Sunday, January 26, 2014

Stuff I Played: Chrono Cross


Stuff I Played is where I write about games I recently played. It’s not really a review, just a short write up of my totally subjective thoughts as the formed in the days after I finished playing something.



Chrono Cross is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, which is widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time.  Cross on the other hand is a divisive game to say the least. While it was well regarded and critically acclaimed at release over the years it has developed something of a reputation as being a bad game, or at least a disappointing one. Having played it now, I can say that I really enjoyed Cross, but I also totally understand the negativity surrounding the game.

The main point of contention Trigger enthusiasts tend to have when it comes to Cross is that it lacks a clear link to Trigger. This is initially true, it’s setting and characters are totally different. Of the 7 playable characters from Trigger none are among the 44 playable characters in Cross. At most, some of them are talked about or appear in minor cameos. The two games share no common locations either, with Cross being set entirely in an archipelago isolated from the setting of Trigger, which is referred to throughout the game as “the mainland.” Because of these factors, a lot of people have said that Chrono Cross is not a “true” sequel to Trigger, but that’s where they're wrong, Cross only works as a sequel to Trigger, and that’s where the problems start for me.

See, these games are about time travel. Which is usually a red flag but in the case of Trigger the story was well told enough that it all was very easy to follow. Any time events in the past changed the present or future the changes were set up enough in advance and the change was shown well enough that it all clicked in the players mind. It’s called one of the best games of all time for a number of reasons and this is chief among them.

In the case of Cross though, it’s not so easy to follow. Running a Google search for “Chrono Cross plot” will auto complete the search with “confusing” and “doesn't make any sense” and while it is pretty confusing I do think it mostly makes sense.  Serge and company never do any significant time travel in the game, it all exists in exposition that is backloaded into the last few hours of the game. So much of this games plot remains a total mystery to players until very late in the game when it’s all dumped on you at once. Like I said, it all mostly makes sense in the way Time Travel stories need to (you don’t want to split hairs too much with these things) but it comes at you so late and fast that processing it all can be overwhelming.

Not only that, but the time travel stuff is all built on the events of Trigger. To understand anything that’s going on in this game demands you have an intimate knowledge of that game’s events. The stuff with the Dragonians for example is all building off the events of the prehistoric era of Chrono Trigger, something explained in terms only someone who has played Trigger will understand. The entire plot of Cross is designed to tie up a loose end from the events at Trigger’s Ocean Palace, one of that game’s most crucial and memorable points, again explained in only terms someone who played Trigger will be able to really follow. I haven’t played Trigger in over two years and while I was able to at least identify when Cross was calling back to that game, the specifics of what I needed to know were often lost to me.

It all reeks of a game that was rushed through production late in development to meet deadline. If you've ever played Xenogears (which Cross writer-director Masato Kato also worked on) you’ll know what I’m talking about. I’d love to see this game get remade and be given the time it needed to have its story fleshed out and told properly, because there are a lot of cool ideas here, even if they are going to be lost on the vast majority of players. For now, if you’re really interested in sorting it all out there is this handy timeline(s) which might end up giving you a headache.

Outside of the story the game play is solid. There are no random encounters; enemies roam the map and making contact with them triggers a battle, similar to what many JRPGs have adopted in recent years. Combat is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't played it, but it’s all designed around preventing the player from spamming a single powerful spell for the entire game. It’s nice and not nearly as complicated as some people have made it out to be. I actually found the system to be very simple and intuitive. Leveling up is no longer an issue either. The game lacks a traditional level up system in favor of scaling the players stats to the point of the game they’re in based how many bosses they've beaten.  There are random stat boosts gained after minor battles but I never found the need to grind for those. Whenever I got to a new area I was always right where I needed to be for the game to be not too hard but not too easy.

One final thing before I wrap this up, the soundtrack is handled by veteran composer Yasunori Mitsuda. Mitsuda is one of the greats and he did most of the heavy lifting on the Chrono Trigger’s sound track when he was just starting out. He did some of his career best work on Cross and that’s not a statement to make lightly. Just listen to Time's Scar.


Overall I really did enjoy Chrono Cross despite my misgivings about how the story is told. That said, while I would recommend Chrono Trigger to pretty much everyone who isn't a total degenerate, Cross is something I can recommend only to those like myself who are really into the genre and even then you should probably take that recommendation with a grain of salt. This one is not for everyone.


Currently playing: Mass Effect 2

Sunday, January 19, 2014

New Year’s Resolution

My new year’s resolution is to become a better writer. Full stop.

I feel like I’m already a competent enough writer. I guess I can string together a handful of words and make something that reads alright. My main problem is that as it stands I don’t really do all that much writing.

So that’s what this is for. I want to make that change. I want to write more often. Not think about writing often, I do that enough. I want to write as often as I can, about whatever. I need to just stretch my legs a bit and work out some of the kinks with my style figure out what my voice is. You know, “writer stuff”. I already started this earlier with my "Stuff I Played" post. But I want to do more than just write about video games. So expect more in the future.

So that’s my new year’s resolution, 20 days into 2014.

