All Things Virtual 5.0

The Life Lethargic

On this Samhain I am sitting at work on my office computer wondering about my future, near and far. I am contemplating my choices and see some that are becoming somewhat clearer with the unstoppable advance of time. I wonder at how my mind will always go off on tangents into the realms of my creative being, into fantasy and speculation both highly intellectual and banal. When all is but a rat race and life falls into meaningless cycles, what do we have to hold our hopes up? Life’s a-wasting. That is what I’ve told myself very often. The more I linger, the more I lose my chance at making anything meaningful out of my life’s endeavors. However, who’s to say that anything we do is meaningless, be it productive – within the accepted terms of society – or purely recreational, if one is thoroughly engrossed by the activity in question? Is it meaningless when one enjoys it, regardless of whether there is palpable fruit as a product of the engagement? Is it any less meaningful is the fruit of the activity is of the abstract realm, something strictly personal and solely subject to individual perception? Isn’t life one’s own to be used as one sees fit? Who is to say that one has wasted life if one does not feel that one has done so? Working is a waste of life just as much as sleeping is. Time spent with one’s family is wasted just the same as time alone watching television. Videogames are a waste of time. Sex is a waste of time. Reading is a waste of time. Learning is a waste of time. Time is but fodder for the cannons of death. It will be wasted, used, consumed in any manner or none at all. Everything we do may or may not be futile in the grand scheme of things. We may all be writing on water after all. In Aqua Scribis. So why not simply enjoy life in every way we can? Someone judges your actions; let them have their own opinions. They cannot hurt you. Wasted time? If you are fulfilled and satisfied then you have wasted nothing.
I now wait for Final Fantasy XII with eager lust. I fear I may not finish Final Fantasy V, which I decided to start playing last week for the fourth time in my life. Wherefore? I don’t rightly know. Nostalgia perhaps? I may very well play XII only on weekends while playing spurts of V whenever time allows during the regular week. Discipline!
Zelda is still a good month and a few days away. I doubt XII will be finished by the time it arrives at my humble abode in the bed of the earth, but I must try nonetheless.
Animal Crossing was gifted to me. Wild World, that is! My DS has not been the same since. “Responsiplay” is the term used in an article at www.1up.com. I couldn’t agree more. Still. I enjoy the piece of crap game. It feels a little too much like the rate race we live, but it gives it an innocent spin. Quite benign, it would seem. Soon I will be playing with Metroid Prime: Pinball. I have been yearning to play it for a while now and the recent price drop made it hard to avoid.
With the Wii only 18 days away I am firmly in control of my desires and am confident that I will be more than apt for the endurance test that is staving off the purchase of the new generation systems. PS3 is too easy to avoid. I mean, c’mon! It’s $600 dollars I won’t be spending on something I don’t have time to play. Xbox 360 is really pulling at my heartstrings with the nifty new titles coming out before year’s end, but I am strong in my resolve and am a brave undertaker of Herculean tasks such as these. Ask me again on December 2007.

RPG Double Standards

For many years there have been two main camps within the fans of the Role Playing genre on consoles: Final Fantasy Lovers (FFL’s) and Final Fantasy Haters (FFH’s). FFL’s hold the series dear and close to heart, usually taking the bad along with the good and focusing on the latter when judging the games in the franchise. FFH’s condemn the series for a just about any little thing.
I believe that the majority of RPG fans that criticize FF for not changing enough from game to game and banking on trite clichés story-wise are mainly hypocrites. Every time I read a post on a forum by some kid – sometimes people my age or older… possibly idiots – saying FF is clichéd but touting Dragon Warrior/Quest for its story and character I feel like I want to punch the little tea-bagger in the teeth. First of all, one cannot possibly deride a game because of a certain something and then praise another that espouses the same exact factor as the greater of the two. Anybody else that comes out with shite like “Tales is better story-wise than any FF” should shoot themselves in the hand. Or maybe in the head, given the ample use their brains are evidently getting. Truth be told, the only RPG series I have played on consoles recently that doesn’t draw as heavily as any of the major franchises in the genre is Shin Megami Tensei. No clichés there, I assure you, save maybe those already done by earlier games in the series, which never actually came out in America. Face it, punks: The genre is ridden with trite ideas and little innovation on the majority of fronts. Bite it!

PSP: Particularly Stupid and (possibly) Pointless

I should start investing heavily in the stock market. I certainly predicted the current state of Sony’s PSP a good while before it came out so maybe I really should look into it. Clairvoyance fantasies aside, I find it a logical development that interest in the PSP waned given the poor support from game companies and the meager releases on the portable system. As it is, I currently see no title worth getting the system for. The one release I was looking forward to, Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis, is looking less and less enticing in the wake of the PS2’s mediocre Dirge of Cerberus. Sure, the system can play MP3 on the go, but so does my iPod. Video on the go? Once again, iPod already does it and better. Sony’s main focus should have been the gaming department and they have sorely failed to make the PSP a must-own portable gaming system. It is a pity, really, because there is potential there. Unfortunately this potential has been hitherto squandered in paltry ports and reissues of PSOne games that, save for Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, bear no consequence at all. Even the aforementioned port is only a cult title and hasn’t exactly lifted the system from the veritable quagmire it has stumbled into. Perhaps the PS3 will revive the ailing portable when their version of Nintendo’s failed connectivity gimmick hits the market, but I find it very unlikely.

Wilted Clover

I still don’t really know how to take it. First Oddworld Inhabitants pulls out of the biz – although recent reports hint at them making a comeback – and now Capcom deliberately closes down their most capable and creative studio. Capcom has gone on at length to assure that creative and original material will still be coming from them as the majority of the team has been redistributed among the different teams and studios under the publisher and developer’s name but only time will tell. I hope this is not the end of the wild ideas that made this passing generation so much more enjoyable courtesy of Viewtiful Joe and Okami. Let the homebrew rise up and take advantage of the advent of digital distribution. The geniuses of tomorrow’s game design will surely find their niche here.

Hot Boy-on-Boy Action

What is it with all the controversy caused by two prepubescent male videogame characters engaged in a kiss? What? Is it not as innocuous as a boy and a girl kissing or two girls kissing? What’s with the sudden moral double standards? Some say they have found it immoral. Others say it’s anti-natural. I say it’s just a kiss and nothing more. Who cares if two individuals of the same gender perform the above-mentioned smoochery? I certainly don’t! So much for tolerance and acceptance, I say. Bully is fun, kissing or no kissing.

In Closing

We draw near the year’s end and the high profile titles are already here, some still looming on the horizon. Me? I’m more worried about freakin’ Tom Nook’s turnip prices. The bastard has done nothing but lower the price since I bought my first freakin’ batch. We’ll see about that you rank bastard! He just wants me as a slave! I know it! I still owe him my latest house remodeling and hence he likely just wants me to break my own back trying to pay off the loan. Damn you, Nook. You shall rue the day I set foot in your town!

Write, Bitches!