Homegrown 8-bit Snob

Video Games and Disabilities

2008-07-06T04:29:00.002-05:00

Otherwise known as "Why certain gaming innovations kinda suck."

I'm a lifelong gamer. Been around since the Atari age, though I didn't fall completely under its siren sway until the original Nintendo came out. At that point I learned to live, breathe, sleep and dream in video games and never looked back. As expected of any entertainment industry, game companies keep getting bigger and better and so on and so forth with their products, pushing the envelope, blah blah blah. The usual. Nothing bad with that, really. I like new stuff, even if sometimes it confuses me. Unfortunately, in their quest to gives gamers a totally immersive experience, they're kinda leaving some important stuff behind.

One of the big things about games nowadays is voice acting. Everybody loves hearing their favorite characters talking smack about each other (furthering the plot being secondary of course), or at least, they seem to think so. I don't really have a problem with it, unless it's a really bad dub, then I kinda want to claw my ears out (I'm looking at you Chaos Wars). The problem actually stems from the fact that certain game companies apparently don't feel the need to subtitle their cutscenes or whatever. This is a problem. Why is it a problem? Because there are gamers out there with hearing loss who would love to shell out their money for these awesome games, except they can't follow the plots without any text so why bother. Hearing loss is a very common disability. Over half of my family suffers from it to some degree. It's bad enough trying to find decent closed captioning on television, please don't take the joy of playing video games away from us too.

And then there's the Wii. I wanted to love the Wii, but the Wii does not love me. Or rather, most of the Wii's games hate my guts. Why, you ask? It's simple really, my left thumb is basically a birth defect. It bends at the wrong angle and has zero motor control. What that means is that I cannot bend it at either of the joints. Oh, the joints are there, and I can manually bend them with my other hand, but on its own there's just nothing there to work with. The good news is that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the rest of my hand so I can flex it at will, thus allowing me to press things down or hold on to things. Thanks to that I could play video games just fine up until now. I could press down on the buttons, move a joystick using my index and middle fingers, etc. etc. And then came the Wii. Games that require just the wiimote or the classic controller are fine and dandy. I can play them perfectly. It's the ones that require the nunchuck that I cannot play. I simply can't get enough stability with the nunchuck in hand to move the joystick or press the button. Trying to switch the nunchuck to my right hand doesn't work either, there are just too many buttons in too many different places on the wiimote for me to manage a normal game with my left hand. Thus certain games that I otherwise would have loved and played to death (Super Mario Galaxy and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess to name a couple) have been quite effectively closed to me.

If I were an engineer of any sort, I'd probably be able to figure out what I need and build it so I can play these wonderful games. Unfortunately, my nerdiness doesn't extend in that direction, thus I am left feeling somewhat bitter. Sure, I can play Twilight Princess on the Gamecube, but what about the next Zelda? And how about Galaxy? I guess I'm just stuck hoping that the Wii's innovations are just another passing fad.

Final Fantasy: 20th Anniversary Edition

2008-06-27T05:08:00.003-05:00

Oh blogspot, dearest blogspot,

Let me tell you blogspot, I love my Nintendo DS. Love it! It's blue, cobalt blue, and it has the most wonderful array of games available to play on it. And yet, there is a dark shadow slowly rising above that love. It started earlier this month when I bought my new Playstation Portable. I never thought I would ever say something like this, but that gorgeous, crystal clear widescreen kinda kicks the DS's butt. Yes, I have fallen victim to that siren song known as graphics. It's so beautiful though. Everything is so crisp and clear and I can read the text on the screen without any trouble at all. Oh, rest assured that I will not give up my DS. It has too many awesome games to play and games are really where my main interest lies. The hardware is a very distant second. However, I can safely say that the PSP is earning its way back into my good graces with its wonderful performance.

But I digress, the subject of this post is actually a game, not the system I played it on, so let's get back on track. Apparently Square Enix decided to start giving the PSP some of its attention. One of the results: Final Fantasy: 20th Anniversary Edition. Obviously, the game is not new. Final Fantasy has been around since the days of the Nintendo (it was originally released in Japan back in 1987). And that's what this game is, in a sense, and yet it's not. The story is the same, for the most part, but the graphics got an overhaul as did quite a few of the game's actual mechanics. That got released on the Wonderswan Color, which we don't have over here in the United States so we missed out on that. Then they released it again on the Gameboy Advance coupled with the second Final Fantasy game and some nifty new content in the form of bonus dungeons (and titled it Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls). And that's what the 20th Anniversary Edition, except it's not. It's all of that with even more content added on (yes, another bonus dungeon) and all of that is delivered on a pretty widescreen display. Oh, and it has the CG movie from the Playstation rerelease of the game back in the day. Confusing isn't it? I'm afraid that comes with the territory. Square Enix excels at putting out more rereleases, remakes, prequels and sequels of the Final Fantasy games than a casual fan can keep up with.

