First Impressions: The Thrill of the Fight (OQ2/MQ2)

The Thrill of the Fight

Systems: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest 2 / Meta Quest

Release Date:  July 1, 2016

Publisher: Sealost Interactive LLC

Developer: Sealost Interactive LLC

The Thrill of the Fight is a virtual reality boxing game that is criminally under-priced.  Granted, I have not played any other virtual boxing game so everything I have to say here will be from the context that this is the only virtual reality boxing game I have played; also keep in mind that the most recently developed boxing game I have played before this was Super Punch-Out!!, developed by Nintendo R&D3 and Locomotive Corporation back in 1994.  So it has been some time since I have played any kind of boxing game.  This is where I am coming from.

There were a couple of factors that led me to buy The Thrill of the Fight.  The first was the game's humble-brag description: it is a "... down-to-earth VR boxing game focused on authenticity."  The closest I have ever been to people actively boxing was back in 2004 while taking a fencing course as we were using a gym that was also being used that week by a boxing class.  The second important factor was that the game is regularly sold for $9.99, but was on sale for $6.99, so I thought that if I lost $7.00 on a subpar boxing VR game, then it wouldn't be the end of the world.  I would still be annoyed and upset at having spent any money on something that I did not have fun playing, but I could live through the error.  Plus the game has a current rating of 4.8 stars from 8,920 ratings and 5,274 reviews felt like a good indication that I was getting a pretty decent game.

But I did have fun.  I booted up The Thrill of the Fight, weighed in [which is just so that game can approximate your height so you are not fighting someone two feet shorter/taller than you (although now I may see what I can do about that. . .)], and decided that I did not want to do any of the warm-up activities like speedball or punching bag, I wanted to jump right in so I went up against you sparring buddy, who we will call Chuck.  Chuck is essentially a portly fellow who will punch back but was designed to make you feel like Chuck is a bit of a chubby chump who you should in no way lose to.

The following two fighters I went up against I played on normal difficulty feeling that anything less would require me to turn in my machismo card and be laughed at by the overly critical voices in my head.  Also after my single round against Chuck, I legitimately felt that I could take on whatever kind of normal difficulty the game was going to throw at me.

All of the following was really just a preamble to say that after sparring with Chuck, and going up against the first two fighters Alexi, and Ugly Joe, and managing to win each fight, I came away with a couple of takeaways from the game.  The first is that you should probably set the Roomscale Guardian so that it is at least an arms length away from any walls, windows, or pianos because I found myself punching my virtual opponents with surprising gusto.  These were not just slaps or gentle cheek caresses, but full-on jabs (I have an office job where I sit at a desk all day unless I'm getting up for coffee or the bathroom, so they were accountant-level jabs).  But if your guardian boundary is a few inches from your real wall, like mine usually is, there is a very real chance that you could right-hook into a wall, shattering both the Oculus controller and your own knuckles.

After the first fight with Alexi I was actually pretty surprised by how much sweating I had done (I do wipe down the silicone cover on the Oculus, so you don't have to worry about whoever is reading this and who might end up using it in the near future... Dr. Potts).  I had to readjust the head strap a few times because the headset was becoming a little loose, possibly because of the sweat.  I also found that I was switching my stance a few times, favoring one shoulder over the other, depending on which arm was currently tiring out over the other.  

The last takeaway was that I am not necessarily out of shape, just that the muscles needed to virtually box someone with the required jab-speed to hit an opponent in the face between their gloves are not in very high rotation.  So the next day, my arms and shoulders were sore.  And by sore, I mean that they were sore for the next two days as well.  Yeah, after playing three rounds of Thrill of the Fight, I had to not play it for three consecutive days because my arms were telling me that I would be unable to even topple Chuck in one round.

I am not claiming that The Thrill of the Fight is a substitute for a legitimate workout. I am positive that I could probably injure myself because I have no idea if I am throwing a punch correctly or not, or at least in a way that I won't end up injuring myself.  I just had a lot of fun virtually punching virtual opponents in a way that left me sore for three days.

There were a couple of things that did give me pause though.  The first is that in each of the matches, you are surrounded by a small crowd of people that seem to use one of three models with slight variations in skin color and hair color.  But all of the men in the audience are essentially the same and all of the women are the same.  All of the men cheer at the same time and alternate with the women, who also cheer at the same time.  If you are looking for realistic audiences, then you will be severely underwhelmed.  The second thing and this could just be because the lighting wasn't quite right in our living room, but it felt like some of my punches didn't land or passed through my opponent.  Maybe the angle was just off?  This will require some additional looking into under varied lighting circumstances because it obviously is not my amateur boxing ability that could be in question.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Star Wars Celebration Day 1

I wasn't originally going to really talk much about Star Wars Celebration going on this weekend, but then when I tuned in during the second panel for the upcoming sequel series Willow, I knew that I had to at least share a couple of screengrabs and talk about my excitement.  After the second panel with Erin Kellyman (Enfys Nest in Solo and Winifred in The Green Knight), Rosabell Laurenti Sellers (Tyene Sand in Game of Thrones), and Ellie Bamber (haven't seen her in anything), I went back and watched the first panel with Warwick Davis (Wicket in Return of the Jedi, and fricking Willow Ufgood), Joanne Whalley (Sorsha in Willow) and writer Jonathan Kasdan (Solo, and Willow).

