Summer Games Challenge 2018 - begin when ready!

[marurun]

I think I just need to replay the game. It's been a long time, and I remembered enjoying the game back in high school up until the ruined world. The story was OK. Kefka wasn't particularly interesting. Some of the characters were interesting but others were not. And the combination of espers and the utter lack of fantasy naturalism broke me. I'm wondering if I'd have a different perspective revisiting it as an adult, and using Mr. Popo's esper breakdown to guide greater character differentiation rather than greater character homogenization.

[alienjesus]

More Shenmue 2 tonight. I picked up after my first night in Hong Kong with some part-time work to get some money. Crate lifting is kinda like the fork lift from the first game but even less fun! Hoping there's better ways of making money - running my own Lucky Hit stand was much less lucrative.

I also went to a few places and was guided by locals. This seems like a cool system - you ask for directions and they take you there personally, but they're so slow! However, I feel that to enjoy Shenmue is to partake in the whole experience, the good and the janky, so I slowly wandered along behind them admiring the scenery.

Anyhow, plotwise I found my way to a temple to meet a guy I was given an introduction letter for in Shenmue 1. However, I was told I couldn't meet him until I learned the 4 wudes, so I'm currently on a quest to discover those. I learned the first one, Gon, from an old man doing Tai Chi in a park after he taught me a new move. It means like 'practicing every day' or something. The second wude, Jie, I learned after reuniting a master with his apprentice. Jie seems to be something like 'not using martial arts to show off' or something like that. 2 more to go, and I've been directed to a barber for that one. However, I'm back down to $0, so I think it's time to move some more crates for now - Id quite like more money to buy maps with so that I can find my way around a little easier.

[dsheinem]

Here's what I am planning thus far:

-Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire PC/N64)
-Zero Gunner 2 (Switch)
-Postal (Redux version) (and maybe the 2nd one?)
-Marvel Ultimate Alliance (and maybe the 2nd one?)
-God Hand (PS2) - in progress
-S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl (PC)
-Far Cry (PC)
-Mega Man 2 (NES)
-Samurai Shodown V Special (Arcade)
-1-2 others TBD

Two down, one in progress....

[pierrot]

Hoping there's better ways of making money - running my own Lucky Hit stand was much less lucrative.

Yes:

1. Buy capsule toys.
2. Pawn capsule toys.
3. ????
4. Profit.

Best to do it in complete sets, if you can.

[lordb0rb4]

I'm once again tweaking my list, since it is my first time i think it's been a learning Summer Challenge more than anything.
Next time i'm going to "theme" my list as i think it's more engaging and i like the feeling of progression in a serie.
After reading an old issue of Retrogamer (#156 to be more precise) about OutRun, i realised that not only i have for ages (at least i think i still do) a copy of Outrun 3D for the Master System, a gente released only here in Brazil and Europe, but also a little game called Outrunners!
So, i'm wraping up my list with 3 OutRun ports to home consoles and so, finishing up my first Summer Games Challenge!

Max Payne
Castlevania Chronicles
Mafia
Altered Beast
Metal Slug 4
Turbo Outrun
Fatal Fury
Art of Fighting


Outrun 3D (Master System)
Outrunners (Mega Drive)
Outrun 2006 C2C (Steam)

[pierrot]

Well, since I had Final Fantasy VI in my list of "reserves" to begin with, I guess I'm going to kind of add it as a + 1.

In terms of progress, I've managed to weasel myself into an airship, and just reached the southern continent. I've lost a lot of the steam I started out with, and feel like my progress is becoming a bit more strained by my boredom. So far, I have been enjoying the game more than I have in the past, but it's sort of a lazy, lethargic process. I find myself able to come back to it, for fairly lengthy stretches, but it feels like it offers little resistance. It's a little like junk food, in that it seems to engender a chemical process that makes it easy to indulge in, but doesn't offer a lot of substance.

Two things remain a bit consistent between my current playthrough, and my feelings toward it after playing to the last act years ago: the characters; the story progression. Basically, I still don't like the characters. A lot of the male characters are just terrible people, or they're paper-thin, and I can't be bothered to invest in them. It's not cute that Edgar hits on everything that's female with a pulse, including the children in his castle, or that Rock tries to lay claim to all the female characters, or that Setzer is Setzer--and why does the opera singer he tried to kidnap have the same name as the character she plays? The female characters are all just giant wads of insecurity, but despite that, I still find myself liking Celes the most of any of the characters. I will say that, while I didn't really understand the appeal before, the Japanese dialogue has opened my eyes to the appeal of Ultros. He's still completely misplaced in the context of this game, but I do find him to be a bit funny. In terms of things I've never really understood the appeal of in FF VI, I still don't understand why everyone seems to care so much about the opera section. I just don't get it, but at least the lyrics in Japanese were actually metered with the background music. With the story in general, I just find all the changing character perspectives to be really irksome. It's a fine idea for a non-interactive medium, or potentially even different genres, but I just have a hard time tolerating it in FF VI. It's hard for me to say why, exactly. I guess maybe it's that something about the story feels really arbitrary to me. Part of it is also that I don't really want to deal with the points in the game that I've had to go through, and that I know are still on the horizon, where I have to set up multiple, concurrent parties full of dead weight.

