aestas_est

I am blogging for the Home for Little Wanderers in support of children in the Boston area who have been orphaned or who don't feel safe going to their homes.

If you would like to donate (first of all, let me say THANK YOU!), you may do so here.

Any amount would be appreciated, so don't think you won't be making a difference! Also, feel free to drop a comment and ask any questions you have.

Well, it's been real guys, but this is going to be my last post for Blogathon 2008. Unfortunately, I have work fairly early tomorrow and I just couldn't afford to ask to have the day off (I was fortunate enough to be able to blog today, really).

But thank you all a bunch and I wish you tons of luck!! Maybe we'll meet again next year-- I certainly hope so!

There's one game that I really love that I was never able to beat, and that's Golden Sun for the Game Boy Advance. It's a wonderful RPG with great characters, an awesome sense of humor and unique gameplay, but it was too hard for me to get through the puzzles in it. I started replaying it a year or two ago, but even then, I had to rely on walkthroughs too much for me to really consider it much fun anymore. I don't know why... I just couldn't wrap my mind around quite a few of the things that are required of the player.

But the visuals are incredible and I love the sound effects. When you're beating the heck out of your opponent, you can definitely hear it, haha. I would recommend it to anyone looking for more of a challenge in their games. :)

Sometimes, I really don't feel like Dance Dance Revolution is an actual video game. Since it normally requires you to exercise, I feel like it breaks the rules, but in a very good way.

Playing DDR, I lost a lot of weight and found tons of music that I really love, so I'd recommend it to anyone. I've taught kids how to play too because I think it's just that much of a worthwhile game. You can technically play it with your controller, but I found the timing to be strange and that takes the real fun of the game out of it!

The newer games in the series are adding a bunch of extra options, but my favorite is the combo challenge. Basically, in that mode, if you miss a single step, it's game over, but it's fun to see how many you can get in a row. At my best, I think I got around 1,100 steps.

And the really good news is that two of the DDR classics (Extreme and Max 2) have been reprinted at a cheaper price, so you shouldn't have to dig hard to find them at all. :D

( Last part of the survey )

Next time: DDR! :D

( Survey continues )

And there are still more questions... to keep this related to video games, let me ask this: what is your most favorite video game of all time? Feel free to explain why.

This entry's going to be a survey originally posted by frostedsunshine. :D Be sure to check out her blog too!

( Read more... )

The rest is going to have to wait for the next entry. Until then~!

Back to Final Fantasy X...

It has the most moving ending of anything that I've ever seen or played in my life. A lot of people end up crying over it (myself included, I admit). It's gorgeously animated and brings everything together. And I feel it's better than watching the end of a really good movie, since you get to bring the ending about yourself.

This kind of begs the question of why they felt they needed to make a sequel with such a wonderful ending, but I can't quite judge X-2 without having played it.


Keep going, everyone! You're doing good!

Anywho, I'm sitting here as Sephiroth is casting his lovely Super Nova move and taking two minutes to do so.

But the next game I'm going to talk about is Final Fantasy X. It's a game that I frankly think should get as much recognition as VII, but it really doesn't. I'm not saying that VII is a bad game, not at all, it's just that X is also very good and I think that the plot in X just makes more sense. (And the battle system is easier, but that might not be seen as positive by everyone.)

The graphics are gorgeous too, especially for a 2001 game. I think it would be pretty hard to make an argument against the game, really.

More when I'm less distracted.

I think I'm going to be lazy with this post in favor of trying to beat Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. :x Wish me luck?

Also, I haven't mentioned it in a while, but if you'd like to donate, please do so here!

I just had a conversation that ended in me saying this: "That sounds like an awesome move for a video game. 'Unexpected dinner!!'"

And hm. Speaking of computer games, there were only three that I ever really loved. The first is Master of Orion. My brother bought the game and I ended up keeping it after he moved out of the house. You basically try to populate as many planets as you can to build an empire. But you have to control the production of things on your planets as well as create powerful ships (for when you run into other races who may want the same planet). You can also have ground combat.. you get to choose how many people to put on your ships that you send to inhabited planets and then they duke it out with the inhabitants. Whoever has troops left standing at the end keeps the planet.

But the strategy goes on and on and on. There are lots of aspects to keep track of. Luckily, it's turn-based, so you can take your time thinking about it. The only thing about Master of Orion is that it's ANCIENT. It's real hard to find these days and runs on MS-DOS since it was released in 1993.

There's a sequel called Master of Orion 2 which received really good reviews too, but I don't know much about the availability of it. I just know what Master of Orion 3 is considered crap by most of the original game's fans.

This one's not quite a video game, but it's related.

The Helicopter Game! :D

Controls are simple but hanging in there for a long time is hard. And it's really addicting. Basically, you click with the mouse to elevate and let go to lower yourself. The whole point is to not crash and destroy your helicopter. So far, my best is 915. Can you guys beat that? I bet you can. :D Give it a try!

Alrighty, time for my next update. :D

I can't believe I haven't mentioned the Ace Attorney series for the DS yet. It's a series that I picked up rather recently and the first game is kind of hard to find these days, but it's so worth it. You play as defense attorney Phoenix Wright to prove your clients innocent. It's really not so much the basic plot of the game as it is the incredibly quirky and memorable characters that makes it great. And the music's wonderful too. If you're looking for a realistic representation of the courtroom, Ace Attorney's probably not for you, but as a video game it's very fun and tells a really good story.

Moreover, it's a strategy game and I don't like those, so me liking this really says something.

