This weekend was a long one for me. I had off Good Friday and I took off Monday so I still feel like I am not back in the groove with the work week. Non-gaming wise we had a great few days off with the kids since it was finally nice out! Plus with Easter, there was egg hunting and basket finding galore. We also spent Saturday building a garden box for vegetables that we are going to (attempt) to grow this year. It was even haircut time for the kids and that even went remarkably well. Shocker!
Feeling the Final Fantasy Love
I talked before about playing FF8 and why I do not play FF7. Since it is still about a month until FF10 gets rereleased, I was looking at other Final Fantasy games that I could enjoy. Then I remembered that Final Fantasy Type-0 came out and if you bought it you could play the demo for FF15. SOLD! I cannot lie, I do get a bit sceptical when it comes to Final Fantasy games (I am looking at you FF10-2 and 13-2) since there are some that are just lackluster for me. Now I did enjoy FF13, though I didn’t play it much and FF12 was Ok too but we decided to take a chance and get Type-0. We ended up downloading it on Saturday (hubby beat Bloodborne but was waiting for a friend to beat the game so they could start NG+ together) and tried it out. Since Type-0 downloaded first, we tried that out. I have to say that I rather enjoy it! The story at first was a bit confusing and you can definitely tell this was in Japanese and they just put English over it since the mouths will move at random times, but for a game that was on the Vita, it is great! The graphic are beautiful and not just in the cut scenes but in gameplay as well. I am also enjoying the combat. The open combat system that Final Fantasy has moved to is great. This time, they allow you to pull in various squad members and when someone dies you can replace them quickly. We are not too far along in the story or missions since we did our common Final Fantasy plan of levelling up all party members to much higher than needed to continue on…opps! At least now we are ready for anything that comes at us.
I Hate Androids
OK so I love Alien Isolation, I really really do. But one thing I do hate: androids. I hate them so much! Why are they so freakishly strong? How do they stop a flying wrench? And please explain how they can see me through walls; I know they don’t have x-ray vision! I am pretty good at sneaking though not from androids. PLUS, I continue to be very good at hiding away in lockers, except when there are androids around and their supersonic ears hear me breathing. Psst game, thanks for telling me about how to hold my breath in the locker right before the android pulled me out of it. Last night I finally got past mission 4 and the annoying androids. It was not done my sneaking or hiding because I feel that there is one section that you cannot sneak by. Let me give you the scenario:
There are about 3-4 androids patrolling this “C” shaped hallway (I marked their paths with red on the map below). They walk back and forth in predefined areas. However there is one section (in the blue box below) where there is an android that just stands there and watches over the stairs/back area. After about 30 tries, since he just stares there and even if you do not move and are hidden he will see you, I got caught and just RAN to the elevator. Luckily androids are slow and couldn’t keep up with me. I am not sure why I didn’t do that the first time…In the next mission I was able to see an Alien! He came out of the rafters and I hid in this little tiny box that would take me personally about 20 minutes to try and get inside and Ripley was in there in about 5 seconds. I am glad that I am finally past the dang androids and I sadly feel I will run into them again.
What is up with The Evil Within?
A few days ago I bought The Evil Within demo. When the game first came out, I was interested in playing it but I heard mixed reviews so I thought I would wait. When I saw that there was a free demo on Steam, I thought, why not. On Sunday night, when I was particularly mad at Alien: Isolation, I fired it up. The cut scene graphics were pretty good and the gameplay graphics were OK, but the first time I was able to take control of my character, I knew I was in trouble. Now, I will be the first to admit that I am not sure if this is my laptop running the game poorly (could be, but I never had any trouble with any other game) or not but man are the controls clunky. The character moves slowly with quick start and stop motions. When trying to turn he was jerky and the camera would swing around wildly. If you want to run you need to push up on the joystick and it is very unresponsive.
Now I have dealt with bad cameras and poor controls in survival horror games before with Resident Evil and Silent Hill series, but this one took the cake. When running from horrible monsters, it is nice to make sure you have complete control over your character especially when the one gets your leg with an unavoidable chainsaw and you are now limping around. The best thing that came out of playing the demo was the following exchange with my husband and I:
I am currently hiding in a locker (one of my strongest gaming traits) since I am being chased by a man with a chainsaw and my leg is all sliced open from or last encounter.
Me – “Do you think his chainsaw will ever run out of gas?”
Hubby – “Not before you run out of blood.”
End Scene
I might try the game again in the next day or two, but I will need to take extra special effort to work on getting the clunky controls down.
What did you play over the weekend?
“This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.”
The Geeky Mom 
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