into the hands of the Happy Mask Salesman. He went to apparent ‘great ends’ to get it. That man seems to have dark powers himself so god knows what ends he went to.

Okay so that sums up Majora till the start of the game but let’s get to the meat of this post. Fierce Deity. Now let’s just cut to the end point of the Mask, we have to assume it is Fierce Deity and not just his possession.

Now let’s remember a transformation mask gives the user the form of the healed creature, while some of the users appearance remains most of the transformation is the creature. Now just look at the Fierce Deity he is Link. There is no question about it, it’s Link with a few years added on and a bit of face paint.

Now it is my belief that the soul of Fierce Deity is trapped with the mask along with his powers. So the very idea that the mask is the first incarnation of Link gets thrown out the window. However seeing as Fierce Deity is a god wouldn’t his child be a demi-god. I like to think that Fierce Deity had a son, kind of the same way Dracula had Alucard in Castlevania. Just like in Castlevania Link was a good soul and fought off his evil father, maybe it was Link that trapped his father in the mask. Link would then use his powers to reincarnate himself every time evil threatened the lands. I understand how far fetched all of this is but it would explain most problems in the Zelda universe including how and why Link gets reincarnated every time Ganon appears.

Well this post was meant to be about a lot of my own personal theories but I kind of got bogged down with Fierce deity. I could write an entire series on Majora’s Mask alone but I don’t think that would amuse anyone beyond my sad little self. I’ll probably do a few more Zelda posts in the upcoming future as it is damn fun to geek out on Zelda theories.

So a new Zelda is on its merry old way and my enthusiasm is through the roof. I’ve always been a massive Zelda fan since Ocarina of Time. The newest Zelda however has me silly amounts of giddy. 

Now Zelda games aren’t much for story, they so however contain an overarching story which encompasses each game if you read enough into what characters say.

For instance in Wind Waker anyone could easily skim over Ganon’s final taunt. If however you pay close attention you will realize he tells us that Link is not a different incarnation each time but is instead the same soul constantly reborn to battle off Ganon.

This revelation shattered my mind at the time as I always though it was link’s descendants that fought Ganon off, kind of the same deal as the Belmont clan in Castlevania.

Now as nerdy as the whole Zelda fan deal is I still follow the scene quite a bit. I enjoy the whole trying to figure out the timeline deal as it’s as complicated as a timeline can get.

One of the main things people question is the entire Termania situation. The land of Majora’s Mask. Now the game gives a simple storyline for this game, Link is searching for a lost friend. The game doesn’t even say outright who the person Link is looking for is, however it’s heavily implied that it is Navi and I always believed that as a kid anyway so I won’t change my mind about it now.

The problem with the entire plot of Majora’s Mask is that it conflicts with a previous statement which is mentioned dozens of times in Ocarina of Time, if someone enters the Lost Woods without a fairy they will turn into a stalfos.

Now at one point in Ocarina of Time there is FORESHADOWING for such an event by one of the Kokiri elves. Yes the blonde ditsy arrives after you get the Carpenter’s son’s some cure and tells you that he has got lost in the woods and has turned into a Stalfos. Then comes the odd part, she ponders if the same will happen Link.

Now at the time you wouldn’t give to thoughts to this comment but the start of Majora’s Mask showed link entering the Lost Woods without a fairy.

This has lead many to believe that Link never actually reached a place called Termina, well not in reality anyway. Termina was in fact a place in Link’s head, this explains why everyone looks the exact same but have much different personalities and occupations.

Now this could all be called nerds nerding too hard on a game series but that was all changed with Twilight princess.

Crap I’m going to have to explain even more of the timeline now.

Okay I’m going way off topic but I like this topic so I’ll keep going. Now Ocarina of Time is seen as the crossroads in the Zelda timeline. This game contains the Hero of Time. He has to defeat Ganandorf but to do so he enters the Temple of Time, Link gets sealed in this temple for seven years by the ‘Sage of Light’. It is only as an adult that Link can possibly rival Ganon in power.

Now when Link defeats Ganon in the future he seals him in the spirit realm or something. Everyone was shitting themselves with happiness as they believed Ganon was finally gone. Zelda of the future thus sent the future Link back into the past, the future Link was destroyed from this point on and became child link again.

Now this lead to a split timeline. There exists two points from this time on. One timeline follows the Hyrule from the time period of the future where no Link exists. The second timeline follows the period in which child link was returned to. Goddamn this is starting to confuse me now.

Okay so in the future timeline there was no Link. This didn’t bode well once the seal holding ganon prisoner was broken. Ganon returned to Hyrule and completely started tearing shit up. Now the people relied far too much on the Hero of Time. They began praying to him to return, theydidn’t even attempt to defend themselves. Link didn’t exists anymore here however and could never return. Ganon was free to do as he pleased.

The gods realized all hope for Hyrule had been lost and flooded it in a final attempt to kill Ganon. Ganon would go on to survive this but lost control. People on mountains were the only ones to survive and went on to flourish and create a new society, this is where Wind Waker takes off.

The other timeline contains the Link that was sent back in time. This Link is the one that went into Termania looking for the friend. That about sums up the confusing part of the timeline.

