Preconceptions Going into Final Fantasy X

At the point of this writing, Final Fantasy X is a 21-year-old video game originally released on the PlayStation 2 on July 19, 2001, in Japan and on December 17, 2021, in North America; later released in May 2022 in Australia and Europe.  Even during the years I owned a PS2, I did not really have much interest in Final Fantasy X, primarily because I had developed some preconceived notions about the game, and I was still feeling a little salty about the game going back from the fantasy setting of Final Fantasy IX (similar to the older NES/SNES era Final Fantasy games) and back to the realism of Final Fantasy VII and VIII.  Then last year after Dr. Potts gifted me Final Fantasy XII on the Switch and as I was getting back into JRPGs, I thought I would give the game a chance, and since the Switch version (as well as all Final Fantasy X HD Remaster versions) also contained Final Fantasy X-2, all neatly packaged for $19.99, I thought I might as well.

On Sunday night and Monday morning, I started Final Fantasy X HD Remaster, a Final Fantasy game that I had never played before and only knew very little about the characters and the game from various sources such as commercials, the Theatrhythm games, and the first Dissidia game, memes, and the Final Fantasy X soundtrack.

So really, all I knew was the following: 

• Tidus and Yuna are the primary main characters.
• There is a game called Blitzball.
• There is a city called Zanarkand that has that iconic piano song.
• At some point, someone fights someone named Seymour.
• Tidus' dad may not be as evil as he is depicted in Dissidia, but maybe he is?
• There are tropical islands.

That was it before I started the game up on Sunday, and even after only 58 minutes, I feel like I know less now but that is because what I have experienced from the game is so much different than where I thought the game was going to start out and what has been currently revealed to the player.

Before I started, based on the aforementioned list, this was my general thought about the story and course of the game.

• The game starts with Yuna on her island doing whatever a summoner on that island does.  Similar to a lot of Squaresoft/Square Enix games, an orphaned person in a small village finds out that there is more to their powers/life/destiny than they had thought and are exiled/banished/willingly leaves their island to save the island/planet; think Chrono Cross, which came out two years before.
• Somehow Tidus gets involved with Yuna and the overall story, something to do with Blitzball.  Maybe his team is shipwrecked on the island or the islands are a stop-off point, or there is a smaller Blitzball team they are playing.  Maybe Yuna gets caught up in a crowd going to a Blitzball game and meets Tidus that way?
• More characters join the party along the way to wherever they are all going.
• At some point, Tidus and Yuna end up in Zanarkand where romance blooms.  
• An evil Shinra-type corporation is introduced and is the main antagonist.  Maybe with environmental themes about ocean pollution and greater polluting the earth themes, kind of the inverse of Mako Reactors from FFVII, instead now it's putting things into the planet (garbage, nuclear waste, fracking).

There is obviously more stuff going on, but that is what I thought the basic gist of the game was, or at least maybe the first quarter of the game.

58 minutes in, and I have very little idea what is going on.  Tidus is introduced as a pretty-boy Blitzball player in the metropolitan city of Zanarkand that ends up being destroyed by a giant sphere-thing that Tidus' friend/family friend? Auron seems cool with.  I thought Blitzball was going to be a mini-game of sorts but like a good 60% of the first hour, you just watch the game happen while you move from Point A to linear Point B.  I was fully expecting a Blitzball tutorial when Tidus signs the balls (Blitzballs?) for the kids.  But instead, you just watch Blitzball happen, then the city is destroyed while Auron and Tidus are sucked up into Sin (giant-world-eating-sphere-thing) and then Tidus wakes up somewhere aquatic by himself and is conscripted by a group calling themselves (I think?) Al Bhed and there is a foreign language that will periodically be understood and the game progresses, or until Tidus finds a translation dictionary.

And apparently, Tidus can breathe underwater without any kind of apparatus.

(This was after being underwater for a good 10 minutes of real-time play, so no clue how many in-game-world minutes passed by).

As previously mentioned, this version of Final Fantasy X HD Remaster is packaged with the sequel Final Fantasy X-2, but it also has a bridging story, Final Fantasy X: Eternal Calm, and an epilogue for FFX-2, Final Fantasy X-2: Last Mission.  Because FFX feels like you are being thrown into the middle of a story with characters in a world that you have no information about, I genuinely felt that I had accidentally selected not FFX, but one of the other games instead.  The way that Auron's lack of reaction to Sin arriving and destroying the Zanarkand felt like I was already supposed to know who these characters were and the destruction of this city, whose music is just something else entirely, felt like it was supposed to have more of an emotional impact.  Instead, I was just confused and lost.

The last conversation I watched before starting this article was between Tidus and the newly named Rikku, and that did offer a little bit of explanation as to where Tidus found himself, but there are still a lot of questions that I hope will be answered as I play through the game.  The most important question being about the lung capacity or ability to breathe underwater.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

P.S.  I am also a little annoyed that I feel like Tidus' design looks a lot like Sora from Kingdom Hearts, with the asymmetrical shorts and the large yellow shoes.  I know his original character design was that of a plumber, hence the overalls, but I'm still seeing Sora, and that bothers me.