I do not remember specifically when I first saw Willow, although I know that it was within a year after it was released in theaters, although I never saw it in theaters and I can only blame my parents for not taking me.  Maybe they thought that it would be too scary?  But I would have been eight at the time, a prime age for that kind of story.  But I first saw it some night that it was aired on TV and like our family, we taped it off of TV while pressing pause on the VCR when commercials came on so that we would not have to fast forward the commercials, but also it meant we used up less tape.  This was the only version of Willow that I knew until the 20th anniversary DVD edition was released in 2008.  Now, not only was I able to watch the entire movie, including scenes that had been cut from the broadcast version from 1989, but I could now also see the entire movie and not the "modified from the original version and formatted to fit your screen."  I have since seen Willow in a theater of sorts, as it was a desanctified church turned movie theater a number of years ago in the before-times.

There is just so much that I love about the movie Willow that anything I say will end up looking like a list.  James Horner's score is some of the best fun adventure music ever written, but at the same time has such a majestic and emotional theme for Elora Danan and the mystical world that this story takes place in.  Similar to Star Wars, you feel as if you are thrown into the middle of a world full of history and prophecy that you are able to catch up on along the way.  With a story that follows a simple character thrust into a larger world that they never expected or really wanted anything to do with.  For me, there is something special about watching Warwick Davis' portrayal of Willow, the obvious love you can feel and see between him and his on-screen family and the hope that he inspires in the other characters he meets along the way, not by being the strongest fighter or the most powerful sorcerer, but by being the most genuine to himself.  At the end of the movie when he touches the braid of hair given to him by his wife Kiaya to help him find his courage as he faces down a wall of charging cavalry.  Ughgjslhgjkdha!!

I have mentioned it before, but I have the sequel trilogy of books that take place after the events in the movie, and I ended up stopping a few chapters into the third book because I felt lost as to what was happening.  The story also felt very different from the movie and more like a story that existed before Willow and a couple of characters from the movie were placed over existing characters.  Such as Willow, who experiences a form of mental transportation and witnesses the destruction of Tir Asleen, and I think, several other areas in the world.  He then goes into exile/hiding and changes his name to Thorn Drumheller and from what I recall, very little is mentioned about other characters (including his family) or places from the movie.  It was just a little disappointing.

So when it was announced a few years back that a sequel to Willow was going to happen on Disney+, I was pretty excited, more so when it seemed like they were not going to be using the books as a source material; which does fit in line with Disney's approach to the Star Wars novels and their approach to the sequel trilogy.  And that trailer had a lot that I did not fully understand but it definitely looks like they are expanding the scope of the story and possibly exploring more of the land, but I am excited by the look of the series, although I guess that is what a trailer is supposed to do.

I think that is really all I wanted to say.  That I am very excited for this series involving characters from 34 years ago that I love, and I was very happy to see two panels of actors on the first day of Star Wars Celebration, especially when I wasn't anticipating anything but to read a couple of articles talking about highlights throughout the weekend.  But don't go expecting consistent articles to come out of Star Wars Celebration.  I mean, unless something completely unanticipated gets announced, like an Enfys Nest series, because I will definitely ride that hype train.

November 30th cannot come soon enough.

Goodtimes.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Old Friends

MIDI Week Singles: "City of Sails" - Sword Coast Legends (PC)

"City of Sails" from Sword Coast Legends on Windows, OSX, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One (2016)
Composer: Inon Zur
Album: Sword Coast Legends Original Game Soundtrack
Label: n-Space
Publisher: Digital Extremes
Developer: n-Space & Digital Extremes

This song took me by surprise for a couple of reasons.

First, I primarily know Inon Zur from his music from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, which like the landscape of the games, is pretty bleak and desolate. In a video game about scouring a desolate wasteland of human existence, having a majestic soundscape is not really fitting with the setting. I also know that Inon Zur can write non-post-apocalyptic music from his score from The Elder Scrolls: Blades game, and while there are more melodic pieces on that soundtrack, this Secondly, the name, "City of Sails" refers to the city of Luskan in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting in Dungeons & Dragons. My previous experience with Luskan before listening to this soundtrack was from Neverwinter Nights, where the city in that story was depicted as being filled with pirates and bandits and sewers full of rats and undead, and is generally not a safe place; revisiting Jeremy Soule's score is somewhat different from my memory however. Before reading "Streams of Silver," where Drizzt and Co. make a stop off in Luskan before heading to Sidesaddle, I had never read any other out-of-game depictions of Luskan. This is what I had in my head while listening to "City of Sails" for the first time.

I have not played Sword Coast Legends so I cannot say how this music is presented in the game, if there is a sweeping cinematic while Inon Zur's score swells. What I imagine with this song is a much more idyllic seaside port city with the rays of the morning sun dancing off of lapping waves against crowded docks. Maybe a group of adventures returning home after a long and harrowing adventure. Incredibly naive I know, especially with all of the quabbles going on in the Tower of the Arcane.