The Final Fantasy: 20th Anniversary Edition is a bit easier than its original incarnation. You're not going to have to resist the urge to bash your brains out when you get poisoned yet again in the Marsh Cave. In fact, the Marsh Cave is rather pleasant in this version. They've basically turned the game into the perfect introduction for anyone who may be interested in trying out turn-based roleplaying video games. I really don't think there's any serious sort of challenge until the bonus dungeons. They take a bit of work and sometimes a little luck, especially with certain bosses, but otherwise the game itself has been pretty much streamlined. Everything works great, there's no loading time, and being able to save anywhere (except the new new bonus dungeon) made it a joy to play.

And yet, I am somewhat displeased with it. I'm really, really tired of how so many games nowadays make you replay them again just to get everything. I have other games to play, movies to watch, books to read, and, you know, all those other time sinks that go hand in hand with having a life. Why would I want to play a game again just to get everything? It takes one serious phenomenal game to make me want to play it more than once. Final Fantasy might have done it for me if I'd been able to keep my character progress and items (you know, kinda like Chrono Trigger), but no, they didn't do that. Or hell, if there had been an option for doubling experience earned like the Tales of series has, then I might have considered it. Starting all over again from square one with nothing of the sort? No. I'll go play another game, thanks all the same.

Claymore

2008-06-22T23:08:00.002-05:00

Claymore is a dark fantasy manga that's still in the midst of publication. If you don't know what manga is, then I'd heartily suggest looking it up on wikipedia.

The story, for the most part, revolves around the struggles of a woman warrior named Clare. As is expected of the protagonist in such stories, Clare is not your typical run of the mill woman fighter. She has undergone a process that changed her into a half human, half monster hybrid. By doing this, she has become a claymore (hence the title) and gained the ability to hunt down and fight the monsters from which her newer half is derived.

There's a lot of things in Claymore that would have a feminist going "What?" Frankly, I, myself, went "What?" at a lot of it. The organization that makes the claymores is comprised of old men, the girls who are to become claymores are orphans who are taken in or even bought, they aren't seen as human beings for the most part, merely tools, etc. etc. etc. It's all there, the basic typical trope of how women can't be strong unless something equally horrible has happened in their past, etc. etc. Also, two of the strongest female characters in the manga basically have the mental maturity of very young children. It's a familiar norm that's existed for a long time in fantasy where women being actual fighters is concerned (and not healers, princesses in need of saving, etc.). There's also the usual manga trope of a weak character who gets amazingly strong during a battle because either somebody they care about dies, or they nearly do, and so on and so forth. There's really nothing new here.

And yet, regardless of all of that, I find myself enjoying the story quite a lot. It started out pretty mediocre, both in plot and art, but I ended up reading all that's available and still want to read more. I think it boils down to the fact that regardless of how stereotypical many of the characters' backstories may be, regardless of how stereotypical many of the plot aspects may be or may turn out to be, I still very much like how the characters interact with each other. And as much as a recent revelation (chapter 79, what the heck?) gave me serious pause, I like the sense of where the story seems to be going. At the very least and despite whatever remaining stereotypes may yet find their way into it, Claymore has captured my interest with the simple seeming concept of a group of women finding a common bond and standing up for themselves regardless of how their fates may turn out in the end.

A Timely Purchase

2008-06-11T00:25:00.004-05:00

In an effort to buffer the scant remnants of my sanity against the grueling drive from Alabama to North Carolina (and the excruciating stay that is to follow), I purchased a shiny, new PSP last week. Said system has not received much love from me in the past. Indeed, I do believe the Wii has seen more playtime than it has (and that's saying something). Still, it is a timely choice. I've recently been of the mind to play all the Final Fantasies from the beginning (yeah, not much left in the sanity corner), and this may be a good time to start. The DS remake of IV will be arriving upon these shores next month, so there's a nice flexible timeframe to work with.

It really helps that the Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition is very, very pretty on the new PSP. My old launch PSP had been steadily developing a case of dead pixels for quite some time, which only aided in the whole not playing on it very much situation. Without the overriding, irrational urge to brush away dirt specks that aren't really dirt, there's at least a decent chance that my PSP games will get more love.

Hopefully, I'll have a review or some sort of actual content for the blog by the time I get back.