MIDI Week Singles: "Otherworld" - Final Fantasy X (NS)

 

Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, Windows, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One (2001 & 2013-2019)

Composer: Nobuo Uematsu

Album: Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack

Label: DigiCube

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Square Enix 1st Production Department Virtuos

Y'all knew this song would crop up as a MIDI Week Single eventually.  It's video game music, it's music composed by Nobuo Uematsu, it's a metal song with metalcore-esque singing.  I only just started playing Final Fantasy X on Sunday so I had the pleasure of hearing this song in the context of the first Blitzball game where you watch the Zanarkand Abes give up a goal and then as Sin rises up out of the ocean and destroys the city all in the middle of Tidus' impressive kick.  How rude.  But it is pretty metal.

When I first listened to this soundtrack back in 2003-2003, before I ever played the game, I was pretty surprised that this was not only in a Final Fantasy game, but also composed by Nobuo Uematsu; this was before The Black Mages released their self-titled arranged metal album so I was not expecting something like this at all.  I would not say that I wrote off Nobuo Uematsu's composing skills, but a metal-core-esque song was not something I thought would come out of Final Fantasy X, especially with what I had already seen of the game (which was not a lot, but mostly serene tropical scenery).  So aside from being genuinely surprised by this song, I do really like it, even if the singer (Bill Muir) apparently screeches about straightedge in the original recording; I've never heard it, but that's what the Internet tells me, so it must be true.

And as Goblino says, "ROCK!"

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Can Life Get Better?

MIDI Week Singles: "Burning Sands" - Beat Saber (OQ2/MQ2)

 

"Burning Sands" from Beat Saber on the PlayStation 4, Windows, Oculus Quest 2/Meta Quest 2 (2018)
Composer: Boom Kitty
Album: Beat Saber (Original Game Soundtrack),Vol. III
Label: Beat Games
Publisher: Beat Games
Developer: Beat Games

Beat Saber is a strange beast on top of a rhythm game and trying to write about one particular song can become complicated when you take into account the difficulty level that is being played.  On its own "Burning Sands" is a fun song on its own, but playing it in Beat Saber does add a certain level of involvement that I don't feel when listening to the song (similar to the songs in Ragnarock, and probably other rhythm games now that I think about it).  Currently, I have progressed skill-wise in Beat Saber to play "Burning Sands" on Expert level difficulty, which I have found is still fun to play and enjoy the song at the same time.  This is very important because I have found that the mapping of the beat blocks can emphasize different parts of the song depending on the difficulty and a song that has overly difficult or oddly place beat blocks, even on easier difficulties can taint the song; such was the case with "Burning Sands."

On the Easy and Normal difficulty settings, this was just another techno-esque dance club song that I would play just to clear it on a difficulty setting and to say that I had.  Once I played it in multiplayer on Expert though (because songs don't stop in multiplayer like they do in single-player if you miss too many beat blocks) the song really clicked for me.  I enjoyed how the beat blocks accompanied the song and how the sound of the beat blocks being swiped both matched the music and acted as an additional accompaniment in different sections.

Like a lot of the songs that I have played and completed on Expert in single-player, I have found that I sometimes just have to turn my brain off and just react while slicing through the beat blocks.  If I end up focusing too much on a particular block, as this song has an average of 4.26 notes per second, then you can quickly get lost, miss beat blocks left and right, and quickly lose the stage.  Normally I can consistently make it to the two-minute mark, and that is where the difficulty ramps up and I just have to react, otherwise, I end up missing too many beat blocks to continue.  What is crazy too is that this section only lasts 30 seconds (or 127.8ish beats) but in-game it feels like more than only 13% of the song.  The payoff though is that from 2:30 to 3:00 there is a little bit of a respite but the music has built up to something out of a climactic chase sequence from The (only good) Mummy, and then goes back to the crazy left-arm-under-cut thing that apparently only happens on Expert; I haven't come across that particular move in other songs and it definitely adds to the uniqueness of this song.  But then the section at 2:37 in the song (and about 2:45 in my video) comes at you pretty quickly and can knock you out of the game/song just as quickly too.

It's just a really fun song to play, especially on Expert once I was able to get some of the moves down, and I am a bit terrified after watching some of what the Expert+ difficulty stage looks like.  Yeesh.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Days Move Along

Game EXP: Blair Witch (NS)

Blair Witch

Systems: Xbox One, Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Oculus Quest 1 & 2, Amazon Luna

Release Date: August 30, 2019

Publisher: Lionsgate Games

Developer: Bloober Team

Play Time: 5 - 10 Hours

[I have had a fair amount of trouble writing this article, possibly because I did not sit down and write it right after finishing the game, but also because I have sat down many times to write about different aspects of the game that at times I feel like I use an inconsistent voice throughout.  Last week, I came to the realization that another reason/excuse is that Bloober Team tried to fit so many different mechanics and features into a game that can be beaten in 5 - 10 hours, that they were not able to really make something special, or at least as special as I wanted it to be.  And as I continued to bring up different mechanics in the game, I realized that this article was getting longer and longer without covering as much as I felt I wanted to.  So we will see how well we do with the time and space that is given to us].

I would like to think that I have a good relationship with games from Bloober Team having played Layers of Fears on PC and Switch, as well as >observer_ on the Switch as well (I should really finish and publish that article).  I also briefly started Layers of Fear 2 on my laptop just to see if I could run it although I am thinking that I may just pick it up on the Switch for portability reasons.