I just think this is a beautiful song and I will likely play it the next time I happen to find myself looking out on a lake with a cup of coffee watching the sun rise up behind the forest while the light hits the water.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Game EXP: The Climb 2 (OQ2/MQ2)

The Climb 2

Systems: Oculus Quest 2 / Meta Quest

Release Date: March 4, 2021

Publisher: Crytek

Developer: Crytek

While I have not completed all of the climbs in The Climb 2, which I will get to further down the line, I feel that I have completed enough of the game to throw down my thoughts about The Climb 2, a virtual reality climbing game that I played on the Oculus Quest 2 / Meta Quest.  I mentioned The Climb 2 in a very bare-bones First Impressions article where I just talked about my excitement and a video showing the second of three routes from the first of six areas, but here I wanted to talk more about the mechanics of the game, the progression, the environments, and obviously the feeling of hanging from the side of a cliff face with a multi-hundred-foot drop.

The Climb 2 is made up of five different real-world-esque locations and floating gym-style climbing walls full of separate puzzle-like routes.  Each environment has three different routes of increasing difficulty that can be completed with one of two settings.  First, there is the Casual setting that does not take into account a few of the key mechanics in the game.  This setting is all about climbing and enjoying the views, and maybe falling here or there while dynoing up to a hold.  The primary drawback with the Casual setting is that you cannot progress to the next tier route until you complete the route on the Professional setting.  The Professional setting has the same climbing routes as the Casual setting, but all of those aforementioned mechanics make the climbs more difficult, but also a lot more interesting.

All of the mechanics that the Casual setting leaves out of the Professional setting are there to give the act of climbing a bit more realism; although you are still essentially campusing and not doing anything with your feet.  First off there is a stamina bar located around your wrists.  When the stamina bar reaches zero, you can no longer hold onto the hold/grip you are holding.  When you are no longer holding a hold, you fall and start over from the last quickdraw you clipped into (brilliant use of actual climbing equipment turned in-game checkpoint).  Each hand has its own separate stamina bar and you can recharge your stamina bar when both hands are holding holds, even if your arms are spread eagle, your stamina will no longer drain.  There is also the act of chalking up your hands which adds a bonus stamina bar to your hand you just chalked, and like actually climbing, as you grip more holds, the chalk wears off and you will have to rechalk to get that bonus stamina bar back.  One way around having to constantly chalk up is to not fully depress the grips on the Oculus controller, which should not be difficult to do, but when your brain tells you that you need to grip the hell out of this particular crimp because otherwise, you are going to plummet to your death and die, then your hands proceed to grip the hell out of the controller.  The purpose of only partially gripping a hold is that you do not use any of your stamina, which makes one arm dynoing to another single crumbling hold easier when you have to immediately dyno to three more so that you can safely cross the gap.

The way I approached The Climb 2 for the first two environments was that I would do each route on the Casual setting to get a feel for the general difficulty and so that I would not be in awe of the setting my first time around.  After completing the three routes for that climb, I would attempt it again but on Professional.  I did this for the Alps and the Bay, but for the Canyon, I decided that I would start off on Professional, feeling that I was becoming proficient enough in my virtual climbing skills that I could progress through somewhat smoothly, not be in too much awe to complete the climb and be able to puzzle my way out of zags that the game would occasionally throw at me.  The Canyon stages threw quite the curveball by introducing rattlesnakes as an obstacle.  Up until the Canyon stages, there had been dynamic animals during the stages, but these were limited to ground-gopher-like creatures and insects, but rattlesnakes were a new one.  During my first run through all three of the Canyon stages, I was able to avoid the snakes, quickly climbing past them or just dynoing when I felt safe to do so.  On my later return to the first Canyon stage, I did not move when near the snake and I pulled my hand back as it struck out, causing me to fall.  I also found out that when the snakes do bite you, you automatically release whatever hold you are holding on to.  I do wish that there were more dynamic interactions like that, maybe having to climb up as waters rise in a cave system you are in, or maybe pigeons peck at your fingers when you are near nests while climbing in the City routes?

The last two stages were the City, which has some of the more vertigo-inducing sections, and the North, which is similar to the Alps, but more of a climbing on the cliffs of the fjord and less majestic mountains.  Half of the climbing in the City stages involves using the sides of buildings and structures like scaffolding to assist in your climb while the other half has you gripping structures closer resembling that of a fancy-ass climbing gym with designated holds.  What makes the City routes a little fear-inducing is that I know what being in a city is like, while I hikes I have done in mountains and caynon-like areas have been nothing like the environments here.  I have looked out from windows from the top of very tall buildings and intrusively thought about falling.  So when you find yourself clinging to a structure being held above a city by a construction crane and you need to dyno TO the crane while there is a few hundred feet drop under you, more than once I thought that I would need to just stop and turn the game off.  Fear is a weird thing.

One evening while Conklederp was playing, she decided to sit on the ground, and slowly inch herself off of the starting platform that you start each leg of your climb on.  This starting ledge is designed to help give you a sense of height and scale and a feeling of safety because you are climbing when you see the finishing/starting platform, you know that you can take a rest and that there is no risk of falling.  So this particular evening, Conklederp wanted to find out if you could fall from one of these platforms, but she did not want to simply take a step from the platform off, or in the real world, take a two-foot step behind her.  So she scooted off of the platform and found that she had just hovered there.  No falling.  I will not even try this, partly because I do not want to break the immersion, but also because this is not Richie's Plank Experience and I have already fallen countless times (enough to earn the hospital wristband).

