This Weekend in Gaming: Feeling the Final Fantasy Love, I Hate Androids, and What is Up with The Evil Within?

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.”

Find your Rage Stage!

Last night I raged and really I didn’t just rage, I RAGED. I normally do not get mad at games. Sure I am upset in WoW when raid bosses do not go our way, but normally I do not get really frustrated with video games. I see it all the time though when the hubby is playing Dark Souls, Demon Souls, or Bloodborne (really any and all of the souls gaming are rage inducing) so I created the Four Stages of Rage.

Stage 1 – Grumbling

• You have died or failed your objective once. It is annoying but you are pretty sure it will take just one more try and you will complete your objective. You might sigh a little bit or mumble to yourself some minor obscenities but really if you do beat that boss or complete the mission the next try, you knew you could and it is not a really big deal anyway
• Rage factor = 1-3
• Obscenity level = Minor – could be said in a PG movie
• Common quote – “I got this.”

Stage 2 – Posture

• OK so that first time you died, it was fine and it happens to the best of us and you were just learning the fight. But that second and third time were completely uncalled for. If you just sit up and focus you can beat the boss this time. Make that back nice and straight, scoot your butt up closer to the edge of the chair, place your feet firmly on the floor, and if you are playing with a controller, hold it steadily in front of you. Focus and you got this!
• Rage factor = 4-6
• Obscenity level – Mild – You are pushing into a PG13 rating
• Common quote – “You have GOT to be kidding me! I mean c’mon how is that even possible.”

Stage 3 – Force

• This is the fourth time you have died and it is crap. Nothing is going your way. First there are about 10 extra guys have to fight. Then the boss pulled out a totally BS ability and killed you in one shot. You squeeze your controller really hard or push the keys on your keyboard with more force than what is needed. You are pretty sure if you would just mash the “X” a bit more than the system would have registered it and you would have hit faster, harder, and wouldn’t have died. Sometimes you shake or tilt the controller and that is sure to help you dodge attacks. Everyone knows the more force you put behind your button mashing the better you do. You will definitely beat the boss now since you are using all of your strength!
• Rage factor – 7-10
• Obscenity level – Medium – You are a PG13 rating and one more F-word and you are going into an R mister!
• Common quote – “This is horseshit! Did you see that? Did you? I see how my abilities just passes right through them and they hit me every time. I was like 40 feet away!”

Stage 4 – Rage Quit

• That is it. You are done. The game is cheating and you are pretty sure there is someone on the other end playing the bosses and laughing at you as you die. You turn off the system before you throw the controller into the screen or bash the monitor with the keyboard. You will have to wait and play until you cool down some. It could be 1/2 an hour or three weeks. But a break is needed for sure.
• Rage factor = Turn it up to 11
• Obscenity level – You are rated R, but some of those words you are using are confusing the MPAA since they are a mix of 2-3 curse words and you might just be banned from theaters.
• Common quote – “Fuck this game.”

Like I said, last night I RAGED. I hit stage four after I died five times to some stupid androids, who cheat and  know where you are at all times no matter how sneaky you are. Oh and they choke the life out of you and no matter how fast you mash the A button you cannot beat them more than once. Plus the jerks grabbed my wrench mid air! Screw that game….I am done….until tonight that is. And tonight those androids will have no idea what is coming.

This Weekend in Gaming: Alien Isolation: Adventures of the Constantly Crouched Gamer

This weekend I got the itch to play new games. Do not get me wrong, I love WoW and I love playing it for hours and hours, but other than playing Civ 5 and some Diablo I have been stuck on WoW for a long time. This is mostly due to the fact that I have very little time to play games anymore (pretty much only when the kids go to bed) so it is just easier to stick with one and WoW is such a big game with so much that I have to do, it just worked out that way where I was spending hours on there. Then my husband got Bloodborne and all this changed…

While I was watching him play I thought about all those games that I wanted to play too: Alien Isolation, Bioshock Infinite, Pillars of Eternity, and about 20 more just on my Steam wishlist. Plus since he was so enthralled playing Bloodborne, I knew it would be hard to drag him onto WoW. So over the weekend I got on Steam, looked at my wishlist, and then added a few more games (it had been awhile).  The next part was the hardest. What should I play? I had a gift card so I knew I could get a few if I liked, but it is better to only stick with one or two so that I really play them and do not just game jump. Also, if I could wait on a few games they could be cheaper at the Steam sale that will hit usually around June (crossing fingers on this one!).