Now in this timeline Twilight Princess also takes place (now we’re getting back to where I left off). In Twilight Princess there is a pretty important character that teaches Link hero abilities. Now this stalfos is generally accepted to be the Hero of Time after he got lost in the Lost Woods. This link shows remorse for not being able to keep Hyrule safe, the same plight the Hero of Time would have if lost.

Now back to my earlier point.

This gives reason to the point that Termina is just the Stalfos Hero of Time going into some sort of dream like state attempting to save the land one last time. I however dislike this theory and instead rather opt for the theory that Termina is another dimension entered through the Lost Woods.

At the end of Majora’s Mask, Link goes on back into the woods once again which could lead onto him becoming the Stalfos. Now I can get into the reason I created this blog. The connection between the Skyward Sword and Majora’s Mask.

Now the new game contains a new villain, no Ganon, no Vaati, no Onox, no Veran. This time the villain is Ghirahim. Now this guy looked a lot like Vaati at first but he’s confirmed a new guy.

Now Ghirahim has had very little revealed about him but there has been one very distinct thing about him and that is the pattern of his clothing.

Yes if anyone is still reading I can hear their groans now. You’re probably asking if I’m seriously analyzing his clothes but yes I am and the reason for all my talk of timelines is to be revealed now.

The main premise to Skywars Sword is that the sword is actually a person and that the sword will eventually turn into the cornerstone of the entire series the ‘Master Sword’.

Now if one person in this game is a sword and a good one. Well isn’t is quite possible that there is an evil equivalent in Skyward Sword. If there is a single evil game in the series of Zelda it would have to be Majora’s Mask. That game also didn’t contain the Master Sword as it was being held in the Temple of Time. Instead the Kokiri Sword was the main weapon. The Kokiri sword could however be upgraded into the Gilded Sword.

Now it’s pretty obvious that this sword contains the exact same design as that seen in the main villian of Skyward Sword. It may be a bit farfetched but I think the villian may be this sword and that SS will connect directly into Ocarina of Time.

I also believe SS will show Ganon before he became evil. He will probably assist Link or something at some point but this game is obviously the first in the entire series. It would make sense to bring Ganon into it now while giving him a little back story.

Needless to say I have high expectations for the new Zelda and cannot wait to play it. I have so much more to say about this series that I may do another post tomorrow. Hell I have a lot I want to say about himself below.

So today while floundering around twittertown I saw a most foul post. The new Assassins Creed is to not only be set in Istanbul (gimme London) but it is to star Ezio Auditore Da Firenze. This boils my blood to an unrivaled level.Spoilers ahead for ACII!

Now don’t get me wrong Ezio was an awesome character he oozed charisma and everything he did felt like it had a purpose. Hell I remember liking his entire family, they felt like such a close knit group, when things went belly up I felt for them.

Now as Ezio’s story progresses he suffers a lot, most of the things he do causes him great pain but it’s to be expected for the pay off at the end as we hope for Ezio to get his revenge and to gain some form of closure.

Then we get to the end of the game. We kill the final boss. We laugh at him and we go onto our golden reward. It’s then it all happens. We see that Ezio’s entire life was nothing more than a way to communicate a message to the series main character Desmond.

Now my jaw was on the floor at this bit. They creatures who spoke at the end looked straight through Ezio as if he didn’t exist. When he began shouting about what they were talking about they just hushed him and told him his part in the story was over.

Then it ends.

After that you are given control of an old Ezio. You feel like shit afterwards. Ezio’s whole life was for nothing in the small scheme. He was a tool. It was a fantastic ending, I found myself not able to play the game once it ended as there was this constant feeling of nothingness to Ezio.

It was a glorious ending but then they announced a spin off. Ezio’s tragic story became the exact opposite. It was merely a stepping stone towards a come back for him and now they announce another title featuring Ezio. The original ending to ACII is now a pointless retcon. Ezio has become as important if not more so than Desmond.

Anyway I just wanted to bitch about that cause I’m a sucker for a sad story.

It’s for reasons like this I want to become a keyboard grandmaster :3

I love this song, it reminds me of lost of some reason.

You know a long time ago I was talking to Feercree. It was on MSN which was the style at the time.

This was just awhile after he had discovered 4chan. I remember the day we introduced him to it he became a new man for awhile. Everyone was out to troll him and he had to stop them one meme at a time.

Anyway this particular day he was in a rush. He opens a window and begins nudging. I’m all like about to use my WTF emoticon cause nudging is bad manners yo. Before I can press ‘:\|’ he chimes in MARK YOU GOTTA SAVE THIS PICTURE I NEED IT FOR TOMORROW. I check his link hoping it’s not some sort of homosexes which was the troll of choice around then.

It wasn’t it was simply a man who turned into an ape out of frustration. An odd metamorphosis I thought. In fact a physiologically impossible one. What was Feercree’s angle I pondered. Before I responded however he claimed MAKE SURE I GET IT TOMORROW THIS IS HELLA IMPORTANT.

Now at this point I was busting my ballbags wondering what the hell he needed an ape smashing a computer so badly for. I logged into EM ES EN the next day with gleeful anticipation.

He never came online that day.

He didn’t come online for a week.

Soon the picture began to fade from my memory. I only found it there five minutes ago and now I really want to know what the hell he wanted that picture for.