Adding more to the context pile, I am a fan of the lore of The Blair Witch Project, or at least of the first movie.  I never saw Book of Shadows probably because of how bad the reviews for the film were, and Conklederp and I did see Blair Witch back in 2016 and while there were elements that I liked about the movie, overall I did not think it was as good as the first film.  I have never read any of the books or the comics, nor have I watched any of the documentary TV specials.  I did like that Lionsgate has said that the story in this game is considered canon in the world of The Blair Witch, so that added a bit of legitimacy, although I did not need that to want to play the game.

So the basic gist of Blair Witch is that you play the character of Ellis Lynch, a former (disgraced) police officer and veteran of the first gulf war (Operation Desert Storm) who is assisting with the search of the missing boy Peter Shannon who went missing in the Black Hills Forest outside of Burkittsville, Maryland.  Ellis decides to help out and brings along with his German Shepherd Bullet, and heads out to meet up with the organizing search party when the game starts.

I will be honest, after playing Call of Cthulhu, I was a little disappointed in how much Blair Witch looked like it had been downgraded to run on the Switch.  I bring up Call of Cthulhu specifically because that was the game I had just finished, and that is the only reason as the games did not use the same engine or the same company to port the game to the Switch.  As mentioned above, I thought that the port of Layers of Fears looked great on the Switch, but I recognize that one game takes place within the claustrophobic walls of a house that is changing as you pass through doors that close and lock immediately behind you, and this game takes place primarily outside in a forest with a bit longer draw distance so the need to render more of the environment takes a bit more processing power (see, I can sound like I know what I am talking about).  But anyway, I was a little disappointed in the environment and how flat a lot of the foliage looked, how much your companion animal Bullet stood out from the rest of the environment, and how he would frequently clip through objects like tables, walls, and doors.

I feel like there was too much bloat in the game, specifically the backstory for our main character and former police officer Ellis Lynch.  From the onset of the game, hints are dropped about Ellis that there is more going on than him wanting to help out with the search for a missing kid in the woods outside of Burkittsville, MD.  There is history with himself and the police chief conducting the search, his wife Jess, and a special connection to his dog Bullet which the game tells you can have a negative psychological impact on Ellis if Bullet gets too far away.  And this is all on top of who the kid that went missing is and the circumstances under how and why they went missing.  I feel like this story could work as an episodic mini-series, but as a stand-alone video game, there is a lot of ground to cover in a six to eight-hour survival horror game.  Now that I said it out loud, I still do not think that this story would work well as a mini-series because again, there was too much bloat for Ellis' story and too many things that happened to him in the way that he was affected by the woods and the Blair Witch that had not been established.  This is on top of feeling frustrated at times by the puzzles needing to progress to new areas as well as just getting lost in a forest.

Let us talk about getting lost first because while at times it felt genuine that you could get turned around in a forest without any landmarks, that should not be something to strive for in a video game.  In the opening area, after walking down a path then hopping down an embankment that you cannot climb back up, I found myself in an area that I could not get out of.  I circled the entire perimeter expecting to find a path leading out of the area, but there was none.  I explored the interior of the area, coming across a small pond and what looked like a small camp from a houseless person, but nothing pointed me in the right direction.  I honestly do not remember what it was, I think it might have been something I saw on the ground and had Bullet interact with because Bullet then sprinted off, and only upon following Bullet were you able to leave.  Conklederp can attest to my frustration my first time playing not finding my way out of this area, turning the game off, then starting it back up the next night only to find that I started back at the embankment, which honestly I felt a bit better in retrospect because it allowed me to search the area from the beginning in case I missed anything.  I got lost again.  But I did find whatever it was that I found that triggered Bullet to sprint off into the woods eventually.

The handheld camcorder was a new and interesting mechanic that could have been the crux of the game instead of a gimmick.  Ellis first finds the camcorder along with a mini-VHS tape that shows Peter Shannon being led by a raggedy hermit-like figure.  The in-game mechanics with the camera is that it can alter the current reality.  So if you find a tree blocking your path and you happen to have a mini-VHS tape that shows the tree falling over, you can watch the tape with the camera looking at the tree before it falls, then when you pull the camera away, the tree is no longer blocking your path and you can continue on your merry way.  After that event though, you could put away the camera, only taking it out again when you need to watch another tape, and one or two other events that I will get to later.  The point is, I really liked the prospect and execution of this mechanic but I cannot recall there being any explanation as to its origin, how it has these types of powers, or just, why?  There was a section that required you to use the camcorder to find your way through a foggy swamp towards glowing points while avoiding red glowing enemies that would kill you if you got too close to them.  There was also a green night-vision function on the camcorder too, but the camera was held too far away to make use of it like you did in Outlast, and when you did have the viewfinder of the camcorder filling the screen, you had to be stationary and you could not move.  I guess I just feel that, maybe because this is a video game, the character accepts the fortuitousness of the camcorder existing and functioning the way that it does instead of having a complete mental breakdown at reality warping in the ways that the camcorder is capable of.  Like, this could have been its own game, but in this game, its existence is simply accepted as a tool to be used like Ellis' flashlight.

Apart from the paranormal video camera, Ellis did bring along several real-world tools that are used throughout the game, although none so much as the thankfully never-running out of batteries flashlight.  There is a classic Nokia 3310-type phone that is used primarily to receive phone calls when it has a signal, which is often left to scripted scenes when Elliis' phone starts ringing while lost in the forest.  You can also play a couple of games that only seem to be there because they likely would have existed on the phone at the time.  Games like Snake (titled "Cobra Masters"), and a Space Invaders-like game can be played when you are tired of running from angry leaf piles or demonic shapes chasing you; I was never great at Snake so I do not know if there is anything special that happens if you get a score of 100+.  You also have a walkie-talkie, which like the phone is primarily used for incoming transmissions, although you can make outgoing calls to reach other members of the search party.  The walkie-talkie feels like it is there to help the player feel isolated from civilization and the rest of the search party when no one answers your calls.  There are three different channels/settings on the walkie-talkie, but again, I could not find times when changing them worked outside of scripted sequences.