I ended up picking up Resident Evil 5 (only 6 bucks!), Alien Colonial Marines (I know it is a meh game, but it was 3$), Final Fantasy 8 and Alien Isolation since it was on sale for 12.49$! I know most of you are sitting here going “Final Fantasy 8?! Who would buy that? 7 is WAY better!” This is something that I have been told about a million times. But I wouldn’t know that since all the further I have ever gotten in FF7 is when…not to be too spoilery… that thing happens to Aeris and I have actually beaten FF8 a few times, it might be one of my favorite games. Let me take a quick detour and talk about Aeris and how I grew to stop playing FF7. Do NOT read the below paragraph if you do not want to be spoiled about one major thing that happens pretty early on in FF7

The Scene that Ruined FF7 for Me

When I first got a Playstation, many many years ago, I was pretty young and all I would play was Crash Bandicoot and Spyro (in fact I got the first Spyro game in my Easter basket, apparently the bunny is a gamer too). My tastes grew and evolved and finally I picked up FF7 I was so excited! In fact, I was on break from school when I started playing it. Well I ended up loving the game. It felt like I could really get into the world. Cloud was super cool. Tifa was my favorite chick but man I was really good at playing as Aeris. I had her all maxed out and she was just kicking butt. Remember people, I was young; no more than 12 or 13 so naivety comes into play here as well. Well I am playing along, enjoying myself, and in fact, having a merry old time. Then I get to the church scene. Tears….absolute tears. I was in shock. How could a game kill a great character? Plus I spent all my time making her amazing (probably what I am most mad about) just to have to die! That dang Sephiroth (PS – I ended up loving him as a character in the Kingdom Hearts games).

I promptly stopped playing FF7 and (I will never forget this) my aunt took me to Hollywood Video and I rented FF8 and immediately fell in love with it. I bought it when the rental was up! And soon after I then started moving to my favorite genre survival horror and picked up Resident Evil and Silent Hill. I know I should have kept playing, and I wish I could tell my 12 year old self that but I can play it now on Steam and it is on my wishlist!

Back to the non-spoilers!

So I played RE5 first since like I said I love the Resident Evil games. I have played this game before, we bought it on PS3 a long time ago, got kinda far and it was just OK. But I thought I would give it another chance. I tried playing it on my laptop and for some reason I just could not get the controls down. I have never played a game like this on a computer. Most of my computer gaming knowledge is WoW, Starcraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Vampire: Bloodlines, and other games like that. But playing a survival horror like this threw me for a loop and I really could not get it down. The next day I went and picked up an Xbox 360 controller and it really helped a lot. Boy could I tell a difference, I was actually killing zombies!

Next, I gave FF8 a go since it was only a 1 gig download! It was as I remembered it, well except as I was sitting there playing I would look up and see Bloodborne on the TV and weep. Oh how far we have come in all these years with graphics. Such a major change! It runs very well on the PC though and the controller works perfectly.

Alien Isolation: Adventures of the Constantly Crouched Gamer (might have minor spoilers)

What I really wanted to play though was a game I had not tried out before, Alien Isolation. After it downloaded I jumped right into it! I am a HUGE fan of the Alien games and the movies. (New Alien movie yay!!!!!!!) I really enjoyed the Alien Trilogy game on the Playstation, though Alien Resurrection was pretty good too. I was hoping that Alien Isolation took the route of those games (great story and in-depth game) and was not so much like the AvP games. When I started the game at first, I thought I woke up in a deserted ship and I moved so slowly, expecting an Alien to pop out at any turn. But that didn’t happen and I finally ran into some of the crew. Once you get over to the other ship is when things get really freaky. The music is beautiful and so are the graphics. But at every turn I was jumping or gasping at some noise. And once I found out you could crouch, I perpetually moved in a couching motion. One thing I am enjoying about the game (and I am only probably about 3.5 hours into it) is the scare factor. I have not even seen an Alien yet but my heart is still racing and I am taking my time since I have no weapons!

Oh and I accidently used my last flare….ok all my flares…This is my one major complaint so far, and I might just be missing something. Once you bring up your little menu and you have an item that can be equipped, ie a flare or your med kit, you cannot unequip it! So I had the flares equipped since I went into the menu and they magically appeared and I had no idea I even had one equipped when I hit the X button on the controller and it lit up instantly. Crap. “Ok,” I thought, “I will never do that again”…until 5 minutes later when I tapped the X button again by accident. Say goodbye to flare number 2. Then about 45 minutes later…say goodbye to flare number 3….yes I used ALL THREE flares I had by accident. UGH. I am lucky that I cannot use the medkits just by tapping the button (you have to hold it down) or else I would be out of them too.

Other than that minor issue, I love this game! It is scary, thrilling, and it is building up the fear factor! Pile that on top of not even seeing an Alien yet, it is great. The humans are scary and always trying to kill me which was something I was not expecting. What happened to ‘let’s all get along before we are killed by a giant Alien’? I am going to keep playing this in the evenings and will keep you posted on the progress!

This looks safe…

Here is the scene from Sunday at our household: Bloodborne on the TV, WoW on the laptop (had to check my garrisons before bed!) and Twiching a Super Smash Brother Tourney on the iPad. Total Nerdom.

“Game over, man. Game over!”