My Dick Hurts - July 13, 2011

Last week I said you should buy Frozen Synapse, and I may have called all four of you assholes. What you have to understand is that I MEANT to say that you should buy Frozen Synapse, asshole. It is a fuckin' good game, and for gloriously simple reasons. If you're not aware, it's a turn-based strategy game, where you and your opponent (be it AI or Other Dude) get a handful of glowing dudes with guns that you direct in an attempt to try and kill everyone who's not your color. The main deal here is that you can plan out your moves in advance, even going so far as to move your opponent's units. This essentially removes any semblance of luck from the game. If your guys get dead, it's because you didn't test all the possibilities. If you win, it's because you ARE A GOD AMONG MEN AND YOUR VAST INTELLECT SHALL BRING ALL OF THEIR WOMENFOLK TO THEIR KNEES... uh. Yeah, it's really satisfying when you win.

I'm no good at good game talk. Look this game up, I highly recommend it.

That brings me to Final Fantasy XIII, which I have a lot more to say about. I've barely played it this past week, because I've gotten to the point where there's a lot of combat, and I cannot remember a game that felt more like a waste of time. This combat is... it's just pointless. That is the best adjective to describe it. I am not being tested on anything here. If I fail on a fight it's because I'm either meant to avoid the encounter, my characters took too long to switch to a healing paradigm, or I fell asleep. Leveling up characters is tedious and is devoid of any choice. Yeah, I can make any character level up in any class I want, but why? You just made me play twenty hours when I only had a choice of three per character. I've already invested in what you wanted me to invest in. So unless I'm meant to grind (and fuck that, you fuck that right now, I'm not kidding just fuck that), I'm playing the game the way you want me to.

And when are these goddamn characters going to actually do something rather than complain and emote to each other? I'm probably going to get into spoilers, but the game's old so fuck it. Boner (that's his new name) is so fucking annoying. I just... my God. He's angsty, his mom's dead, he ejaculates at the mere sight of a woman, and he has daddy issues. He has such a terrible, understanding and loving father who's willing to throw away his life and beliefs to help his son. Poor thing. He was just about to straight up murder a motherfucker and now he's going on about the power of friendship and choice and he pulls a boomerang out of his ass and his hair is stupid and fuuuuuuuuuuuuck hiiiimmmm.

I have no idea why Cloud is the main character. None of these characters really do anything, so I guess she's the main protagonist because she has a sword? Guess it makes sense. "Lighting" is not actually her real name (it's revealed to be "Claire", but I think they just misspelled "Cloud"), she just insists everyone call her that. She's at least twenty-one. It's like if I still told people I was a "ninja wizard", which I totally am but keep it to yourself, bitch.

I have no goddamn idea what's going on. There are two worlds, yeah? Coccoon and Pulse. At least I think they're separate worlds. You can apparently fly a ship to get from one to the other so I don't know. There are also these things called fal'cie, which I think created humans? There's like one line of dialogue that says they created humans, but that isn't brought up anywhere else. Anyway, fal'cie turn humans into l'cie, which are essentially mages. The fal'cie give l'cie a focus, which is a task they must carry out or become cieth, which are essentially abominations from Dragon Age. If they do carry out their focus, they're turned into a crystal and apparently cry Cerulean City gym badges. The fal'cie don't tell the l'cie what their focus is, which is a really stupid thing to do when you want something done. At first it made sense that l'cie only get a glimpse at what their focus was, since every fal'cie you came in contact with was just a big discombobulated mess of mechanical nothing-stuff that never spoke. But now I've fought what is basically this game's Seymour twice, and he's a fal'cie that can change his form into whatever the fuck he feels like, including a human being who can speak perfectly. My brain, it hurts.

Anyway, the gang decided to take out the Sanctum, which rules Cocoon because why the fuck not. In Cocoon, fal'cie apparently provide necessities for humans, like food and light. Our little band of misfits comes upon the realization that this is a terrible thing and these things should be killed because of it. Stuff happens, and Seymour sends us to Pulse. Or Gran Pulse, I don't know. There are fal'cie on Pulse as well, only they're just basically animals that apparently let people ride inside of them. I'm not kidding, the characters find a giant mecha-armadillo and their first instinct is to hitch a ride on it. We do... something in Pulse, fight Seymour again, who gives us a ship to go back to Cocoon. We then start slaughtering people on an active hover-cycle raceway.

I think the basic plot goes like this - one of the main characters is supposed to become Ragnarok, which does what you'd think something called "Ragnarok" would do. They become this by killing someone called Orphan, who is... uh. Uh... anyway, Hot Australian Chick apparently became Ragnarok hundreds of years ago and wrecked Pulse, so I think everyone else assumes their focus is to destroy Cocoon in the same way. And I think Seymour wants them to do it, despite trying to kill them twice and being the ruler of Cocoon with, literally, all the power in the world to destroy it himself. So at the point in the game I'm at now, Cloud and her group of revolutionaries are going to attempt to destroy the things that keep Cocoon alive so they... can save... Cocoon, okay this shit is stupid.

Oh, and everyone got their own transformer while all of... this is happening. Now, I am not a terribly smart man. There are some stories that have plot elements that go over my head. This game, however, has a less coherent plot than Eraserhead. It's even lazily written, with characters spouting out their motivations and emotions at the drop of a goddamn hat, and I'm still not entirely sure why they are doing what they are doing. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware the game is leading up to some "amazing" twist where I end up fighting God with the power of love and friendship or some shit. They always do. But keeping the audience in the dark for thirty fucking hours is not going to keep them interested, especially when you don't give them gameplay that's the least bit entertaining.

But I'm going to get through it, because fuck you game. Stay tuned.