Throughout the game, you could also find collectible objects that only seemed to offer flavor to the world and had no noticeable impact on the rest of the game.  You can first find a wooden totem in a nearly unrecognizable shape, almost like it is trying to be something that Ellis and the player should be able to recognize but it is not quite there as far as detail and context go.  You also find polaroids of various people along with their names written on the back.  I felt like it was implied that these were people who had gone missing, possibly also victims of Carver's kidnapping, but the photos are the only evidence of these people as you do not find jackets, boots, or a bundled-up cloth full of bloodied teeth lying around.  The other collectible was possible only in Ellis' head as you can pick up dog tags that really get to Ellis.    I do not recall if he says much of anything about specific dog tags that are picked up other than questioning why they are there.  I am sure that on other systems that finding all or a certain number of these leads to an achievement, but on the Switch, it was just something to momentarily interact with while trying not to stay lost.  It did make me feel self-conscious about how much of the game I was missing if I felt that I was missing a slew of collectibles because I did not go and look behind that one tree or under those boulders off to the side of the map.

Most of the puzzles in the game not associated with the video camera felt fine and appropriate for the world, or at least the physical puzzles.  There was one spread over multiple areas of an entire mining camp which was actually pretty annoying, where you had to repair a steam engine with missing parts that were scattered about.  The solution to the puzzle was fine and how you used the video camera was nice, but finding all of the pieces was a pain, especially the last piece (I do not remember specifically what it was, but it does not particularly matter).  This last piece was located in the back of a shack that was only accessible to Bullet, but you had to spot it through a broken window and tell Bullet to get the thing.  Most of the time, if you were within a certain proximity to an object on the ground, there would be a high contrast white icon that hovered over the object drawing your eye to something on the ground.  For this object, you had to be close to the building and look in the direction of the window to see the icon.  Taking this into account along with nothing specifically indicating that there was anything in this inaccessible part of the shack, meant I had to look at two different walkthroughs to figure out what I needed and where it was located.

The bloat story-wise has everything to do with Ellis' backstory and the trauma he suffered while serving in Iraq.  There were multiple times when Ellis would start having visual hallucinations where the surrounding forest would take on the environment of any number of different locations, such as building interiors, outside burning buildings in a stereotypical 'war-time-middle-east-desert-city' skin, or even running along a sand-covered deserted freeway.  I realize that in the films, because everything is found footage, you cannot film what someone is hallucinating and what the cause of those hallucinations are.  Are they caused by the Blair Witch?  Are they caused by the trauma that a character has suffered in the past and being lost in the woods is triggering that trauma?  There is an additional backstory between Ellis and his girlfriend/wife who crops up as someone who he talks to occasionally on his cellphone as someone who is worried about him personally as well as his mental state.  And then there is the evolving story of the hermit Carver who is first introduced through a found mini-VHS tape to be the one responsible for the disappearance and alleged kidnapping of Peter Shannon.  I just felt that there was too much going on for any one of these stories to really have a serious impact.  Sure they are there to help flesh out Ellis' character and to give them more than one dimension and I think if Bloober Team had stuck with the girlfriend/wife angle and sprinkled hallucinations here and there instead of focusing so much on entire areas of the forest completely becoming new locations that were new to the player (but not new to the character) then, I don't know, the story would not have felt like there was so much to it that I was supposed to follow that I really did not feel attached to.

The final act of the game finally brings you to the Witch's Cabin and honestly by this point in the game, I was glad that the story was coming to a close.  I was also relieved that I was going to be playing in another indoor location because those areas like the wood mill and the buildings that you went into in the camps felt more tense than the open forested areas and kept me on edge.  I was a little worried that the interiors of the Witch's Cabin were going to feel like Layers of Fear, with looping hallways full of jumpscares, paintings flying off walls and melting into horrific visages, as I did not want a copy of that game.  I think I wanted something tangentially similar, taking a similar approach to make an indoor location scary and tense, not knowing what is going to be around the next corner, but keeping the flavor of the world of The Blair Witch.

Once inside, it did not feel like a retread of Layers of Fear (or even Outlast to a lesser extent with the inclusion of the camcorder) as there was some environmental puzzle-solving such as using the camera to follow paths along the floor while avoiding looking at whatever it was that you were not supposed to look at.  There was one instance of finding and using a red mini-VHS tape to get through a collapsed hallway, and then it was primarily wandering through the house and basement hoping that nothing was going to jump out at you.  Like the mansion in Layers of Fears, there was a fair amount of passing through hallways while upstairs only to find yourself back at the front entryway on the first floor, so cyclical rooms that do not make sense.  In this setting though, there was a different creepiness to it than in Layers of Fears because here there was an added layer of frustration of constantly being redirected when all you are trying to do is find Peter.