I just realized that I haven't really said anything about the battles, and I guess that's because it's the part that I find the most boring. I found some mild entertainment in Gau's abilities, but that was coupled with all the time I had to spend reading up on what the hell his deal is, and the frustrations of the damned Stray Cat! I keep him in my part now mostly because it feels like he has the most intricate mechanics, although I still really only ever use two or three of his abilities. I'm rolling with Mash, Celes, Rock, and Gau, which is perhaps not an ideal group, but, I don't know. After getting the Thief's Gloves, and the dagger that steals items, I just felt like I needed to take the Thie--I'm sorry, I mean "Treasure Hunter" along. Maybe the Drill makes Edgar into a monster against bosses, or something, but I don't find his tools be all that interesting aside from the auto-crossbow, which I abused the hell out of early on.

So, just sort of randomly, there was a scene that I enjoyed this time around:

When Mash pushed Kaien into the Magitec Armor, as they're trying to escape the Imperial camp, I found their back and forth pretty amusing. Mostly because of Kaien's stereotypical speech, I really envisioned a samurai riding around in a Magitec. So, kudos to the script writers on that part, at least. I'm a bit curious what Gau calls Mash in the English script, though. I don't remember enough about the English script, but I imagine it couldn't have been 'gozaru.' Actually, I'm a little hopeful that Gau eventually refers to Mash as 'dosu koi,' to go along with the "bear" comments from Tina.

[MrPopo]

In English, Gau calls Sabin "Mr. Thou", because he first catches on to Cyan's use of "Thou" and finds it hilarious, but eventually Cyan is like "fuck this shit" and Sabin sets Gau straight. Which gets Gau to call Sabin "Mr. Thou", even though Cyan is Mr. Thou.

[pierrot]

In English, Gau calls Sabin "Mr. Thou", because he first catches on to Cyan's use of "Thou" and finds it hilarious, but eventually Cyan is like "fuck this shit" and Sabin sets Gau straight. Which gets Gau to call Sabin "Mr. Thou", even though Cyan is Mr. Thou.

Oh, yeah. They made him kind of Elizabethan, right? That's probably about as good as anything else, I suppose.


Well, I went through Vector and the Research Lab. I damn near threw the controller at the screen at one point, though. For one thing, I just hate everything about what I saw in all of those cutscenes, but I also did not at all remember losing Celes. I was making her into the ultimate warrior, dammit! Don't take that away from me!

[alienjesus]

I started up another of my summer games this evening with Fire Emblem: Fuuin No Tsurugi AKA Fire Emblem Binding Blade AKA Fire Emblem 6 AKA The One With Roy In It.

It's going OK so far. I played through the first 3 missions but Roy unfortunately copped it on Mission 4 giving me a game over - enemies spawned and attacked on the same turn, which I know is a thing in this game (and a few others in the series) but which I still think is bullshit.

That said, I'm enjoying the game so far. I've got a few characters in my team I'm planning to use more long term, but a lot of dead weight characters still right now. I've been focusing on levelling Roy, Deke, Shanna, Elen, Lugh, Chad and Clarine right now whilst minimising the involvement of the others so I can level up my core team more.

It's very interesting just how thoroughly mediocre Roy is as a Lord - unlike Ike or Chrom, who are great, or even Eliwood and Lyn from this games sequel/prequel who are just OK, Roy is really underwhelming right from the outset. Even as my highest level character (and I've certainly overlevelled him) he kinda sucks.

I can't be bothered playing through chapter 4 again tonight (I was right at the end, as is the way of things) but I'll probably pick it up again tomorrow and play some more.

[pierrot]

That sounds like it's just the worst, AJ. Sounds like you should play more Shenmue II as an escape.




I am now basically at the cataclysm in Final Fantasy VI--I was fighting UltimaWeapon, when I inexplicably died, and was sent back to before I stormed the floating island, because I didn't save on the island at all, for reasons--which means that I'm not terribly far from where I had gotten to on the PS1 version. I decided to actually grab a few more Rages for Gau, and work on Stragos' blue magic. Lordy, did they mess up blue magic in this game, though. All of the spells I can get for him are pretty underwhelming, or just terrible. Aqua Breath is nice, but I can cast it for free with Gau (granted he's locked into an uncontrollable state for the duration of the battle when I do). Looking at his list of magic, Mighty Guard would be nice, but who knows when I'd be able to get that (probably too late for it to really matter). Maybe Aeroga, Quasar, or Grand Trine are any good, but I'm betting those aren't available to me for a while, either. Rilumu is also functionally useless to me.