I'm pretty surprised that I haven't mentioned this game yet... Dragon Warrior Monsters for the Game Boy. :D I think most gamers are familiar with the Dragon Warrior series, but Dragon Warrior Monsters is quite good too. A friend of mine bought the game and that's what influenced me to get it.

Because you choose three monsters to bring around with you and have fight for you, it's similar to Pokemon. However, all three of your monsters fight at the same time against up to three enemy monsters. In order to "catch" the wild monsters, you have to feed them meat (and the more expensive the meat, the more they will like you). Another difference from Pokemon is that as long as the monster is above level 10, it can be breeded with another monster to have an egg. :D Lots of interesting combinations can come out of breeding and it's pretty much the best way to get yourself the strongest monster. The only catch is that you don't get to keep the parent monsters after you breed them... they leave you and their egg behind. Talk about awful parenting.

Oh, and the monsters can talk to you in this game. :D There's a certain table in the game where you can chat with your monsters one-on-one and based on their personality, they'll say different things.

I really kind of think that Pokemon stole some of its ideas for its later games from DWM, but don't tell anyone I said that. :x

Entry thirteen~! It feels like a lucky number to me. :D

Now here's a pretty obscure game... Snoopy Tennis. Yeah, I'm biased toward tennis, I'm sorry. It's a game for the Game Boy Color and it's surprisingly fun. Generally, when games are based on shows, books, or movies, they don't end up being all that fun or well done, but this one was, I think.

You can play as a bunch of different Peanuts characters. Seriously, if you think of a character, you can probably play as them. None of them play better than the others overall, but they have their own special strengths and weaknesses. You can also play in tournaments as well as single matches or play a few mini games. AND! You can play it in Spanish or French... or Italian, if I remember correctly.

I guess I won't advertise it too much more, though, since it's probably a pretty hard game to find now. It came out around 1999. I can't believe I've owned it for that long...

I'm starting to have to recheck what number entry I'm on... eheh.

I haven't been giving handheld consoles enough love, so let me remedy that. Klonoa: Empire of Dreams came out for the Game Boy Advance and I think it deserved more attention than it got. My sister bought it for me, saying it reminded her of Pokemon, so she thought I'd like it.

It's really nothing like Pokemon, though. It's a platform game where you basically have to solve little puzzles to move Klonoa around and to the end of the stage. Think of the original Mario games; it's kind of like that. But it's cute and not too challenging and definitely appropriate for kids. (The lack of a challenge would probably make it less appealing for an older audience, but if you're looking for something simple, it's pretty fun.)

My favorite stage is where you ride around on a snowboard(?) and have to jump to get the jewel-type things (kind of like coins in Mario games). It's impossible to lose since your goal is just to collect as many of the jewels as you can. It's definitely worth a look.

Talking about Mario Kart made me think of another racing game that I loved to death... Cruisin' USA. I never owned the game, but my friend did and I often begged to be allowed to borrow it. It didn't have any real extras, the point was just to race, race, race until you unlocked all of the courses and cars. (Unlocking new cars? An interesting idea.) But then when you wanted to use the new cars, you had to press a bunch of random C buttons to activate them, if I recall correctly. I personally really liked driving the bus, haha. Using a bus in a race is an interesting thought, isn't it?

And it had the smallest little bit of fanservice in there, with the girls in bikinis at the finish line... but even despite extra options, it was still awesome. And you could change the music you were listening to while playing! Haha.

I love games with little quirks in case you hadn't noticed.

Yeah, double digits! Whoohoo! I hope everyone else is hanging in there all right.

Now, to talk about a game that's a little more recent... How about The World Ends With You? At first look, the title seems pretty negative, but I've heard that in the game it has a much more positive message. I only started playing this one a few days ago and I like it. It has a teen rating, so I doubt too many kids would be playing it but I could be wrong, but it's definitely worth taking a look at.

A friend of mine asked me what it was about, and I told her, "It's a new RPG game for the DS that was made by Square Enix. That's all most people need to know to want to buy it."

I grew up mostly as a button masher, so having to move the stylus across the screen to execute attacks is going to take some getting used to. But the game does have a lot of style and isn't as serious as most of the promotional images for it make it look. It even has an easy mode that makes things quite a bit less difficult. :D

There are a lot of video games related to Pokemon that aren't the original games (like Red, Yellow, Gold, Ruby, Pearl, etc.). I'm really tempted to try playing those Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games but I wouldn't be willing to buy it right off the bat. I've heard they're more like adventure games than RPGs, and considering that my favorite video game genre is RPG, it decreases my enthusiasm a little.

But a game I really think they should bring back is Pokemon Stadium. It stays true to the original games by letting you battle (and in nifty N64 graphics, yet!) and play through gym leaders to get to the Elite Four. Nevermind that I never beat the Elite Four, though. But those mini games were AWESOME. The controls were simple and they were a fun way to get away from battling all the time.

The one thing I didn't like about the game was the announcer for the battles. He was pretty annoying, haha. "Whoa, it's a one-hit wonder!"

I think that line might haunt me for the rest of my life.

Enough Mario for now. Now I'm going to talk about Pokemon. Oh, yeah. I'm going there.

I still play Pokemon and have Pearl version sitting on the desk here, actually. The first game in the series that I played was good ol' Red version (and amazingly, it still works). I started out with Bulbasaur, which is actually the easiest one to start with. I say that because it's strong against the first two gym leaders' Pokemon. But later on in the game, things get pretty tough using it (especially against the seventh gym leader whose Pokemon are all fire-type).

When I was a kid, I was completely obsessed with Red version, haha. I managed to get all 150 Pokemon and I wouldn't stop talking about Pokemon with my classmates. My grades actually suffered a little because of it. Oops.