But the Witches Cabin was not without its share of issues.  Because this was the climax of the game, a lot of Ellis' backstory involving his military service in Iraq and his relationships came to a head.  At times passing from one room into another would lead Ellis through a memory reenacted that felt like I was being pulled from one story to another.  The anxiety that I was feeling from trying to find my way through a house that was purposefully misdirecting me was put on hold as I found myself wandering through a hallucination about Ellis' squad and what happened to them.  Maybe this was meant as a respite from the Witch's Cabin, but at the same time, it felt a bit like a distraction.  Really, the main hiccups inside the Witch's Cabin were just another extension of the rest of the game, trying to cover too much information and bring together too many story points while all trying to wrap up the whole missing person aspect of the game.

After finishing the game, I was a little confused by the ending so I looked up information and found out that there are multiple endings.  Naturally, I ended up with the bad ending, but after finding out what you had to do for the good ending, I was a little annoyed because it required the player to go against mechanics that the game had taught the player throughout the first two acts as what you needed to do to survive against antagonistic elements.  Without spoiling anything, it would be like in Super Mario Bros., how you can take out the bridge in the castle stage by jumping on the axe if you don't fireball the faux Bowser, but then in 8-4 when you finally get to the correct castle and actually do go up against Bowser, that you completely avoid him and jump over the axe to receive the good ending.  It almost felt like there was supposed to be a setup to get the player to replay the game, to redo events in order to earn the good ending, but from what I read, only events that occur (or don't occur) while in the Witch's Cabin directly affect the ending, and once you finish the game, you cannot restart from a previous save state, at least on the Switch.  And I was not about to restart the game again.

I very much have mixed feelings about Blair Witch.  I enjoyed some of the story points and again, I think it could have worked better if this had been an episodic game or even a third-person survival adventure/horror game instead of a first-person survival horror.  As for scariness, there were a couple of times, for the majority of the game where I felt tense, but most of the time the tension was broken by being lost; again, coming back to being lost as an out-of-game frustration.  Towards the middle of the game, you start going into buildings like the aforementioned mining camp, the abandoned summer camp, later a mill, and finally the Blair Witch House.   The indoor locations were definitely the highlights of the game for me as I felt that the whole getting lost mechanic in the forest felt more like I was doing something wrong and not a feature.  And sometimes, as with my first attempt playing, it was me after all.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
This Adversity and Loss, It All Ends With You

P.S.  While writing this article, I found that I kept adding snippets of things I wanted to talk about, be it game mechanics, or just short sections of the game that ended up not fitting with anything else that I was talking about.  Some of those include fighting off shadowy figures with your flashlight and what those figures were and where they came from.  Or even their purpose besides being antagonistic towards Ellis.  Then there was how your dog Bullet was used within the game, and then at times how the dog needed to be close to Ellis and how at times that was in conflict with their surroundings more than a few times.  There was also the handling of the missing kid Peter, and even the character of Carver, who seemed like a stand-in antagonist for the Witch because you could not have an omnipresent villain who shouldn't show up at all based on the two Blair Witch movies that I saw.  Again, this all goes back to my feeling that there were a lot of good ideas going into The Blair Witch, and they all made it into the game, but there was not a lot of thought on how those individual elements should be used to create a cohesive narrative in a 5-10 hour time span.

MIDI Week Singles: "We Like to Party (The Vengabus)" - All-Star Baseball 2005 (PS2 & XB)

 

"We Like to Party (The Vengabus)" from All-Star Baseball 2005 on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox (2004)

Composer: Danski & DJ Delmundo

Performed By: The Vengaboys

Album: Up & Down - The Party Album

Label: Breakin'

Publisher: Acclaim Entertainment

Developer: Acclaim Studios Austin

Part of me is thinking, "Why are we playing a 1998 Eurodance song by The Vengaboys on a column that features music composed and used in video games?"  Well, apparently someone at Acclaim thought that this would be the perfect song to use in All-Star Baseball 2005 released on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox back in 2004.  For the longest time, I only knew this as the song used in Six Flags commercials in apparently the same year that All-Star Baseball 2005 was released.  I am unable to pinpoint who used the song first, All-Star Baseball 2005 or Six Flags, but I would assume that Six Flags used these Mr. Six commercials leading into the summer of 2004, and the game was released in March 2004.  So it's possible that someone with Six Flags was tangentially familiar with All-Star Baseball 2005 and the music being used in the game and thought that it would be great as part of a new ad campaign leading into the 2004 summer.  Is there some crossover between the board of directors for Six Flags and Acclaim?  This is all just speculation because what do I know?

It does make me wonder who is influencing who and if there was another factor that influenced both Acclaim and Six Flags independently so that this song showed up in both All-Star Baseball 2005 and Six Flags commercials in the same year.  Interesting to think about for about 3 minutes and 44 seconds.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Have You Ever Felt Like There Was More?

First Impressions: Moon Knight (Disney+)

Before Moon Knight was announced as the next Marvel show premiering on Disney+, I was unaware of this superhero's existence. I knew absolutely nothing about Moon Knight the character or how they were to fit in within the larger Marvel framework comics-wise or ever-expanding MCU. I knew Oscar Issac.

I was pretty reluctant to watch the show until the trailer was released a week before the show premiered and thought, "Eh, I like Oscar Issac, I might as well watch this 55 second trailer.  That sold me to at least watch the show, still not really knowing what the story was going to be about. All I could tell was that Oscar Issac plays a character who has some type of split-personality-disorder, that he is a superhero presumably called Moon Knight, and that he apparently talks with an English accent some of the time. I did not even know about Khonshu, not that I am knowledgeable about the Egyptian pantheon, but I do know about Ra, Horus, Isis, Osiris, and Anubis. I do recognize the artwork of Khonshu in their falcon form, but that's apparently because the falcon form is a placeholder for Ra, Hours, and Khonshu, among others, respectively.