Speaking of wristbands, there are unlockables in the game as you naturally progress through each location.  Upon completing the Professional climbs in each environment, you earn cosmetic upgrades for your gloves, watch (telling you how much time you have spent on each climb), and a wristband.  Some sets of cosmetics you can unlock by completing Professional climbs 30 times in each location or performing dynos a certain number of times, or by completing certain routes without chalk.  I have tried the no-chalk climbs a couple of times, but the additional criteria is that you cannot fall either.  I have only been able to complete this on Boar's Tusk, the first climb in the Alps and I know that if I could perfect the partial grip, I could do it, because why do you need to worry about your stamina bar if you do not need to fully grip the holds?  There are also twelve different wristbands that you can only unlock during specific times each month as they are all seasonally themed.  For instance, in February, there are floating hearts that you collect on each route, and after you collect something like 300 of them, you unlock a special Valentine's themed wristband.  The problem I have with these events is that they do not run the entire month, but usually only up until the holiday that month.  So the Valentine's event ran until February 14th, and the St. Patrick's Day event lasted until Marc 17th.  The other issue I had was that, for whatever reason, I was unable to connect to The Climb 2's servers even though my internet connection worked on other games (Ragnarock, Beat Saber), and in March, I ended up only being able to connect on March 15th after being told for two weeks that I could not connect to The Climb 2 servers to start the March event.  Put a little sour taste in my mouth.

The final environment in the game is the one that is giving me the most trouble, the Freestyle setting.  This is the one that had fancy-gym-like holds on sections of the wall that are hovering in infinite space.  Some of these routes would not be so difficult, except in these climbs, there are no quick release/checkpoints so any time you fall, you have to start over from the beginning.  I have also found that there is a lot more dynoing required in these stages and you come across the breakaway holds (holds that crumble and holding onto them within a second or two) and spikey holds (holds that drain your stamina faster and prevent you from regaining stamina if you are holding them) a lot more frequently than you do in the natural environments.  I have made it through five of them, but I remain stuck on "Moving Walls" which has walls that move out of reach after a certain amount of time and a lot of crumbling holds, and a pretty confusing route that I still have not figured out.

The last thing I wanted to mention is a feature that I feel kind of ruins the immersion of The Climb 2, and those are the online leaderboards (when they are working).  From the leaderboards, you can see your personal time and score and those of other players immediately in front and behind you, but you can also see people who have the fastest climbs for that particular route.  When you select one of these times on the leaderboard you are deciding that you are going to race them to the top of each route.  When you race someone, you can see ghostly-blue hands that represent the person you are racing and when I first tried to race someone in the top 10, I was taken aback by how fast the ghost moved.  They were fast.  Like, blindingly stupid fast.  I already knew that I was not going to win, but I decided to try to dyno like my opponent and upon reaching the end of the first route in fewer than two minutes, a whole seven minutes faster than my previous time, I had a bad feeling about this feature in the game.  While I can understand the appeal of online leaderboards and racing ghosts of other players, I found that it took away the sense of wonder and fear, two of the primary reasons why I love playing The Climb 2.  When racing, I was only focused on where I could dyno to and where I could dyno next after that.  My focus was narrowed that it was not so much that was flinging myself a dozen feet to my left, bypassing a dozen holds while being three hundred feet in the air, I was now standing in my living room racing a pair of noncorporeal hands by pulling a set passed me as fast as possible.  I have tried the race option since that first race, but only so that I could get videos to pull screenshots from.  Also I have found that the online leaderboards are down about 75% (subjective guess) of the time, so it does not really matter.  

That being said, since I first started playing, I have found that I am moving faster through the routes.  Climbs that once took me upwards of 19 minutes to complete are now taking me fewer than seven minutes, and it is hard not to mime-out the yahooing of your character when they reach the end of the climb, safely looking out on the area you just spent the last few minutes scaling.  Part of that is just familiarity with the game and its mechanics, the routes themselves, being used to the environments, and not taking as many glances around as I traverse above a waterfall while hanging onto a knotted rope 50 feet above the ground.  Part of it is being more comfortable in the Oculus, while the other part is knowing that I could skip this one section if I launch myself off of this rockface onto the ladder that is about 10 feet to my right and about 30 feet below me; that will probably shave a good minute off of my time.  But it is never about time and more about exploring and discovering new ways to finish a climb.

I do love this game.  I love the virtual feeling of virtually climbing because I love climbing in real life.  I love the different environments with the Alps, Canyon, and North being my favorite locations.  The Bay is nice, but it is a tropical setting and I would personally rather be in the mountains or above a forest than in the middle of the Pacific.  The City setting has too many stressful sections and if I just want to get in a route or two, I have found that the City is just not where I want to climb, but it is a great location to show people, plus I know there are paths on each of the routes that I haven't discovered yet, not so much to shorten the time it takes to do a route but to discover new experiences and vistas.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

MIDI Week Singles: "Whispers of the Ancestors" - The Elder Scrolls Online (PC)

 

"Whispers of the Ancestors" from The Elder Scrolls Online on Windows, OS X, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Stadia, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S (2014)
Composer: Brad Derrick
Album: The Elder Scrolls Online Original Game Soundtrack
Label: Bethesda
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: ZeniMax Online Studios

I listened to this soundtrack a lot after I left my career of caregiving for six-and-a-half years and while I was studying for my accounting classes, I listened to this soundtrack almost every day.  The entire soundtrack is roughly two-and-a-half hours long so it would easily cover five hours of studying. Because many of the songs are similar, I would not always notice when songs would repeat, especially when I had the album on shuffle.  