So, let's talk about the story and characters. (Basically, spoilers.) There's this odd dichotomy between those two things in this game. It's not really the events of the game that have any impact on the characters, they just have all their own baggage that they're sorting through independently of the events they're immediately living through (terrible, horrible, awful, atrocious things that they're largely unfazed by). Honestly, Final Fantasy II did a better job of integrating its characters into its story, and that is not saying a whole lot. 'Gosh, gee. I guess all of the Espers are gone. Time for justice, gang! Play that "epic" music now, Nobu-chin.'

Anyway, there are basically two incidents of the game tripping all over itself expositionally that have sort of put me at my limit. One is the scene with Tina on the boat, conversing with General Leo, and I guess technically Shadow. Aside from the fact that she expects someone is going to spoon feed her the solution to her existential crisis, it's still somewhat galling to me that she's basically told 'You'll figure it out, little girl. --LEAVE ME ALONE!' The thing that I find most terrible about this scene, is that it's like the game started playing chicken with itself, couldn't handle the melodrama, and panicked by bringing in Lock to play up a seasickness gag for some levity. Was it funny? I guess, kind of. That comic relief completely undoes any meaningful scene they were hoping to achieve there, though. The tone of the scene shifts so horrendously sharply that I'm a little surprised I wasn't the one ralphing on the deck.

The second is much more, seemingly, innocuous, but even worse, to me. So, basically, Edgar is a problem. I don't know if this was another moment like the above where it's supposed to bring some levity to a scene where the cast should have been showing some emotion about an entire species of creature being killed off (but really didn't), but even assuming that, it's not funny. My problem is that, after Rilumu goes through some inane Rilumu banter with Mash, most everyone walks off screen, and Edgar just kind of stands there, sullen, and sort of sulking. Rilumu heads back to ask him what's wrong, and Edgar just asks her, 'How old are you?' --"How old are you"? "HOW OLD ARE YOU"? (I wish I could encode a screen shake there.) Look, no one actually needed to hear her say that she's ten. Edgar's response to himself is even trying to gloss over admitting to himself that he's almost hit rock bottom, and may have a problem. Yes, Edgar, you have a problem. You are damn near a pedophile, and you are not allowed into my party because of it.

I also just feel like touching on Kefka, again. He's completely one-dimensional. I just can't abide this type of antagonist. It was kind of interesting hearing from a guy in the pub in Vector, that Kefka was the first person in the Empire to be experimented on by Cid, and while he gained the power of magic, the experiments destroyed his mind/soul (literally the guy said that it broke Kefka's heart, but that's why literal translations are no bueno). This is such an easily missed bit of information, though, and it still doesn't do anything for Kefka's character other than check a box, certifying that he technically has a reason for being just a purely demented individual. That's all he is though. His psychotic persona entirely defines him, and there's nothing else. I don't know how people couldn't get tired of him as a character, because he's recurring throughout, and he's the same deranged thing at each point. This is kind of why I would prefer some big-bad popping up at the end of the game, because why does it matter? Someone like Kefka may as well just be a conduit for the final enemy. If they're just acting as a moving goal post, what's the point of pretending the antagonist is interesting at all.

As sort of an example of an RPG antagonist, that in some ways resembles Kefka, but is executed much more carefully: Luca Blight from Suikoden II. So, Luca, on his face, is a similarly perverse, and unfeeling product of war, but he actually has realistic reasons for being that way. I kind of want to go into detail about what those reasons are, but I'm going to avoid Suikoden II spoilers, except to say that Luca isn't even the main antagonist of the game. He just facilitates the circumstances for the main antagonist, and the gravity of the relationship between that person, and the main character is palpable. How do I get anything like that in Final Fantasy VI?

I really find most of the main characters to follow in Kefka's mold. That is to say that I'm not impressed, but I'm holding out some hope for Kaien (even though I'll probably never really use him) and Shadow. Everyone else I've mostly given up on, and the Celes x Lock thing, I just-- I just can't, anymore. I want Lock to disappear from everything, and never return. Please, please, please-- please, oh please.

Well, I can't imagine many are going to read even most of that, but despite all of my bitching, I still kind of like the game more than I used to. It's quite playable, but I would not be shocked to realize that my increased enjoyment is entirely due to Gau's substantially increased role in my playthrough this time. Although, last time I gave up on the game entirely because I hated the new world that I'm about to get to again.