Now, I am very much unqualified to talk about anything to do with this character, either Steven Grant, Marc Spector, or the Moon Knight as again, I did not know that this character had been around for the last 47 years and I am not going to make any assumptions about where this particular story-arc is going, where it fits within the greater 27+ film library of the MCU (not including the Netflix or Disney+ Marvel series). My main purpose here is to give a brief impression after the first two episodes to air of this six-episode season.

For the most part, I am enjoying Moon Knight, but mostly the parts were with Steven/Marc. With Steven being the quiet British gift shop worker with a sleeping disorder, his is a fish-out-of-water angle as more-and-more bizarre things happen to him, events that he cannot explain as he tries to live his life as normally as possible. And then Marc Spector being the (American?) mercenary and another aspect of this personality who wants to be in control of the body, mostly when Steven is in danger. It almost comes across as a Gollum/Smeagol personality split, but that would delve into the realm of speculation and I am trying to avoid that.

The least interesting part of the show for me, at least so far, is when the Marc side of the personality is able to take over and wills himself to become the Moon Knight, a physical avatar of the Egyptian god Khonshu. The design of Moon Knight feels like it is ripped straight out of a comic book, almost more so than characters like Iron Man or Captain Marvel. I do not know, I just don't quite vibe with it. In the first two episodes, Moon Knight has taken over towards the end of the episode during confrontations with some physical manifestation of Anubis as a violent gangly-looking jackal. I don't know if it is something about the fight sequences or some combination of that and the costume design that I just begin to lose interest in?

I think what it is, is that I am more interested in the Steven/Marc dynamic. I am more interested in the show that is about a person dealing with their supposed split personality. I am also more interested in watching Oscar Issac act as opposed to watching Moon Knight fight because it is just a person in a suit with glowing eyes. When Moon Knight takes over, I lose all feeling that I am watching Oscar Issac act, and more like I am watching a stuntman in a suit beat up other stunt performers and CGI creatures.

Maybe my position will change with the remaining four episodes, maybe the format of the episodes will change as the season progresses moving towards more Moon Knight and less Steven Grant. More Marc Spector and less awkward British guy not knowing what is going on and being terrified. More stuntman, and less Oscar Issac. More action, and less suspenseful horror and confusion.

I mean, I guess it is based on a comic series after all.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
This Boy's Had Enough

MIDI Week Singles: "Overworld BGM" - Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)

"Overworld BGM" from Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES (1988)

Composer: Koji Kondo

Album: Game Sound Museum ~Famicom Edition~ ND Super Mario Bros. 3 

Label: Scitron Discs

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo R&D4 

To me, this song is the embodiment of Super Mario Bros. 3.  It is the first level theme where you learn the new mechanics in this Super Mario Bros. game like the flying Goombas, the Super Leaf, and flying ability, even that Mario/Luigi flips during their jumps while invincible.  There are just so many new elements featured in this first stage, accompanied by this music that I cannot help but feel like I am nine years old again playing this on Christmas Eve every time I hear this song.

Super Mario Bros. 3 may not be my favorite game in the series, but I do love the buhjeezes out of this song.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Have You Ever Spent the Night With a Man Who Cries?

First Impressions: Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game

Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game

Platform: Board Game

Originally Released: August 30, 2010

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

A brief history first before we get into the things.

I first saw Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game (just Castle Ravenloft from here on out) at PAX 2010 in the board game hall.  I had originally signed up to play after my shift ended but ended up not being able to attend the scheduled time; there might have been a Goldeneye 007 tournament back at Classic Console (where I was working that year) that I participated in (and lost) instead.  If you have read anything about me and Dungeons & Dragons over the years, you will know that I fell in love with the Ravenloft campaign setting when I was 13 when I received a copy of "Van Richten's Guide to the Created," not really knowing anything about the setting or what the book I was being gifted (that I picked out myself at Walden's Books).  I had recently finished reading "Frankenstein" and Dellanos had introduced myself and Dr. Potts to AD&D within the last year or so.  Over the next six years, I proceeded to buy nearly everything I could find in 2nd Edition AD&D relating to Ravenloft.

So when I first saw this board game back in 2010, I was intrigued because it was a Ravenloft IP, but at the same time I was also turned off because it was a board game and not proper D&D.  And despite all of the positive rumblings I had heard at PAX10 about Castle Ravenloft, I decided that Goldeneye 007 was more worthy of my time (it also meant I did not have to play a board game with a bunch of people I didn't know).  But as the last decade went by, I had read more about the Dungeons & Dragons line of board games as actually being well-made products for the most part and that each box came with 40+ miniatures that were decently sculpted; also thinking that I might be able to use some of these in a future run of Curse of Strahd.  I was also drawn to the fact that the game box (and several of the reviews) touted that the game is for one to five players and that depending on the adventure, games could take as few as 30 minutes.  Meaning that I could play the game by myself in under an hour including set up time.

So a few weeks back when Dr. Potts gifted me with the ability to use some funds at an Amazonian store, I decided that this would be a perfect use of the available funds.