Stuff I Played: Mass Effect

Stuff I Played is where I write about games I recently played. It’s not really a review, just a short write up of my totally subjective thoughts as the formed in the days after I finished playing something.



So I finally played Mass Effect. Sometime around June of 2012 I bought an Xbox 360 just to play these games and a small smattering of other games, but since then I've only ever played Lost Odyssey and Dust: An Elysian Tail to completion. To make matters worse, in the time between me shelling out for the 360 and now most of the games I bought the system for (namely Mass Effect and Deadly Premonition) have been ported to the PS3, which I already owned. Funny how that works out…

I played Mass Effect on the recommendation of a new acquaintance. I had actually tried to play it once before, closer to the time that I had dropped the cash for the games and console, but quickly lost interest in what I was doing. See, the game opens with this really exciting mission where a ton of cool stuff goes down and then about an hour into that you arrive on the Citadel and have to convince the galactic council of everything that happened while you were there. This mostly takes the form of you kind of running in circles and chasing leads for a bit and while it really does help you become acquainted with the world of Mass Effect I never could bring myself to get excited about finding proof of something I saw happen so that I could convincing some alien jerks who don’t seem to like me very much that I’m not crazy. I still feel this way having gone through it a second time, but luckily the sequence doesn’t take all that long to complete and once you’re done the game recovers quick and gets going.

Everything once you get to leave the Citadel really does move at a nice clip. Even the extended talky bits on planets like Noveria were more engaging to me that what had preceded it on the Citadel (this is likely because the stuff on Noveria was being uncovered for the first time while the events on the Citadel felt somewhat redundant to me). I especially liked how each planet was its own little closed circle with a unique cast and story arc that helped build to the games conclusion. It helps strike a nice balance between linear and non-linear progression that is need to tell a compelling story in these kinds of games without sticking the player on a straight line from start to finish. Apparently this is kind of a Bioware thing because I also thought it was cool in Dragon Age: Origins when I played that in the way way back.

The members of your squad were all pretty cool too. I never got too interested in Ashley or Kaidan because I guess the appeal of chatting up all the different Aliens and getting to know more about their worlds and cultures was more intriguing to me than whatever the other humans on the ship felt like talking about. The world of Mass Effect feels uncommonly fleshed out for a piece of modern science fiction so getting to hear Wrex and Garrus tell me about who they are and how they become who they are and what their respective races are like was something I really enjoyed. 

The romance stuff felt kind of silly to me though. I had initially decided to go with Ashley because I couldn't figure out where Liara was on the Normandy, so after I had shifted gears to Liara I got an awkward little scene near the end of the game where the two characters decide to confront Shepherd about who he wants to be with. I thought this was pretty funny so I’ll put it in the win column.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by Mass Effect.  Third person cover based shooters aren't the kind of games I usually play and I was REALLY bad at the combat in the beginning, but luckily the game never punished me too badly so long as I made sure to save often. By the end of the game I felt pretty awesome and could take on anything I felt like assuming I didn't act too dumb, so that was neat. As it stands, I've decided to space out the remaining games in the trilogy with an unrelated game in between them. I feel I need to give them a little breathing room so I don’t get too burnt out on the mechanics.

Currently playing: Chrono Cross

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Hickman, Avengers, and the Infinity Gems


Spoilers for Jonathan Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers. You have been warned.


Today over on twitter, David Uzumeri suggested an interesting theory concerning the future of Jonathan Hickman’s run on Avengers and New Avengers today and I felt like I should run with it. For the purpose of context, here is the original tweet.

Manifold is a character which Hickman himself created during his run on Secret Warriors back in 2009. The character has the ability teleport. As the current writer on Avengers, Hickman has put the character as a member of his expanded roster for the team.

Hickman is well known among readers for planning his runs of any given book pretty extensively to the point that he makes use of complex charts for mapping out what plot points play out in what issues. One thing that has always struck me about his work at Marvel that no one ever seems to bring up is how interconnected it all is. Aspects of his work on S.H.I.E.L.D. play into both the tail end of his run on Secret Warriors as well as an early issue of his Fantastic Four, a two issue story arc in Fantastic Four (#607-608) foreshadows the fate of Wakanda during Avengers vs. X-Men as well as Black Panther’s role in the events of Hickman’s New Avengers series. I bring up his past work because to better flesh out this theory the first thing we need to put on the table is established in Hickman’s previous Marvel work (well, first two things if you count the introduction of Manifold in Secret Warriors). I’m talking about when Hickman establishes in Fantastic Four #571 that an Infinity Gauntlet and its respective Gems are only functional in their native universe.

Fast forward to Hickman’s New Avengers #1, in which a new villain named Black Swan arrives in Wakanda, claiming to be from a parallel earth that has suddenly appeared in the sky (I'm not going to bother explaining what's actually going on here, it's far too complicated, just read Hickman's New Avengers because he spends a good chunk of #2 explaining it). She arrives on Earth 616 through the teleportation powers of her own universe's Manifold only to kill him shortly after. Later, in the following issue, Reed Richards, interrogating Black Swan, asks her about her motivations in doing this and she says this...