"Whispers of the Ancestors" was one of the exceptions though, as my ears would always perk up at 1:59 when that, what I assume to be an oboe, comes in pretty low and drawn out, it just felt like sinking into warmth, surrounded by trees with an ever slightly cool breeze blowing the scent of warm pine through.  And then when that, we will call it a french horn, comes in at 2:35 . . . it is just perfect.  The last third of the song builds like the previous thirds and the vocals around 3:35 through the end of the song are a nice cap.  

I find that this song eases my stress levels and reminds me to just breathe.  At my last job, which is a lot like my current job but with a different company, whenever I feel stressed or anxious about my work and I need to focus, more often than not I will pull up this soundtrack and have a similar reaction whenever this song comes on.  It is just good background music that will occasionally pull your attention, but not in a way that is distracting, which makes sense coming from an MMORPG.  And it works well for dealing with simple numbers in semi-complex situations.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Filled with Hubris

First Impressions: Borderlands 2 (PC)

  

Borderlands 2

Systems: All of Them

Original Release Date: September 18, 2012

Publisher: 2K Games

Developer: Gearbox Software

There really is not a lot that I can say about this game that has been out a few months shy of a decade and has spawned a second sequel, a pre-sequel, an episodic game from TellTale Games, a spin-off game, and a movie which to me has some very interesting casting choices.  I played the first Borderlands a few years back (read six years ago) and had a lot of fun, being what I was looking for in a first-person shooter.  You have a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, taking place in a seemingly post-apocalyptic-Mad Max-type wasteland that is full of characters ripped out of Twin Peaks if George Miller, David Frost, and David Lynch all had a single baby.  Or something like that.  What I am trying to say is that the writing in Borderlands was top-notch hilarious when it needed to be.

What inspired me to play Borderlands 2 was listening to an episode of The Besties podcast from April 8th, which was mostly about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, a spin-off of a character from Borderlands 2 that was described as a mix between Borderlands and Dungeons & Dragons.  I was told that playing either Borderlands 2 or the Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep was not necessary to play or enjoy Wonderlands, but me being me, thought that I had Borderlands 2 sitting unplayed in my Steam library so why not install that game up and give it a go?  So that is what I did.

I decided to pick Maya, the Siren as I chose Lilith (also a Siren) in the first Borderlands because she seemed more interesting than 50% of the other base characters.  The Gunzerker and Commando classes felt like generic dudes with guns, and Zero the Assassin seemed to be the cool-looking character (Zero also focused on melee weapons in the opening, and while I know that there would not be as much hand-to-hand combat in the game, I thought I would lean away from that, especially if some of the skill-tree abilities focused on melee combat.  Because I apparently have whatever version of the game that also gives you access to the Mechromancer and Psycho, two added classes that were not part of the original four, I thought that I would play the game with one of the original characters, at least to start and if I did not like Maya after an hour or so, I could start a new game and switch it up.  Well, I am currently 28 hours in at level 17 and I really like the Maya character.  Her primary special skill being able to isolate a single enemy by levitating them in the air and immobilizing them temporarily, allowing you to shoot at them at point-blank range, or just temporarily taking out another enemy from the fight so you can focus on other enemies for a few extra seconds.

Like the first Borderlands, Borderlands 2 feels pretty weak on story as you are again playing a vault hunter who gets caught up in squabbles between weapons corporations, and you just kind of go along for the ride.  Killing, looting, selling, repeat.  But honestly, that is really all that I am kind of looking for right now as I am also playing Final Fantasy X and Dragon Quest IX so having something that is not too story intense with fun characters is rather nice.

As for how I am currently playing, I have found that I am favoring sniper rifles coupled with a shotgun for close encounters.  After unlocking the third equipped gun option, I would have either an SMG or assault rifle, depending on what kind of damage I wanted to do and if I needed something with elemental damage.  For bosses, I will usually swap out the sniper rifle for a rocket launcher (or when I had to go up against those annoying mutated varkids).  As with the first game, I have found that I tend to shy away from shotguns and rocket launchers where you can only fire one or two shots before reloading because one of the quirks in this franchise is your gun randomly jamming which triggers an automatic animation where you essentially reload again and that is just as annoying as having to reload period.

That is really all I came here to say.

Oh, and I am playing the game solo without any online co-op and I have not delved into any of the DLC.  At least yet.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Many Moons Ago, In a Faraway Land

First Impressions: Blitzball - Final Fantasy X

 

Is Blitzball a divisive mini-game in Final Fantasy X?  It is the Internet so regardless of the question you ask you are going to get multiple answers and the same goes for players' feelings about Blitzball.  Some love it, some hate it, and some are ambivalent about it.  Me, I am not a fan of Blitzball, especially after playing my first round of Blitzball nearly seven hours into the game.  I could not tell you if you are predestined to win the first Blitzball tournament you actively play in, because when I played it, last Saturday night, that was how it felt to me.  That I was supposed to win, which I will get to below.  And if you are not wanting to read an entire article about why I played Blitzball so horribly and why I am going to put 86.47% of the blame on the game and not my own competent JRPG skills, then we will see you on Monday because the rant/complaining/git-gud-fest is about to begin.

For people who are not familiar with Final Fantasy X (like me a few weeks back), Blitzball is a fictional sport played by people in the fictional world of Spira where Final Fantasy X takes place.  It is a mix of soccer/football, water polo, and rugby.  There are six players on a team, including a goalie.  Each team tries to get the ball into their opponent's goal by passing between players and eventually shooting/kicking the ball past the goalie and into the goal.  The game is played in a sphere that is filled with water, so all the players are swimming (albeit without any kind of self-contained underwater breathing apparatus or any explanation as to how people breathe underwater so I am just assuming that this is a normal trait for humans or humes in this world), but the plane is only horizontal to keep the game from being too complicated; so the players are only swimming left and right, and not up and down.  Each player has active abilities such as special tackles and shooting moves that they can use at the fourth level when they engage other players.  As you play in the game, characters can level up and learn new skills, but the opposing team levels up and learns at the same time too, which makes the game progressively more difficult.  That is all the background I will give because you could probably write an entire Prima Guide about Blitzball and we are not that.

The player is first introduced to Blitzball during the opening of the game when the main character Tidus leaves his bachelor boat to go play in a Blitzball game at a massive stadium in the metropolitan city of Zanarkand.  At this point, you do not actually play Blitzball, but instead, just watch a movie of the characters playing, and then you take control again after a giant amorphous sphere called Sin attacks Zanarkand and destroys parts of the city and the stadium.  I received my first tutorial in Blitzball about five hours into the game when the team that Tidus finds himself on presumably goes into the water sphere for practice before a tournament.  This tutorial is long.  As in there are 12 topics to cover, each with multiple pages of text to read through.  Thankfully though a lot of the tutorial is hands-on so you are reading the description of what a particular action does or what a specific attribute is and how it relates to the player offensively and defensively and then you perform that action or see how your actions affect other players.  I appreciated that much at least because, for me, I tend to learn better by doing as opposed to reading something and then knowing how to do something.  

After you finish the tutorial, you do not actually play a match of Blitzball, instead, you then go on a hunt to look for another character which leads to another character getting kidnapped and you do mostly typical JRPG running, talking, and battling.  While this is happening, your team is playing a match and ends up winning, but one of the key players, Wakka, is injured and has to sit out.  All of this would probably take about 45-60 minutes, except for me, I played over the course of two nights, so I went through the tutorial on the evening of Tuesday, May 3rd, and then played my first Blitzball game the evening of Friday, May 7th.  So it is my fault a bit for waiting nearly four days before playing my first game, but in my defense, I thought that I was not going to play because there was the whole 'rescue the kidnapped person' instead of playing Blitzball.

So Tidus is pulled onto the team and takes the proverbial field with all the skills of someone who has never played Blitzball before even though the character is presented to be a superstar in the sport with a multitude of fans who wait outside the stadium and crowd around him as he enters.  And then the game starts!

And I have forgotten almost all of the terminology, what any of the buttons do, and apart from getting the ball in the opponent's goal, I am utterly lost.

However, I did take the in-game advice and I left the game on auto-play, so the computer controls your characters as they swim around in the sphere and you only make decisions when one of your players carrying the ball is stopped by an opposing player.  Then you can decide what action to take while evaluating your opponent's stats.  But again, I have forgotten specifically what the various stats meant, how they are calculated against your opponent's stats, and really everything else.  I was pretty irritated to find out that pausing the game did not bring up any kind of refresher or tutorial and the options menu and button config screen did not have anything specifically for Blitzball, which did not play as much into my frustration until overtime, but I am getting a little ahead of myself.

So the first quarter of Blitzball started with the game on auto-play, figuring that this was the safest option because I could not remember a lot about the tutorial and figured the game would do a better job of playing than I would.  I cannot say for sure, but it felt like the computer was playing a stalemate game against itself with a little intervention from me because, at the end of the first quarter (5 minutes in-game), the score was tied 0-0.  You are then brought to a screen that shows you how each player leveled up (or didn't) on the other team, the Goers, followed by your team.  You can then move your cursor through the players, but what this is supposed to show I don't know because there was no additional information presented on-screen and it didn't seem to matter who you clicked on to take you to the player position screen.  The positions were essentially like soccer with an L/R Forward, Midfielder, L/R Defense, and a goalie, but you could move players around.  I guess?  I don't know if a particular player excels in a specific position and if you move them around then your goalie Sasso is going to be a garbage Left Forward and the game does not give any explanation as to how the stats affect a player in a particular position.  So I just left everyone in the positions the game had them default in.  You can also equip players with skills/abilities if they are a high enough level (level 4) and then you can assign them marks, being other players to learn a new skill from them (think Blue Mages in the FF series, which are usually my least of the magic users), but only if that skill is highlighted blue and if that skill is used against them.  I think.  Then you move on to the next quarter and repeat.

I did this for the entirety of the match until overtime, not really knowing what was going on and feeling pretty lost, but all the while fortunate that the Goers had not scored, through whatever luck I was experiencing.  Before the beginning of OT, Wakka apparently recovered enough and swaps out with Tidus, and it was at this point, once the first quarter of OT started that I read a FAQ about this specific match, to find out if you are supposed to win, or supposed to lose, or what, that I switched the game over to Manual A (no idea what the difference between Manual A and Manual B is though) halfway through the first OT.  This just meant that I could control whoever has the ball as well as pick the actions when prompted.  Again, I became pretty frustrated with the controls because nothing seemed to activate anything or bring up a menu except to switch from Auto to Manual.

I kid you not when I say that I lost track of how many overtimes we played, but I know that there were at least seven OTs because I knew there were five and at least two past that.  There was one instance somewhere around the third or fourth OT where I had Wakka in a good position, I managed to press (I think the B button?) to have him make a shot on the goal with a good enough SH score against the goalie's lower score, but I made the shot with only 6 seconds left on the clock and apparently when the time runs out, the game stops, regardless of where the ball is, so I will never know if that ball would have gone into the goal or not.  The same thing happened against the opposing team a few OTs later too, with the time running out on the clock before their shot, which definitely would have gone into the goal, could be completed.  It was definitely around the end of the 5th OT that I genuinely stopped caring and at least one OT quarter I tried to actively lose, but that obviously did not work.

Eventually, sometime around OT 7 or 10, I managed to get Wakka in position to shoot against the goalie (having read that only Wakka or Tidus have the SH skill high enough to score against the goalie) and managed to score the one and only goal.  

I was tired and frustrated.  After saving the game, it was then I noticed that the entire match, which I had expected to take 10-15 minutes because it is a mini-game after all, took 1 hour 23 minutes 28 seconds (at least from the last save point before the match starts).  I recognize that the game took a lot longer than it should have from all of the OTs, but I was still frustrated with how this game was introduced to the player by way of the tutorial, taking a fair amount of aspects of the game for granted, and the execution of Blitzball as a mini-game within the larger foundation of the game.  I get that in Final Fantasy there was the whole Chocobo raising mini-game, in Final Fantasy VIII there is the card game Triple Triad, and a similar card game of Tetra Master in Final Fantasy IX, so Final Fantasy X had to have its own world-specific mini-game that everyone plays.  I also read that recruiting various players for your Blitzball team is its own thing and you have to do something Blitzball-related after building your S-List team to get some of the best gear in the game and that kind of Gold-Chocobo-level-grinding I do not want to deal with.  

I am just not into Blitzball.

Now, I am fewer than 10 hours into Final Fantasy X but I do get that in the world of Spira when there is a giant nearly immortal entity that wreaks destruction across the planet, the population needs an outlet for entertainment to take their minds off the fact that an entire village might have just been destroyed the previous week.  I do like the idea of an activity that is usually skill and dexterity-based turned into a turn-based battle (which is probably why I liked Hybrid Heaven so much), I just am not a fan of how Blitzball has been handled so far in the game.  I feel like there were plenty of instances where the tutorial could have been used, such as an earlier flashback between Tidus and his dad, or sometime after Tidus washes ashore on Besaid and he could have had amnesia resulting in him needing to relearn Blitzball.  Instead, the player is given a forward-heavy tutorial with little practical practice and is then thrown into a final match against a superior team with a character who is a superstar in the sport.

Maybe I am being too harsh, but I really do not think so.  Maybe?  There have been a couple of times that upon saving the game, you are given the option to play Blitzball (how/why?) and I just do not feel interested.  I read that there will be at least one other required Blitzball game and I just hope that the game will not expect me to have built up my team to the level where I am expected to win in order to proceed with the story, because I will be very disappointed in the game.  I really hope that will not be the case.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

P.S.  Just so I get it out of the way, if you have made it down this far, I am not a fan of Gwent in The Witcher III either.  I could probably write a similar article about that in-game card game, but I do not know if I have it in me after today's Blitzball article.  Maybe I just do not like mini-games in my RPGs?

P.P.S.  And no, I did not make the Jecht-shot while on the boat.  I thought I was watching a cinematic and plus, there was no on-screen prompt to push whatever button you were supposed to press the learn the Jecht-shot.  Just another thing I was annoyed about.

MIDI Week Singles: "BGM09" - eCrew Development Program (NDS)

"BGM09" from eCrew Development Program on the Nintendo DS (2010)

Composer: Unknown

Album: No Official Release

Publisher: McDonald's

Developer: Unknown

Holy buhjeezsus what is this!?

While randomly coming across eCrew Development Project during my #AllTheDSMusic randomized searches, I thought that this was going to be something that I marked down as not being able to find the music for.  I had zero ideas about anything to do with this game and what was it that I found?  A video game training program for McDonald's employees in Japan using a Nintendo DSi specially designed for McDonald's emblazoned with the McDonald's logo on the cover.

Most of the songs begin with Justin Timberlake's "I'm Lovin' It" turned McDonald's theme jingle and this one is no different.  There begins the jingle on whatever MIDI harmonica-accordion hybrid this instrument is supposed to be, typical enough for the music in the game.  Then cue the choir of angels at four-and-a-half seconds in!  MIDI Ahhs flood your unworthy ear holes gracing you with the godliness that is McDonald's.  Now, I have no idea what context this music is used in but it had better be the "Congratulations, You Beat McDonald's and Passed Your Training!" music because I cannot think of any other reason to use something so grandiose as a MIDI choir in a McDonald's training video game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

The Crimson Sunrise

The Best-Best 3DS Games

As the 3DS and Wii U eShops progressively come to a close, I have increasingly seen articles talking about the Top 10 3DS Games, or the Best Wii U Games to Not Skip Out On Before March 22, 2023.  Other similarly titled headlines telling you of their favorite games or the games you should buy before the respective storefronts go offline to buyers in March 2023 if you do not want to pay out of your ass.

I have my own list of games for both the 3DS and Wii U that I would like to pick up before the respective eShops stop accepting payments which in turn will only increase the cost of physical versions of not only the games that are also available on the eShop, but just because.  Not because I think they are will be the most amazing 3DS or Virtual Console experience, but because I want to play them.  eBay is going to be even more of a scalpers paradise for people willing to pay for games that can only be acquired physically.  For me, I will most likely be sticking to digital media for both the Wii U and 3DS, although I have already purchased three Wii games (coincidentally all are on-rail survival horror games, which probably says something about me) and I will obviously still look .  

There is the part of me that wants to jump on a number of digital games before March 2023, but the level-headed part of me knows that the digital games will still be there on March 21, 2023, so there is no real need to buy them now.  Why not just wait for them to go on sale?  Because they may not go on sale is what I know you will tell me.  And you are likely to be correct, especially regarding games like Fire Emblem: Awakening, Metroid: Samus Returns, and the Metroid Prime Trilogy, but they could go on sale is my point.  And why spend the $39.99 now and only be upset at myself if the game drops to $24.99 the last week of November?  Or maybe there is some kind-hearted soul out there who wants to get rid of their DS/3DS games and just decides to give me a copy of Metroid: Samus Returns or Silent Hill: Frozen Memories (yes, I know that is a Wii title)?  I am not holding my breath on either of those, but it would be a generous surprise.

I had thought about putting out my own list of games that I personally felt were the best on the 3DS (as I have literally not played a Wii U game on the Wii U yet, only Virtual Console games, which might be an article for Friday?) that I would recommend people to go out and buy either in physical or digital form, but with there being 1,378 games released on the 3DS and me having only played maybe 100 (my 3DS has 151 recorded titles including DS games, demos, and applications, so that guess is probably not too far off), I am definitely not qualified to make that kind of judgment.  Instead, I will just list the top 10 games that I played on the 3DS both in terms of total playtime and longest average playtime; something I wish that every video game console/system could tabulate for you.  And I could probably take all of the following data to extrapolate the kind of person that I am or my Myers Brigg* based on the games I played on the 3DS, but that would be boring, inaccurate, and would also take too long.  And also boring.  So instead, I will say that these are the games that I either enjoyed the most (in regards to total playtime) or "could not put down" (in regards to average playtime); especially when there is an overlap between the two.

Total Play Time:

• Pokemon Picross - 100 hours 47 minutes
• Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - 76 hours 44 minutes
• Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call - 66 Hours 5 minutes
• The World Ends With You - 56 hours 32 minutes
• Theatrythm Final Fantasy - 46 hours 35 minutes
• Radiant Historia - 39 hours 42 minutes
• Infinite Space - 34 hours 31 minutes
• Fantasy Life - 34 hours 20 minutes
• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - 34 hours 7 minutes
• Chrono Trigger - 27 hours 12 minutes

Average Play Time:

• Assassin's Creed - 5 hours 20 minutes
• Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - 3 hours 9 minutes
• Chicken Wiggle - 1 hour 48 minutes
• Theatrhythm Final Fantasy - 1 hour 43 minutes
• Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - 1 hour 37 minutes
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate - 1 hour 36 minutes
• Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call - 1 hour 34 minutes
• Ultimate NES Remix - 1 hour 34 minutes
• Professor Layton and the Unwound Future - 1 hour 33 minutes
• Infinite Space - 1 hour 26 minutes

What is not represented in either of these two lists are all of the older games that I picked up from the eShop or just games that I would either play in short spurts and for fewer than 30 hours.  Games like Mega Man 3 and Weapon Shop de Omasse, where I spent a few hours here and there and beat the games and were never designed to be more than a handful of hours.  I found that I played a lot of games that were re-released on the 3DS that were previously on the NES (Mega Man I - VI, Castlevania II & III, Bases Loaded) and Game Boy (Castlevania: The Adventure, Golf, and Tetris) that I had not played in decades or ever finished; kind of like what I end up doing all the time with every system I have that lends itself to either being backward compatible or where games are ported to newer systems.

I know that there are games that never made it to the eShop that I will inevitably remember long after March 2023 and the price for the physical game will be through the roof, but that is destined to happen to all video game systems, regardless of how many of their games make it to the digital storefront or how much people talk about video game preservation.  And I do think that video games should be preserved, but that is a discussion all on its own, which I may or may not get to in due time.

But for now, I am just going to remember the hundreds of hours I spent playing DS and 3DS games on their respective systems, and pick up a few more Virtual Console games on the Wii U before next March.  And maybe another physical Wii or even a Wii U game along the way.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Gott will es, auf ewig, Amen

*P.S.  In a surprise to probably no one, I usually hover around/between INTP and INTJ.