Like any board game designed after 1995, there were a fair amount of rules separate from the nearly 30 years of Dungeons & Dragons rules (spread across four editions) that I had tucked away in my long and short-term memory.  After playing my first game, I mentioned to Dr. Potts that actually having all of this background in D&D was a bit of a hindrance because while reading the rules, I ended up making things more complicated because I was trying to figure out how existing rules from the PHB and DMG were written between the lines of the rules for Castle Ravenloft.  The best example of this was that in Castle Ravenloft, you are able to attack an enemy that is right next to you, then use the rest of your turn to run away from them without incurring an attack of opportunity from the monster.  I was so certain that moving while next to an enemy would give them a free attack, even Mansions of Madness has this mechanic so it only made sense to have it here too.  I spent too much time scouring through the rule book looking for how to disengage from an enemy that I ended up Googling the answer only to find that there was no engaging/disengaging here.  You can just attack, and move.  Easy.

In Castle Ravenloft, there are 12 individual adventures that you can play although there are only two that are specifically labeled as single-player adventures, and currently, I have only played the first adventure, "Escape the Tomb" which is a single-player scenario.  The story here is pretty simple, you play a character trapped in the tomb of Strahd von Zarovich, the Darklord vampire of Barovia where Castle Ravenloft is located, and you have to find your way out.

The player starts out in a designated starting location and the rest of the board is randomly generated from some combination of the remaining 40 floor tiles with the exit tile already placed within the deck of room tiles.  For reasons not entirely clear, I decided to play as Immeril, an Eladrin Wizard.  I knew that the wizard would likely have the fewest hit points and lowest armor class, so part of me figured that if I could finish this first scenario with the squishy wizard, that..... I am actually not entirely sure as that was as far as my thought process went.  I followed the game guide's suggested starting spells and abilities so I ended up taking Magic Missile, Thunderwave, Shield, Fey Step, and Fireball (I won't get into the difference between Utility Powers, At-Will Powers, and Daily Powers or the other cards I could have chosen for Immeril because this is not a players guide or a rule book).  I did not even look at the stat cards or ability cards for any of the other characters, so I know future playthroughs are going to be new and interesting.  I was a little disheartened and confused that all of the wizard's spells only did 1 hp of damage, even Magic Missile which, in-game, does 1d4+1 to up to three targets, but when 90% of the enemies I faced all had 1 HP, this made more sense.

I was equally concerned when I realized that each time I placed a new floor tile down, a new enemy would spawn in a specific location.  The prospect that my soft 6 HP wizard would make it out of a 10 tile dungeon alive was not looking very good.  I did have two healing surges, which bring back a character from 0 HP to a designated amount added some hopefulness, but not much when each healing surge only healed for 3 HP.  Thankfully though the rules specifically stated that enemies will not attack a hero if they are at 0 HP, so when Immeril was knocked unconscious while being surrounded by two undead ghouls, a spider, and a kobold skirmisher, I knew that I could still be resurrected.  And once I was brought back, I had never been so happy to cast Thunderwave, because this spell, in this version, is able to attack all of the monsters on your tile, dealing 1 HP of damage to all monsters, who all thankfully had only 1 HP.  It created a great cinematic moment in my head.

Sadly that was my last healing surge and I still had four more tiles until I discovered the exit, unless I reached the end of the day and Strahd woke up from his tomb to mercilessly begin hunting me through his crypt.  Thankfully that did not happen, but Immeril did end up getting devoured by a swarm of rats right before Strahd's turn, and so I died-died.

Having played games like Mansions of Madness and Pandemic, losing was not the soul-crushing experience like it is in Monopoly or Chess, and the fact that, including set up time to when my tasty Elven body provided nourishment to a mischief of rats took just over an hour I took as time well spent.  I learned a fair amount of the rules so that future playthroughs would go much quicker and when Conklederp and I play (maybe this weekend?) and later when Dr. Potts and Jane maybe decide to play (maybe the weekend they're up in a few months?) there won't be as much rule book checking that inevitably slows downplay.  Because nobody likes playing a game that should be fun if someone is having to look up rules after every other person's turn and when a 45-minute game turns into a two-hour slog.

Lastly, just a few quick points I wanted to mention that I discovered either while playing or after I had finished.  The big one is that this is not a legacy game or meant to be played as a campaign.  Your characters always start at level 1 and can level up to level 2 during the quest, but that is it.  No items or treasures you collect in one adventure carry over to another adventure.  Not every adventure is going to use all of the rules, like the skull icon on the room tiles, the Encounter tiles, or thankfully, the Dracolich.  I have read various house rules regarding leveling or turning the game into a campaign, or even using this game in "The Curse of Strahd" but I think, at least for the time being, that I am going to enjoy the way the designers intended the game to be played, although I will definitely see how many of the quests I can complete using only one character.  Because why not?

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Just Yesterday, A Wind Came Blowin'

Monthly Update: April 2022

 

It's April 1st, 2022.  

I have been admitted to the 42nd floor of life, or however you want to word that.

Putin's Russian forces are still pounding away at various parts (those parts being various combinations of military and a lot of civilian targets) of Ukraine displacing nearly 3,900,000 Ukranians from a country with a population of 41,167,336.

In the span of 10 seconds, Will Smith went from laughing at a potentially ill-conceived joke aimed at his wife Jada Pinkett Smith to walking up on stage and slapping Chris Rock who made the joke while he was hosting the Oscars at the time.  I guess I'm in the camp of Chris Rock probably should not have made the joke and Will Smith should not have assaulted him.  But what do I know?  I'm just sitting here typing out words from the comfort of my middle-middle income lifestyle.