At the end of the issue, Steve Rogers realizes the Illuminati are considering compromising their principles to stop the impending threat and convinces the team to use the Infinity Gauntlet instead. When Reed tells this to Black Swan in New Avengers #3 she reminds us that the gems, don't work outside of their native universe.

In that same issue the Illuminati assemble the Gauntlet and Steve uses it to prevent impending disaster, but at a cost; the Gauntlet is lost.


With the Gauntlet gone the Illuminati realize Steve is going to stand in the way of them doing what they feel must be done and mind wipe him. The scene mirrors the out of context dream/flashback panel Steve has as he is waking up in Avengers #1 and seems establishing that everything in New Avengers thus far has taken place before Avengers #1

So building off of this train of thought David got me going down today, here is my theory where all this is heading. Steve did not break the Gauntlet in New Avengers #3. When Steve says he gave it one last push, he unconsciously transferred the powers of the Gems to 6 characters that would eventually become part of Steve's expanded Avengers team. In other words Steve has effectively made the Avengers into Infinity Gauntlet and doesn't realize it yet. After all, this team will likely go on to stop the threat the Illuminati are planning to sacrifice their principles to prevent, which would ultimately prove Steve's original stance of using the Infinity Gems to prevail right.

As one last piece of evidence for all of this, I'll point out something I just noticed about that Avengers team graphic in the front of every issue of Avengers.


Notice anything interesting? Each circle represents one member of the team, with the inner circle representing the "movie Avengers" and the offshoots representing the newer recruits. What strikes me as odd is that 6 of the circles are larger than the others. Sure, 2 of them are empty at the moment, but the other 4 represent Captain America, Iron Man, Captain Universe and (going back to David's original tweet that spawned all of this.) Manifold. Six is also the number of the Infinity Gems.

I know I'm probably not 100% right, but considering we know that Marvel's Free Comic Book Day offering is the opening shots of a big, Hickman penned event called Infinity, the Infinity gems have to be out there somewhere and I think the clues all point towards something akin to this.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Updates

Ok, so I’m going to try and revive this blog… again. First things first; updates!

• I removed all of the God awful posts related to DC Comics New 52 line up. This includes my Justice League #1 review, where I gave it a glowing 4/5 as opposed to just saying “It looked nice, not a whole lot happened in it, but it didn't give me cancer or anything.”

• Since my last post, I’ve worked double jobs as a library children’s programing assistant and after school day care worker, before quitting both of those jobs in late 2011 to start working as a children’s therapist.

• I've been on a monster retrogaming kick as of late, no idea rather or not that will actually come up in my posts, but it seems like something that’d be fun to write about…

Sunday, May 22, 2011

I think I'll slice my way into this blog... (Jazzeh's First Post)

Wow, I've never actually contributed to anyone else's blog before. I usually find it hard enough to manage my own. I'm willing to give it a shot, though... it might be more fun with someone else than it is alone, ya know? Also, it's funny how Zack and I went to hating each other in fifth grade (some silly fight over whether Sailor Moon or Voltron was better... lasted for about eight or nine years) to being pretty good friends, and now he's given me blog-posting privileges. I am honored.

I've been asked to write about a pretty amazing television program I ran across a few months ago, and honestly I couldn't be more thrilled to talk about the god of late-night programming: Cutlery Corner.


Basically, the three wonderful people pictured above have organized their own home shopping program for knives, swords, and other related objects. The quality of this show kind of reminds me of my childhood, when I'd drag out the old bulky camcorder and attempt to record my own commercials and TV shows. I don't think I can ever forget flipping through the channels at 2-3 in the morning and finding a middle-aged man attempting to describe a pocket knife, and then watching it fall to the floor as he tries to pick it up. Bless his heart.

I'm sure these people sell some good products. I know absolutely nothing about cutlery, but you can take a look at their site and see for yourself. However, the hosts make this show pure gold. A lot of internet browsers should be familiar with this video of a man failing pretty hard with a katana on live television, and a funny man coming out to demand "emergency surgery... in the studio". This funny man is Tom O'Dell, and I would love to have whatever he's smoking.


Tom seems to have a way of lighting up this show with his quirky sense of humor and overall awkwardness. A simple YouTube search of his name yields so many amazing moments from Cutlery Corner, but the one above is one of my favorites. (The audio isn't synced properly to the video, but it's worth watching anyhow.) How can you not enjoy it? IT'S THE GOLDEN FANTASY DRAGON!!! With spontaneous growling, impromptu kazoo performances and in-depth discussions about ninjas on his resumé, this man seriously needs to get his own talk show or something. The other man, Todd Boone, is pretty great too mostly due to his awkwardness on camera, but Tom is just made of win.

You can find Cutlery Corner's broadcast schedule here if you're at all interested in watching it, which I would highly recommend. You can also just stream it straight from their site whenever it's on. However, I implore you to avoid watching this if you're having trouble sleeping at night. You will never sleep. NEVER. It's just that great.