Ron Non-Indoctrinated DeSantis has signed into law his "Don'T TeAcH KiDS AbOUt THe [redacted] bECAusE It'LL tuRn THem [redacted]."  Similarly, Ted Do-You-Know-Who-I-Am Cruz is so offended by the contents of a kid's book taken out of context (that we actually have and do read this book to Goblino) as well as being offended by the mere existence of people who are transgender, that he sees the need to complain about it during the confirmation hearing for Judge Gitanji Jackson.  What was supposed to be a standard hearing to find out if Judge Jackson were qualified to sit on the supreme court, turned into a bunch of Republicans grandstanding to their respective bases.

Lastly, it's nice to see COVID-19 cases down an average of 11%, as well as a 42% drop in ICU beds filled and an over 35% drop in hospitalizations over the last two weeks.  Seeing fewer than 1,000 people dying every day is also a nice cherry on this cake of often preventable death.  It is a little disconcerting seeing some of those numbers start to creep up on the east coast with the rise of the BA.2 variant in European and Asian countries (currently it is accounting for 54.9% cases in the United States), but it is not often that in our lifetimes (as in the last 50 years) that we have seen a virus of this magnitude be reported on in nearly real time, seeing how it evolves and the public and political responses to that evolution.  This is exhausting and I know a lot of us are all exhausted in one form or another, there are no if and or buts about it; yes I am a parent.

Now on to non-parenting things like playing video games and board games.

Through the generosity of Dr. Potts, I decided to pick up the 12-year-old board game, Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game.  I will talk about it a bit in the actual article which I have planned for Monday, but if you know me and D&D, then you probably already know how much I love the Ravenloft campaign setting from 2nd Edition and kind of surprised myself in just now playing this game.  I think what ultimately put me over the edge was that I saw that the game could be played by a single person and anywhere between 30-60 minutes, depending on the adventure.  So I played the first adventure, which you can see pictures of over on our Instagram, or you can just wait until Monday to see how well trying to escape Strahd's crypt before he woke up worked out.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, on the Switch I restarted with a new character in Neverwinter Nights after somewhat intentionally recreating my original Half-Elf Ranger from when I first played the game on PC 18 years ago.  I decided that since I usually tend to play someone who actively helps characters, I would play a Half-Elven Paladin and hopefully find a henchman who can pick locks and disarm traps.  Maybe cast a spell or two?  

I am slowly progressing in Skyward Sword, although Link ended up running into a pit all on his own while in Larayru Desert, which can mean only one thing.  That's right.  Another case of Joy-Con drift.  I have now calibrated the left Joy-Con twice now and while neither time was it horribly bad, it was noticeable, especially when pointing the joystick to the right and then having it 'snap' back.  I give it another week or two before I send it off to Nintendo for another round of free either repairs or replacement.  At least I have a back up pair of Joy-Cons while those are in the shop; hopefully it won't take as long or have the same issues that I had when I last sent them in back in 2020.

That being said, shortly after Link fell into a pit, I apparently thought it was a good time to give the final two bosses in Blasphemous a try, because who needs tight uncompromising controls in a 2D pixel-platformer Metroidvania meets Dark Souls set in an overly religious world inspired by the Spanish Inquisition?  I will hopefully have an article up either in a week from now or sometime later in April.  I think if I can separate my love of the setting with just talking about having fun with the game and not trying to analyze a very cryptic-lore heavy game, I could probably have the article ready in a week's time, otherwise, I might have it done by summer 2026.  I'm not really sure what smaller game I am going to play after Blasphemous, which turned into a 29-hour game, not including a NG+ run which apparently has a fair amount of more content than the main game.  While I am intrigued to see what else Cvstodia has to offer, looking back through some of the bosses and knowing that they become more difficult in NG+ gives me a bit of stress.  Plus I haven't finished all of the side quests that I had wanted to, so maybe I will finish those first?

On the 3DS/DS side of things, I am still playing through Dragon Quest IX: Sentinel of the Starry Skies, although not as quickly as I would like.  I think part of it is that I end up reading or planning/writing articles (like this) while on my breaks at work and I usually end up playing on the Switch while in bed.  But I do like that I do not feel lost, even when coming back after not having played for a week or two.

In the virtual realm, I am playing a combination of rhythm games (Beat Saber, Ragnarock) to supplement my Google Fit steps counter with all of the arm swinging that goes on in those games.  Yeah, I know it's kinda cheating, but it typically only ends up being a few thousand steps that I need to reach my 5,000/day goal.  My work-life is pretty sedentary after all.  But I've also been putting some time in The Climb 2, Rush, and Gadgeteer (which I have not yet talked about) when I need to wind down.

That is really it.  I decided to not join in on Fortnite this season (Chapter 3 Season 2) despite the fact that Rahul Khouli voiced one of the characters this season.  I just wasn't as inspired to join in this season (the last season I didn't play was way back in Chapter 1 Season 7).  Maybe in the following season?  Or maybe not at all?  We'll see.  I also have not picked back up God of War: Ghost of Sparta for some of the similar reasons above.

Let's just leave it at that for now.  There will likely be updates throughout the month.  Hopefully only good updates, because Eir knows we could all use those these days.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental